Every day we get requests from Students searching for lodging in Florence. Going to schools for a month, a semester or a full year the question is always the same: where do I lodge for a long term? I am on a budget what should I do?
Demand for student lodging is always high and regardless the huge offers of private apartments, shared rooms, hostels is STILL hard, crisis regardless, to find accommodation in Florence, why?
- 6 to 9 millions of tourists a Year!
- over a 100 schools for foreigners in just Florence!
- Over 20 thousands Students / year!
- A reasonably small city centre!
- Lots of buildings converted into Hotels, Affittacamere, B&B’s and so on.
Getting accommodation at a low budget it’s a nightmare for every student, in a few words is really hard to get below 500 € / month for one private room with the use of bathroom. Finding such accommodation is so hard that some Students do spend endless hours browsing dozens of sites, asking questions, expecting to find something it’s not available.
The hard path: Look online for bargains
Perform some searches on GODgle for: economy apartments Florence, budget student housing in Florence, cheap rooms in Florence, find something for less then 800, 900 € / month is very hard.
Well, here are some resources to look for budget rental at your own risk!.
- http://www.easystanza.it/ it’s a good site for rooms in Italy in shared apartments.
- Contact your school for housing, they provide list of private owners and other resources for your stay in Florence, do not expect pictures of the apartments, do no expect fancy places, do not expect too much service, you are on your own for what regards, contracts, follow up during your stay and so on.
- Look for classifieds ads in Florence through, http://www.kijiji.it/annunci-firenze/, http://firenze.bakeca.it/, http://firenze.vivastreet.virgilio.it/, http://www.annunci.net/annunci/32_Firenze/, search results on google for annunci firenze, CraigList, and more…
- Come to Florence for a week or more in a B&B (People have spent two months in B&B’s searching for the right apartment), when in Florence search through local estate magazines, visit real estate agencies, advertising boards at your School and so on.
The hard path: coming to Florence for sometime to Hostel or B&B’s and start the search!
It is right and legit to come to Florence and search for apartments locally if you are staying a year or more. Many students think that a good option is coming to Florence in a B&B’s for a week or two and search for a flat for the remaining two or three months stay. Unfortunately even if it might look like a good idea, the path will turn out to be even more expensive then booking online.
A decent B&B will cost around 20 € to 40 € a day and counting at least 10 days to search properties, take care of the contract and so on your expenses will raise, unless you do find a private owner you’ll need to add commissione from 10% to 15 % of the total rental cost.
Therefore if all this above is appealing to you, go ahead and crunch it, for those who instead want to save some extra time and money and having a nice place secure by the day they arrive in Florence with nice people greeting you and helping understand the city read on the following article on The Easy Path of the Students seeking for Lodging in Florence.