Renting a place

When you start renting a apartment, house or villa you only get a one year contract (sometimes if you are lucky they are for 2 years) and you usually have to pay the year's rent in one cheque upfront. (again if you are lucky you can make 2 or 3 postdated cheques) So this means every year you have to have enough money on the side to be able to pay one year's rent.

Until this year, the landlords were allowed by law to raise the rent up to 15% if the contract was renewed for the same tenant. Since 2007 there is a new "rent cap law" and now only a 7% increase is allowed, and only if there were some major improvements done on the object by the landlord.

So I'm sure you think, well that is good news and not much to complain about, but let me tell you, there is. Of course the landlord is not willing to renew the contract with his tenants but he is trying to find a way of getting them out and new ones in. For example by saying: "i will move into the house" or "I sold the house and the new landlord wants it empty" etc.

And as the prices of rent increase here every year by 30 - 50% you can see that all those sharks are willing to risk everything to get their previous renters out and new ones in.

Of course our landlord is no exception, and our rent contract is expiring mid July. He even didn't have the decency to inform us himself..... We called him the other day, since we were planing to leave on holidays in July and wanted to sort this out before. Well that is just great... this gives us not even 2 months to find something else....

And not only will we be force to find another place to live, but also, we will be new tenants for a new landlord and he will charge us of course 30-50% more. I just wonder how we will be able to pay some much more in rent every year...... It just doesn't work out! And then the hassle of moving all the time.....

Well, we are in the process of finding out if there is anything we can legally do to prevent him from "kicking" us out, but after so many friends of ours already went through the same s**t, we have not much hope.