Renting an apartment in Poland is now no easier than passing a clever quest, because there are not a lot of really good options at a reasonable price in the market. At the same time, there is an increasing number of tenants, which means that there is a huge number of interesting and trash stories on the rental market of Poland. These are the stories that we talked about with the director of the real estate agency ByHome Evgeny Kornevets.

«A slight drop in demand in the rental market is a seasonal lull»

All tenants, probably, heard scary stories about malicious owners of apartments, which put tenants outside at night in their underwear. But trash stories, which occur due to the fault of tenants, according to the director of the real estate agency, in the rental market is also a common case.

— What is the current situation in the Polish rental market?

— Branches of our real estate agency work in most major cities of Poland (except Warsaw), but the head office is located in Poznan — that is why we have the main statistics from this city — said Yevgeny Kornevets. — The situation in the Poznań rental market is now more or less stable. But a month ago, the demand for rent was literally skyrocketing, and apartment owners did not have time to raise prices — ads «lived» in the market for no more than a few hours. It was then that we faced auctions and casting among tenants and the success of the deal depended not only on the solvency of the client, but also on the ability to negotiate.

Today we see that some ads «live» several days, and sometimes even a week. But it is too early to say that the rental market has finally calmed down. In my opinion, a small drop in demand is a seasonal lull: those who wanted to settle before the beginning of the school year, have already found housing, and those who are running out of lease agreements (often this is the beginning of the year) have not yet started looking. At the same time, good three bedroom apartments (two bedroom apartments) are still the weight of gold. Of course, options are illiquid, when there is no repair or the area is not very suitable, but good housing must be long sought.

Rent an apartment in Poznań can be at the following prices: a «kawalerka» (studio apartments up to 25 sq.m.) can be rented from 2000 zloty per month (it is already with communal and other payments), one bedroom apartment (37-39 sq.m.) costs about 2700-3500 zloty per month, two bedroom apartment — about 4000 zlotys per month.

«All the crappy stories are the fault of the tenants»

— Tell us, what are some of the most interesting rental situations you’ve encountered?

— In our practice, we have encountered various rental cases: positive stories, of course, are much more numerous, but there are actually a lot of «crappy» rental stories. And, as a rule, all of the crappy ones are the fault of the tenants.

We work more with foreigners, and not all tenants understand the realities of the current rental market in Poland. For example, there have been cases when tenants, upon checking in, expected that for «such a high fee» the landlords would change their bed linen every week and bring them fresh toiletries. Because that’s what hotels are supposed to do. When this doesn’t happen, they call us and make scandals, and we have to explain to them that such things are not provided for in rental apartments. Or there was a case when a girl tenant suddenly changed her mind about renting the apartment at the moment of signing the lease. Why? Because there was no toilet brush in the toilet. We managed to persuade her not to break the contract, but we went and bought a toilet brush for her ourselves. By the way, there are many situations when people change their mind at the last moment or disappear altogether. I recently had a case in my practice when we spent a long time looking for an apartment under clear criteria, and when we found a suitable option, we spent even longer persuading the owner to rent the apartment to our client. When a positive decision was received and the owner of the apartment came from another country to sign the contract, our tenant simply wrote a message saying «I don’t want to do business with you. Goodbye». Next she just stopped picking up the phone and answering messages. No explanation and no apparent reason. It was very difficult for me to explain to the owner why this happened, and of course, he did not want to work with our agency anymore after that.

There are some funny stories. For example, we once received two requests for apartments from a guy and a girl. After a while, it turned out that they were a married couple, and two different agents were looking for an apartment for the same family. But the most interesting thing is that when we found an apartment for the «husband», the «wife» wrote to her agent that she no longer needed his help because she had a grandmother in Poznan who died and left her an apartment as an inheritance. To this day there is a joke in our agency about the apartment from my grandmother in Poznan.

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— Have there ever been any «classic» stories about renting a place with 40 cats?

— I can’t say forty, but I have had twelve cats in my practice. We were approached by a client who looked very much like a biker — a man of large build, all in leather clothes, with tattoos. At first he rented a «kavalierka», but about six months later he came to us again to look for an apartment, but this time he was looking for a place to live for himself, his wife and twelve cats (who, as it turned out, had lived in another country until then). He warned us that seven cats would come first, but then perhaps all of them would move in. As he explained, «You have to specify in the contract that the number of cats can change.» We looked for a suitable option, by the way, not very long. However, it was a small townhouse in the suburbs, but it was quite nice.

Stories about renting with pets are a separate category. For example, there were tenants with an alabai dog. This dog completely chewed off the door to the bathroom in the rental apartment. We came and looked — the door was really eaten from the base to the ceiling. Well, what can we do? The tenants put a new door at their own expense. The owners had no special complaints about it, by the way.

— Have there been cases when it was not possible to reach an agreement with the landlords?

— In fact, there are not very many such cases — apartment owners are often very cooperative. But recently there was a situation where tenants were beating out the landlady for discounts on rent for literally everything. At first they said that they did not need a garage, but when they moved in and went down to the underground parking lot, it turned out that they needed it. And there was someone else’s stuff in there at the time. The tenants thought that it was disturbing them and demanded a discount from the landlady for not removing their belongings in time. The landlady agreed and gave them free parking for three months for the «inconvenience». When it became clear that the landlady was a compliant person, they started to push for a discount on the rent for everything: for an insufficiently clean tray in the oven, for a creaky door in the kitchen, and so on. Some time later, when everything seemed to have calmed down and there was nothing else to get discounts for, we were approached by the owner of the apartment. The thing is that she was contacted by her neighbors with a request to check if it was her apartment where the cockroaches were escaping from. It turned out that indeed this apartment had become a breeding ground for cockroaches all over the entryway. I don’t know how this is possible in the modern world, but apparently the tenants left food everywhere and went somewhere for a long time. That’s the only explanation I can see. We ended up helping to poison these cockroaches and the whole process took a lot of time. Of course, the landlady asked these tenants to move out. The tenants, of course, did not want to move out, and in the end they were almost evicted by the police.

— I think we’ve had enough crazy stories for now. Can you tell us about the most positive case of move-in? Were there any unusual stories here?

— The other day we received a request to find a one-bedroom apartment for no more than 3000 PLN per month. It was supposed to be a family living in the apartment, but the husband and wife could not decide on a city to live in and were choosing between Krakow and Poznan. The husband approached us to find an apartment in Poznan, while the wife was looking for a place to live in Krakow. They agreed that whoever could find an apartment they both liked the quickest would go to that city. As a result, Poznan was a clear winner within 2 hours of contacting us.