Idealista vs Fotocasa for DNV holders, my hit rate
Honestly the housing situation here is why I'm considering moving up to Velez-Malaga or even further east. Malaga city is becoming a theme park for nomads and the prices reflect that. 1000 euros for a 1-bedroom is crazy for the local economy. Idealista just enables the bidding wars. I saw a place yesterday where four people were viewing it at the exact same time and one guy offered to pay the whole year in advance. how are we supposed to compete with that?
malaga is becoming a nightmare for prices lately. i looked at a place in el palo last week and they asked for a full year of rent upfront because i am remote. it felt like a total scam but apparently it is becoming common for foreigners. did you stick to the city center or look further out like torremolinos?
honestly i found fotocasa useless for malaga this year. idealista is where most of the actual agents live, but you have to call them within ten minutes of the listing going up. if you message through the app as a dnv holder they just see the foreign name and ignore it. did you find that calling made a huge difference for your hit rate?
calling is definitely the only way. i even started opening with the fact that i have a spanish bank account and can pay six months upfront. it is the only thing that stops them from hanging up immediately.
the doc list is the most important part. most landlords in malaga still dont understand what the digital nomad visa actually is. they just want to see a nomina from a spanish company because their rent insurance requires it. did you end up getting private insurance to cover the lack of a spanish payslip or did the landlord just take your word for it after seeing the visa grants?
I actually had the opposite experience with Fotocasa but maybe it depends on the neighborhood. I found a great spot in Huelin through a private landlord on there. No agency fees and it was much more chill than dealing with Gesa. The problem with Idealista is that everyone is on it so the competition is ten times higher. If you can find a private owner on Fotocasa you can sometimes bypass the whole three months upfront madness.
private landlords are the dream but they are getting so rare now that everyone uses agencies to filter the 500 messages they get. how long ago was this? even Huelin is getting pricey lately.
800 for Pedregalejo sounds like a dream from two years ago. I am seeing studios there for 1100 now that look like they haven't been painted since the eighties. Malaga is getting priced out so fast it makes my head spin. if you found a place for 750 in El Bulto you should probably hold onto it. the agencies here are slow on repairs because they simply don't care. they know if you leave they will have a new tenant by Monday afternoon.
You managed 8 viewings out of 15 responses? That is actually a really high success rate for Malaga city center. When I was looking in January I felt like I was auditioning for a role in a movie. Most agencies didn't even want to hear about the DNV. They kept asking for a Spanish contract and a Vida Laboral. Did you have to show them your bank movements from abroad or did they just accept the visa as proof of income?
thanks for sharing this. me and my partner are moving in october and the housing situation is the only thing giving me anxiety. we use the chrome extension to translate idealista but even then it is hard to tell which agencies are just wasting time. which agency did you end up using? i want to know who is actually dnv friendly.
avoid the big corporate ones. the smaller local agencies in pedregalejo were way more chill about the paperwork when i was searching last month.
Idealista is definitely the king and Fotocasa feels like a graveyard for listings that are already gone. one thing you missed though is that calling is the only way to win in Malaga right now. if you use the contact form you are already too late. I moved to Soho last month and only got the place because I called thirty seconds after it went live. the agency fee is the part that still pisses me off since the law changed last year. they still find ways to charge it by calling it research or management fees.
it's basically legal extortion at this point. they know DNV folks have the cash and won't fight it in court over a thousand euros. i tried arguing the ley de vivienda with a guy in Teatinos and he just laughed and moved to the next person in line.
The 9 AM ritual is real. I had a Chrome extension that refreshed the page every minute. One thing I noticed is that some agencies list on both but only check one dashboard. Inmomar seems to prefer Idealista for sure. Did you find that being a DNV holder made them ask for more rent upfront? I had one guy ask for six months of bank guarantees which is just insane. I told him to forget it.
Six months is a total scam. They see a foreign passport and they think we are made of gold. I usually offer two months and show my remote contract right away to shut that down. it works about half the time.
I gave up on both and started walking around the neighborhoods I liked looking for se alquila signs with phone numbers. It sounds old school but that is how I got my place in El Palo. A lot of the older owners don't even bother with the apps because they hate the spam. You might get a better price that way since they aren't paying agency commissions to list it. Plus you get to meet the landlord directly which helps with the DNV explanation.