Apartment Rental Experience

Just returned from Paris and wanted to share our apartment rental experience. We rented a one bedroom apartment from Paris Attitude (www.parisattitude.com) and found this agency to be professional, friendly and quite accomodating. You can select an apartment from a variety of units displayed on their web site. Once you have reserved an apartment you will receive via e-mail a copy of an agency contract (one in English and one in French). The French version is filled out (using the English copy as a guide as necessary) and faxed back to the agency along with a copy of your passport. The agency fee, which is part of the overall rental price as explained on the web site, is also paid at that time via an on-line credit card payment (Paypal system) or via an invoice containing your credit card information which is faxed back to the agency. (You can also pay the agency fee via wire transfer, certified check or mondy order).

Once the above documentation is processed you will then receive via e-mail a booking confirmation containing all the information about the apartment, the owner and payment insructions. You then receive from the agency, again via e-mail, a copy of a lease which you sign and return via mail or fax to the agency. At that time half of the total rent is sent to the owner and the balance of the rent is given to the owner upon your arrival at the apartment along with a security deposit (for short term rentals the deposit is equal to the total rent. In our case we arranged with the owner to pay the total rent along with the deposit upon our arrival at the apartment).

We were met at our apartment by a representative of the owner who took the rental payment and security deposit (we used Euro travellers checks) and provided us with a receipt for this. The deposit was returned in full on the day of our departure, again by this same representative (of course if there is any damage to the apartment presumably this would be deducted from your deposit).

In summary while there are some front-end transactional matters to attend to in renting an apartment in Paris we highly recommend it and will certainly use Paris Attitude again for our next trip (next summer). Nothing like having your own fully equiped kitchen in Paris in which to enjoy fresh delights from the many Parisian shops and markets that abound.

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Thanks for your post. I am considering Paris Attitudes for an apartment and I%26#39;m not finding much about them on the %26#39;net. I did find one message in another forum from someone with a difficult experience. That seemed to arise from the apartment actually being someone%26#39;s home, rather than a placed used only by tourists on a short term rental basis. Was your place someone%26#39;s home?

Where was your apartment located?

Merci,

GigiG

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GigiG--The one bedroom apartment we rented was in a small apartment building in the 8th arrondisement--a few blocks from l%26#39;Arc de Triomphe--excellent location. We originally heard about Paris Attitude from friends who had rented from them a couple of years ago. Both their and our experience with the company was very positive. After our return from Paris we received a questionnaire from Paris Attitude with questions about how much we liked the apartment and the service we received from Paris Attitude; they also were interested in any suggestions we had for improvement. This suggests that the company cares about customer service and is interested in how it might be improved. Cheers.

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Thanks for your reply. I will say that the prices of their apartments are great, but I am having trouble getting any response to my questions. Your endorsement means a lot to me in this situation. I appreciate your taking the time to respond.

Gigi

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We are in the midst of the front-end transactional matters with Paris Attitudes for a 5-day stay, and since it is our first experience with renting an apartment on vacation, we are finding it little frustrating, but are getting through it. There was one surprise so far--how much it costs to wire the 50% rent ahead. Our bank is charging $40 and then there is 20 euros at the other end. You were prudent to negotiate with the owner to pay it all on arrival.

My question is did you buy the %26quot;mandatory%26quot; renter%26#39;s insurance? Or does anyone else have experience with whether it is a bad idea to ignore this?

The Paris Attitude agency offers this insurance, bundled with a cancellation insurance at about 20 euros, but doesn%26#39;t push it. I can%26#39;t seem to find the mandatory insurance alone on any other available site.

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If you buy travel insurance, you can add the apt rental on that if you want. Don%26#39;t know which is cheaper. I won%26#39;t use an agency that requires me to wire money due to the cost, and its a pain! You don%26#39;t know the exact rate of exchange, and alot of the banks in france will also charge you on their end to exchange it, so you have to guess how much to send. If you do cancel for any reason and you are entitled to some sort of refund (maybe a percentage) you loose money again on the transaction! That happened to us. My mom hurt herself, but we were able to cancel and get 50% of our deposit back (insurance covered the rest) and the owner didn%26#39;t know quite how to get the money back to us. He ended up sticking cash in the mail! We were lucky to get it without being stolen.

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