Poland's flat rental agents and the anger they brew in me....

I have had the frustration more than once of searching for a flat in Warsaw. It seems most owners place listings with agents so you have to go through the agent to see the place even if you have done all the work searching. They always send me offers by email or phone a few days after I have found the flats myself online. And they keep listing rented flats over and over even after I have checked and they are for sure not available. I have missed some good options because the agents take a few days to follow up and the place gets rented in that time. Basically they want to be paid to let you in for 5-10min and check the place because they do ******* else useful. I wish more owners would just put the listing up themselves on Gumtree (which is now more agents than direct rentals) or similar sites. Owners should realise they are missing out on potential renters because of the nonsense games these agencies play.

And screw all the football hooligans in town taking up all the decent flats for the next couple months.

Ok rant over ;)

check oferty.net

you will find many with agents and many without.
agents in Poland are useless tools that do nothing. Try and go direct if you can, to the owner- this way they don't have to pay the fee and you don't have to pay the fee.

Thanks Pip I will check that site. I rented my last two flats without agent but now I am having a harder time finding direct options. It would be different if the agents found a great flat that you couldn't find yourself, but to expect one month's rent as a fee to spend a few minutes letting me in and photocopying a standard rental agreement is just mental. Most will offer 50% if you push but today I had a woman who insisted she did a lot of hard work like showing me the place and preparing the contract so it was fair for her to be paid a full month. I told her I wouldn't be calling her back. Sorry for being ********** frustrating.

I had a guy expect me to pay him 400 USD for opening the door. It was a joke.

They are useless scavengers. Bottom feeders.

The residential market needs standards for their agents because at this moment it is a joke.

I like you...our common anger binds us ;)

agents access most of their offers from public portals, gumtree, oferty and co...

Yeah thats what aggravates me...that even though I do all the leg work I still have to get through them as an obstacle to see a place as they are often the only contact...Gumtree used to be mostly private offers but its tipped to agencies. Not sure where they get the cheek to ask for so much money to get in the way ;)

Enquiries I have made - majority of agents are agreeing 50% of a month's rent as their fee with little or no argument.

If I spoke Polish, I'd not even use an agent tbh

It's not a matter of speaking Polish...most of the ads are listed by agents so you have no way to contact the owner without calling the agent. Lately they are even refusing to give you the address exactly, and many are requiring you to sign agency contracts before seeing the flat, because they know people will try and go there and leave a note or something. It's getting out of hand.

You misunderstood me - what I meant was if I spoke Polish I would contact the landlords who are advertising on Gumtree etc directly. I would never answer the ads from agents (not knowingly anyway)

I understood you and agree it's best...but the problem is most of the ads are not from the landlords and you have no way to contact them. You MUST contact the agent if you want to see a certain flat. I wish it wasn't like this but more and more are listing with agents. Lately it seems the flats I like the most are listed by agents unfortunately.

Everyone here tells me Poles don't use agents! They told me the minority of landlords use agents not the majority! They said Gumtree is full of landlords advertising direct in Wroclaw - not so?

In my experience Gumtree is now more agents than direct. It used to be mostly direct. You can filter out agents of course but you lose more than 50% of the open flats doing so.

Just now I checked the site and filtered down to 292 flats with my criteria....192 are with agents...100 without.

You could also try daft.pl

It's all changing then :o(


Thanks, I didn't know Daft had bought a Polish portal - will check it out.

They started Daft.pl maybe 4 years or more ago. Daft.ie actually set it up.

@Irishguy
I had a look at Daft Poland just now - in my price bracket and area the ads seem 2 months old, so not sure if they will be available. Going to give it a try however.

That seems to be a problem with all the sites. A lot f the listings are old, or just resubmitted over and over even after being rented. Several flats seem to be listed with multiple agencies and they don't have current information. It is quite frustrating.

best of luck, by the way you owe me a months rent if you find a place on daft.pl ha ha

Hopefully you'll settle for a couple of Guinnesses :o)

I don't know Wroclaw at all but here is a link.

oferty.net/mieszkanie-na-wynajem-wankowicza-wroclaw-fabryczna,1500322470

this one just has a name and no agency listed.
oferty.net/mieszkanie-na-wynajem-ul-glowna-wroclaw-fabryczna,1500350752

my god there are loads of agents in Wroclaw...good luck with your search!

did anybody notice that up untill about two months ago rightmove.co.uk (the UK property portal) had over 40,000 Polish properties for sale.

Just checked now and they have 12, rightmove.co.uk/overseas-property-for-sale/Dolnoslaskie.html

Looks like things are more buoyant than I'd feared. All sold by flippin' Haart I shouldn't wonder....

Many of the sites all of you sent us to, look good, but I don't speak, read, Polish. Are there any in English?

Valpomike

Not that I know of. I had to learn what the words meant, then used the site. Or you can try MS Translate WIth Live Search (right mouse click) for some sites.

if you have google chrome just use the translate function and it will translate the full website

Mike...it's also as good a time as any to start learning some Polish. You can pick up pretty quick what the basics are for flat related stuff. And yeah...Google Translate makes short work of any issues if you cannot understand. Flat listings will be the least of your communication worries so don't give up before you start.

What kind of flat you want to rent in Warsaw? I will explain to you how to search offers excluding "biuro nieruchomosci", "agent nieruchomosci". Direct offers often contain word "bezposrednio" in title.

Once you find a place you might want to take along a translator to help with financial details, etc, but as far as searching through the ads, google translate works well.

After your first dozen ads you'll see that there are about 20 or so words that are repeated over and over.
Especially words like "cichy" and "spokojny" :->

And they are nearly ALWAYS lies. The places that make it a point to mention how quiet they are for example...never are. Flat hunting is not a fun experience. Even pictures are often very deceiving.