el crispito

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September 24, 2008

Armchair Apartment Hunting

A couple of weeks ago, our friend Joseph mentioned that he was looking in the housing listings of the Friday supplement to Mural and he discovered that we could get an apartment pretty much anywhere in the city for the amount we are currently paying for our apartment in Colonia Chapalita.

We love our current neighbors and our building, but with the rent having been hiked 10% this year and the possibility of it going up another 10% next year, I figure there is no harm in looking to see what is available.

I keep forgetting to pick up a Mural on Friday, but there are online listings in another paper, El Informador. I have been having fun just looking through what's available out there, and I thought that readers might enjoy searching the listings to see what they could be getting for their money here in Guadalajara.

There are a lot of neighborhoods listed in the pull-down menu for the search, and not all of them are places you would want to live. I'll give instructions for doing a basic search first, but then I'll include links directly to searches for some specific neighborhoods, illustrated with Google Maps.

1. Go to http://aviso.informador.com.mx/bienes-raices.
2. Click on "Busqueda Avanzada."
3. Under "Categoría," select "[3] Alquileres - Departamentos" in the pull-down menu to search for apartments. Select "[4] Alquileres - Casas" to search for houses.
4. Under "Colonia," either leave the pull-down menu on "-todas las colonias-" to search through all the listings or select one of the many options to search a specific neighborhood.
5. "Resultados por Página" means "Results per Page," and you can select 20, 30, or 50. If searching only one colonia, you probably will not even come close to any of these options.
6. Click on the "Buscar Bienes Raíces" button, above the two pull-down menus to do a search.

Here are some things to know about what you will find in the results:

• The amount will be shown in Mexican Pesos (MXN), so to get a rough idea of the price in dollars, divide the amount by 10. "$4000" would be 4000 Mexican Pesos, or about 400 United States Dollars.
• A recámara is a bedroom. So is an alcoba. A baño is a bathroom, while a cocina is a kitchen. A cocina integral means there are built-in cabinets in the kitchen.
• A cochera is a garage, or at least, a place where you can park your car.
• Amueblado or amueblada means "furnished."
• Piso means "floor," but in Spanish-speaking countries, what English-speakers consider the second floor is the primer piso, the third floor is the segundo piso, the fourth floor is the tercer piso, etc. The ground floor, or what English-speakers would consider the first floor, is the planta baja.
• Nivel means "level," so tercer nivel means "third level."
• A cuadra is a (street) block, so if an apartment is tres cuadras de something, it's three blocks from it.
• Gas, luz and agua are "gas," "electricity" and "water," respectively.
• Mensual means "monthly." Semenal means "weekly."
• If you need help with other words, look them up at http://www.wordreference.com/.

Want to just run some pre-programmed searches for some areas around town?

Posted by crispy at September 24, 2008 06:14 PM

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Posted by: Chris Coen at September 25, 2008 08:18 AM

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