PrivateHousing

Apartment - life without basecamp

To get an apartement you need to have a CPR number and to get this you need to register at an address.

To register at an address you need to live somewhere for 30 days or more and have permission from the flat or house owner to register at their address.

There is a housing registration document available from international house that needs to be filled out and signed by both you and the landlord and you also have to provide a receipt for the rent.

One way of making this work is to rent an Air BnB for a month where you have agreed prior to renting it that the owner will sign your housing registration document. Then you have a whole month to have a look for an apartment.

Boligportal is a good site for this. Some housing descriptions are in danish, but google translate seems to work well. You will also need to pay a monthly membership fee in order to write the contact the landlords. There are other sites as well, but boligportal seems to have the largest selection.

It is also possible to ask the administration in your centre to send an email to employees to see if anyone knows of a spare room.

Advice for searching rental apartments

Many of the CPH Biosciences students have for flat sharing with fellow students and found an apartment through boligportal or lejebolig. While many locals don’t rent through such websites, but either buy a whole apartment or buy shares in so called “andelbolig”. The first is not ideal due to the investment cost and uncertain future after the PhD, while the latter is foreigner unfriendly since it requires some years in waiting lists.

Employers often have login credentials that can be used to avoid paying the fees required for the housing seekers (e.g. CPR has an account). If you use one of these accounts that is not coupled to your own email, you can create a second account on a private email with a search agent that would notify of any new offers matching your specific criteria. You can then contact them through the employers account. Write a short and personal message to reply to offers, which you can adapt to each specific offer. If you want to get an example, don’t hesitate to ask older students.

There are a few important things to know when searching for housing this way:

  • Apartments will mostly be for 1 to 3 people, but exceptionally you will find some for more.
  • the floor area is always higher than in reality, because landlords count stairways and corridors outside of your flat. Try to estimate the actual area from floorplans.
  • you could expect a price of around 150-200kr per advertised square meter (keeping in mind that the actual area is lower). Utility costs vary so keep them in mind as well.
  • accoridng to the Danish rental act, there is a rent cap for apartments that have been built and used as apartments before January 1st 1992. While the websites filter out scams fairly well, landlords will not hesitate to ask more than they are legally allowed to. If the cap does apply you can get the excess rent charged in the past payed back, although this is not always an easy process.
  • go to as many viewings as possible to get a feeling of the offer before considering
  • the market is fairly competitive. This means that if you are interested after a viewing, you have to be really quick. If you say that you take the apartment, the landlord sends the contract, but no fees are payed untill it is signed. You then have four days to decide until they retract it, and you have the time to either cancel or sign while it is reserved for you.
  • upfront costs are relatively high, so be prepared.
  • check your contract for a minimal duration and for termination clauses (often 3 months).