Urm
You will be unlikely to find unfurnished apartments to rent for 6 months, especially as a tourist. Use the search function on the home page to find threads that discuss your problem in detail.
Why?
Whilst the law concerning rentals is currently under review, any changes made shouldn't affect your situation. I will give you a brief summary.
There are two types of legal accommodation rental contracts in the city:
Short-term (tourist) rental
Long-term (2 year) rental
Short term properties for rental are rented out for 6 months maximum at a time, they are nearly always priced in dollars and the owners/agencies expect dollars in cash. They come furnished with all bills paid for and usually include a weekly maid service.
Long term properties are for locals, they come un-furnshed and without any paid services. The renter assumes all responsibility for the decoration, general maintenence and bills pertaining to the property. Rent contracts last two years and a
garantia is mandatory (which I believe you will not be able to get).
Entonces q?
So the point is that you will not be able to rent the usually cheaper and unfurnished long term rental properties. You will be choosing from the lists of tourist rentals, which, with the fuckdiggery of the dollar controls at the moment, actually make renting in dollars an OK prospect (as long as you earn dollars).
You originally asked, "Why are these rents so expensive?"
Well, the property market in Buenos Aires has had a strong recovery in the last decade and the rental prices match that. In popular areas like Palermo prices are climbing in check with the lower estimates of inflation. In a quick survey of my friends´ (long term) rental prices, they all going to be paying 20-25% more next year.
Coming here to live for 6 months you will be choosing one of the popular barrios to live in, these also cost more to live in. If you checked rental prices in the south of the city you will see the difference.
Really the prices in dollars are not all that expensive. Since the dollar controls came in late last year, the peso had dropped so sharply against the dollar, that many dollar rentals have remained frozen in price for the last year.
And lastly, demand, people come and pay these prices, so the owners charge those prices. I have seen some stupid prices (1300 dollars a month for a studio in Palermo) and yet the owners tell me that they have 95% occupancy.
What to do?
Go to
craigslist and look through the ads there. You will soon learn, with a bit of practice, to read between the lines and filter out with your brain all the agency ads. They all are very similar, listing the properties in block capitals and with the same input method, with similar adjective descriptions. Look for the uniquely formatted adverts, these will have been posted by owners directly and will work out cheaper for you.
This has found me the best priced and most interesting properties I have lived in here over the last few years.
Soloduenos has been mentioned above. I wouldn't recommend it. It is a speculators site in my opinion, where the owners, unimpressed at the rental rates quoted by agencies, go to fish for a higher bidder. The properties are nearly all over priced.
You may also try
enbuenosaires.com and
zonaprop.com.ar. Reme,ber to check
temporary rent or
alquiler temporal in the search options as that is what pertains to you. There are options to check to only show listings that are listing directly by the property owners (through an agency you will be charged one month or 15-20% commission).
In all of these listing sites, calculate the $/m2, take a look at the map and get an opinion on the precise area and streets where the property is located, one street can be quite lovely while 2 blocks away you are suddenly in a crime zone or being beset by two, 4-lane avenidas. Look at the phots and try to draw the property in your mind, they are taking to hook you in, if you spend a little time studying the layout in the photos you can separate the chaff.
What to watch out for
Unscrupulous owners and agencies. There is many a thread here on these forums about this. It is important that you study the problems that have arisen and the criminal activity that happens in rentals, especially to foreigners.
I wont explain it here is my fingers are aching and my tea has gone cold. Just use the search bar on the home page to search for, rental deposit stolen, landlady is crazy, they locked me out, etc...
There are also wonderful Landlord/ladies here, that I luckily have had the pleasure to rent from. The problem is, is that there is no way to distinguish between them until you are right in the middle of their crap.
Get everything recorded and written down: pictures taken, inventory noted, contact details from everyone. Read up. All the people we get crying on this site, it usually too late for them and they have to cut and lose. If you read up you will be ok.
