How to find a Safe Sublet Abroad?

Parents Forum
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<p>My daughter is finishing her junior year of college and will be doing research for 6 weeks this summer in Berlin. She doesn’t want to live in university housing. She wants to be in a rental apartment, in Kreuzberg, preferably with students, or other young adults.</p>

<p>She found a great apt thru Craig’s List, but we are all understandably nervous about that (scam, identity theft, etc). I know folks who have found apts in NYC thru Craig’s List, but that’s a bit different since they were in NYC, and could check it out safely before committing.</p>

<p>Any suggestions for how to safely use Craig’s List for something like this, or an alternative way to find a rental?</p>

<p>Are there agencies or something that anyone can recommend, which do not charge exorbitant placement fees?</p>

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<p>I would imagine her study abroad office at her school may be able to help her with housing referrals if they send kids to Berlin during the semesters…even though she is not going as part of that program…</p>

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<p><a href=“http://www.wg-gesucht.de%5B/url%5D”>www.wg-gesucht.de</a> is the most popular site for finding sublets in Germany. She also needs to be more flexible with the neighborhood-- Kreuzberg is popular with students, but so are Friedrichshain, Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg, and Neukoelln. The only problem with wg-gesucht is that a lot of WGs hold “castings” in person, but they might be more relaxed if she’ll only be there for 6 weeks.</p>

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<p>Is her research through a university? D1 studied abroad last semester, and enrolled directly in the largest university in a different European country (not Germany). In that country, the universities had a message board where students could post sublets/looking for apartment notices/etc. That is how we found a sublet for D. We did look on Craigslist, but didn’t have much luck. And there were quite a few listings out there that were clearly scams. It really was a lot of work to find a sublet for her.</p>

<p>Here is a thread from another poster whose son will be in Berlin for part of the summer and had to find a rental:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1114246-renting-room-berlin-summer.html?highlight=germany+housing[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1114246-renting-room-berlin-summer.html?highlight=germany+housing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>If you message DonnaL, she might be able to get the web site info from her son for you.</p>

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<p>LOL - I just came back to check this thread AFTER i had found some of Donna’s messages and emailed her for help.</p>

<p>Thanks folks - I’ll look into some of these suggestions!</p>