Hello Ramallah

My darling wife and I splashed down in Ramallah within a couple of weeks of each other in early 2011.  As part of my relocation package, the organization I work for was willing to cover one month in a hotel to allow us time to find an apartment—luckily we only needed 29 days.  Here are some statistics from our apartment search:

·         We used the services of four different real estate agents

·         We looked at apartments ranging from $350/month to over $1500/month

·         We used three different web-based apartment listing services, including one entirely in Arabic, thanks to online translate tools

·         We looked at apartments over the course of four months, from November 2010 to February 2011

·         In total, we saw 43 apartments, with the very last apartment we saw being the one we live in now

Of the 43 apartments, very few met our basic criteria, which included location (close to downtown and my office), a garden or balcony, a decent price, overall condition (no mold, functional windows), and decent furniture.  One reason we used four different real estate agents is that none seemed to fully grasp what we wanted in an apartment, even though we spelled out our criteria to each of them.  Rather, they were showing us what they had available.  And we came to realize that landlords that rely on real estate agents are more likely to live outside of Ramallah and less likely to take proper care of their properties.

Odd bedroom arrangements were common:

And we saw apartments with troubling mold issues:

The search was disheartening at times, but we knew we would find something eventually.  Eventually we found two apartments that interested us—both through personal references rather than real estate agents.  One was located in a 2-year old villa.  It had nice furniture, a large kitchen, two bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, and a small garden.  The price was a bit higher than we wanted to pay and the location was good, but not great. 

The other was located in a 3-year old apartment building.  The furniture was fine, the apartment wasn’t large, but the floor plan was well designed and the open kitchen helped make the main room feel large enough.  There were two bedrooms and two full bathrooms and a small balcony.  The location was better than the first apartment and the price seemed very reasonable.  Both were tempting options, and we found ourselves suddenly with a decision to make between two good apartments as opposed to the 40 less-than-adequate options we had previously seen.

Finally, we decided on the apartment with the better location and better price.  We would miss out on the small garden, but we would also save $100 per month and be closer to “the action” as I called it and as my darling likes to tease me about.  We’ve been here two months now, and other than an occasional mosquito singing into our ears at night, things are working out very well here. 

We have a spare bedroom for guests and would love to show people around Ramallah.  We’re an easy 15 minute walk from just about anything you’d want to see or do in Ramallah: the old city, the hottest Thursday night clubs, several good restaurants, and the local movie theater.  Come help us enjoy the fruits of our apartment searching labor!