Quote: (03-04-2019 11:46 AM)Shimmy Wrote:
Quote: (03-03-2019 12:48 AM)NoMoreTO Wrote:
no appliances, fridge, stove, etc. So you have to set all that up, which in Colombia Ive heard can take a month.
You can actually get that stuff the next day pretty easily. If you were hard up and willing to toss a guy $20-30 extra I bet you could get it delivered and installed on the spot at the right place. I have paid some random guy who hangs around places and has a truck $10 to get furniture or large items from the building material store delivered because I didn't want to wait a day. I believe homecenter also has a 4 hour option where you can pay extra to get it delivered in 4 hours. However dealing with larger companies like getting internet installed you can wait months.
The main difficulty for renting an apartment in Colombia as a foreigner is not having property to put down as collateral. Some people will accept a certificate of deposit for several months as collateral but you would have a hard time finding someone to rent it outright with nothing. Colombians are not trusting people.
The rental guarantee mess isn't unique to Colombia. Argentina and Uruguay have it. I imagine much of Latin America has their own variations.
Down here they have "societies" you can join and the principal reason to join is to acquire a rental guarantee. You pay some small number of pesos monthly for membership and in return you put down a substantially smaller rental deposit than if you arranged a rental guarantee through a certified single purpose bank deposit.
Everywhere has their own weird local rituals that they will want you to satisfy.