1.
International Office – for all the Earlybirds
If you know
that you’ll go to AAU no matter what will happen, you should register yourself
at the accommodation service of the international office. But you have to do
that early and with early I mean super early (maybe even before you’ve gotten
your confirmation letter). International office offers shared furnished
apartements for international students. You’ll get a room in an shared
apartement with 3-5 others in the city center for quite a cheap price – so it’s
really popular and rented out very quick. Remember that Erasmus students get
their confirmation quite early so they’ll probably be the first ones signing up
for the room, than there will be the Master students getting their confirmation
in early June and if you are a Bachelor student, waiting until you’re having
your confirmation in the end of July, you might not even have a chance anymore.
2. AKU
AKU is a
service for all the students in Aalborg (AAU+UCN) no matter if Danish,
international, which semester or whatever – every student can register here.
It’s a place where you can find unfurnished 1-2 room apartments for a really
good price. But again as earlier as you’ll register as more chances you’ll have
to get something there. Don’t be that picky about the location of the flat, the
ones in the centre are much more popular so it’s very hard to get one of those
even if you registered half a year earlier (I’ve heard some rumours that some
people are on the waiting lists for over a year now). A good way is to register
together with someone else (in your personal settings you can add a person),
than you can apply for 2 room apartments and you’ll be ranked much higher since
you’re two people searching together.
3.
Facebook Groups
There are
lots of lots of Facebook Groups where you can search for whole apartements or
free rooms in shared flats. Some of the groups are:
- Aalborg Student Accomodation
- Roommate in Aalborg
- Rooms/Housing/Bolig Aalborg
- Accomodation in Denmark
- Bolig Udlejning Aalborg Kommune
- Bolig udlejning og søgning Aalborg og omegn
- Lejligheder til salg og leje i Aalborg
But as it
is the season, people are craaazy about free rooms. If there is an offer for a
room or a flat within the next 3 hours there will be 20 to 50 people who are
interested in that offer, so again chances are not too big to get something,
especially when you can’t speak Danish.
4. roof
over head guarantee – thank god we don’t have to be homeless
In case you
decide quite late that you’ll take the offer from AAU, like I did, it’s kind of
impossible to find a place to stay in advance. I registered myself at the
beginning of October and my best waiting list rang at AKU was something around
150… not to mention that there was not even a chance for applying at the
international office accomondation anymore. But thank god Aalborg has a heart
for those poor students. So if you’re registered at AKU and haven’t got any
offer you can check yourself in at BBB-Hostel for just 10 EUR per night
(special discount for students with a AKU number). The cabins are quite nice
and you get to know a lot of other students since you’re all in the same
situation. That is actually a very good situation since you can team up
together and look for a bigger flat to share, which is easier than finding an
apartement or a room for yourself. You can stay here until November, afterwards
you pay the normal price of 200 DKK (25 EUR per night) and trust me you don’t
wanna stay here in winter when you have to walk to the bathroom when it’s
freezing as hell outside. Besides the hostel is in the middle of nowhere so better
get a central spot as soon as possible.
5. Housing
websites
What to do
next? Discover the world wide web! Apparently there are a lot of websites for
the housing market in Denmark. Most of the times you have to register yourself
for being able to get in touch with the landlords, which is quite annoying
because it costs money. But if you sign up for the trial it will only be 1-3
EUR for 5 days and 5 days should actually be enough… The descriptions are
always in Danish so google translate will be your new best friend ;) I
personally can recommend the following three websites:
- Findaroommate.dk – Private person renting out free rooms or flats, sometimes furnished
- Boligportal.dk – whole and unfurnished apartements, you can change the language to Englisch (at least for the settings) and can add a filter “sharing”. But it is still worth to even call the agents who offer a flat which is not for sharing, because sometimes they have other apartments too (that’s how I found my flat). Don’t just sent the landlords messages, if there is a phone number call them!
- aalborg-furnished-apartments.dk– if you don’t care about money that’s your new place. They offer fully furnished and decorated apartements from DKK 7000 – DKK 12000 and since that is a bit pricy there won’t be a big run on it as there is on all other apartements. You can share those flats as well and you don’t have to register yourself before contacting the landlord.
Of course
there are a lot more sites, but I had some good experiences with those three. I
wouldn’t recommend to sign up at boliaalborg.com – you’ll pay DKK 200 and end
up on waiting list rank 200 – waisting of money and time. Besides it’s not
worth registering on minlejebolig.dk, most of the offered apartements there are
posted by Prodomus or other property companies like iCiti, so you can also
check their websites directly or just go there as I’ll let you know in the next
point…
6. Prodomus
Prodomus
is, as far as I know, the biggest property company in Aalborg. They’re not
really good in replying to emails so we just went there. There office is at
Boulevarden 11 but they’re only open Mo-Fr (not Wednesday) from 10-14. When you
enter and ask for flats they’re going to tell you to check their website, but
when you tell them you want to see something now they will let you pick some of
the available flats and you’ll get the keys for doing your own viewing straight
away. When you return the keys and decided to take one flat they’ll tell you
the same shit again “Write an email that you’d like to rent this flat and we’ll
let you know if you’ll get it within 1 or 2 days” – we never got a response to
our email so I’d recommend you not giving up easily and force them to speak
with some person in charge.