Housing

Finding a place to live when you arrive is the first thing you need but unfortunatly is the hardest to do. In Milan the renting market is skyrocketing and most of the houses and flats in the center are impossible to get, especially for a person with a limited budget like a student.

The price for the smallest flat (just a bedroom, with a little kitchen and a bathroom) starts from € 700 and can get as expensive as possible getting closer to the center of the city. That is why most of the students choose a different and cheeper solution, which is to share an apartment with other students or even to share a room. In fact the price for a single room is at least € 500 and anyway it depends on the location of the flat. The price for a double room (a room shared by two persons) is at least € 350 and it raises as well depending on the location. You have to be carefull also if the expences are included when you look at a price: usually the building and heating expenses are included in the price, while electricity, gas and phone are never included in the price.
It is also common that a deposit is asked at the beginning of the contract: this amount of money is usually equal to three times the monthly rent and you will get it back at the end of the contract. One thing to be checked also is the length of the contract, which usually is 12 months while an exchange students is usually staying only 10 months, which could be a problem.

So after all this list of prices and problems now you are probably wondering where you can find adds and how to start looking for an apartment. The best place to look is among the adds of private persons, because even though there are renting agencies, they will ask you a high fee to find you an apartment. The best newspaper we can advice you to find adds for apartments is SecondaMano, which you can find on the web or in any newspaper stands in Milan. We prefer the paper version, but anyway you can find go on the related links on the left of this page. When you call a number from an add be careful: the one with a big dot or anyway with a bigger font or underlined are from agencies, which have a fee and they are not always reliable. So go and look for the small ones, which are for sure by private persons. The help that ESN Politecnico MIlano can give you in this matter is to be as an intermediary between you and the private person who is renting the apartment: we understand you do not know italian very good yet and you know so litlle about Milan to find a room all alone, so what we do is to collect some adds in our office and call them for you. Moreover if you come with the Seconda Mano and you underlined some adds, we can call for you too.

We would like to underline that ESN is not a renting agency, we do not have our own rooms which we rent out! Ant moreover we are not paid for the help we give you: so just try to understand we cannot find you a hundred rooms to see so you can choose the best one, but try to adapt yourself a bit... we will do our best for you anyway!

Note: we are not in charge of managing the applications to the student residences, so please do not ask us if there is place there or why you have not been accepted and so on. If you are going to study at Politecnico and want to apply for a room there or for any other information please write to cri.accommodation@polimi.it.