We're officially hunting for housing now. We have the same realtors who found us housing 10 years ago (Victoria/Sean and their team) looking again for housing that might match our criteria.
Hi Victoria and Team,
We hope you can find us a place in Son Tra somewhere between Hồ Xuân Hương in the south and Phạm Văn Đồng in the north
We are especially looking for a larger-than-average living area to offer hospitality. We hope we can find one where the living room and kitchen are good for hosting games and cooking-together. Parking for motorbikes is important, too.
We especially like the older/established neighborhoods near the old Son Tra markets. We don't need it to look glamorous or luxurious. We do hope for AC in the living room/kitchen, even though that's unusual in most houses.
If we can spend less than 25 million per month, that would be our target range.
Thanks!
Tim/Janet
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And in our price range this is a pretty normal house (take a look):
There is not much room in the downstairs of these townhouses for hospitality, cooking together, etc. And this is how 80-90% of all the city houses are designed... so we're hoping that we can find a house with an unusual layout.
We really depend on the local realtor team to find actively listed (real) rentals and hammer out our rental contract, because most of the listings you'd find for yourself online are in the "bait and switch" category. That happened to me last year for a one-week rental, and it was almost a disaster. We were bringing some friends to visit Danang and I had to quickly scramble to find a place for us all ... it's a great story to tell you sometime, because what the enemy meant for evil, another power meant for Good. And boy oh boy was the outcome good!
Right now at 25 million if we don't see lots of great options we might go up another notch. (26.3M is $1000 USD, for context.) There's a reasonable 2 bedroom apartment option at 19M, but the downside is that it can be inconvenient to host friends when you're in an apartment--they have to check in at the desk and there's no place for their motorbikes. For not much more, we can have a lot more space in a house ... if we can find a suitable one.
Hoping for the best! Glad if you'd hope with us!
Tim/Janet