5 steps to finding a home in Phnom Penh

I would hardly consider myself an expert at anything, especially the property market of Cambodia! But after several weeks of bizarre hoops and jumps, here is my 5-Step Guide to Finding a Home in Phnom Penh:

STEP 1: Hire a ‘house finder’
In the absence of any viable estate agents in Cambodia (a good thing in my mind), you need to get yourself a house finder. He does not need to be a professional or even have previous experiences of finding a house. He just needs to be willing to drive up and down the streets of Phnom Penh, looking for ‘TO RENT’ signs and phoning up the scribbled-down numbers to arrange a viewing. We got a nice guy called Saruen to help us find a house. He was happy because he walked away with the first month’s rent after helping us secure the deal. Not a bad deal for him either!

STEP 2: Hone in on your kind of house
If you’re not careful, you might end up with a wooden shack overlooking a mosquito infected swamp or an apartment just above the ‘black water’ (open sewer running through Phnom Penh). Be sure to give your house finder plenty of guidance, as ours starting out by taking us to a place where birds where nesting in the windows and the owner was offering plastic pink furniture!

STEP 3: Bargain hard
There is no such thing as a fixed price for renting a house in Phnom Penh and, geneally speaking, the whiter you look, the more you’ll be charged. Send your Cambodian house finder in first to meet the landlord and negotiate a price. Once you’re interested in the place, you’ll need to bargain hard for additional work to be done on the house. We spent a total of four hours sitting on the floor of our apartment-to-be, negotiating with the landlord (and his wider family!) about ceiling fans, mosquito-mesh screening, air-conditioning and a sink (our house has three toilets and no sink – very odd). In the end, we got everything but the air-con and had to pay 50% on the rest.

STEP 4: Get ready for bureaucracy
Maybe it’s a hangover from the close links Cambodia had with the USSR or maybe they just need to keep-up the heavy deforestation. Whatever it is, Cambodians seems to love their paperwork and renting a home is no exception. Come prepared to bring copies and originals of all your life’s paperwork and a whole stack of random family information. In the end, Laura and I handed over a total of 8 passport-sized photos of ourselves (?!?) and had to sign - well, thumprint actually (see photo) - a total of, you guessed it, 8 copies of two separate contracts. We were also asked about our parent’s ages and where they born, essential information I’m sure for the local housing office.

STEP 5: Be creative with furniture haulage
If, like most people who end up renting a property in Phnom Penh, your place is unfurnished, getting furniture into the home could prove trickier than you thought. With Cambodian’s efficient use of space in and around the home, there is often little or no room for beds, sofas, mattresses, etc. We spent a sunny Saturday afternoon hauling our newly-bought furniture up to the second floor balcony using a ladder, some rope and some dangerous antics on the roof of the house below us.

Perhaps, after this experience, I could set-up my own estate agents in Phnom Penh. But I wouldn’t want to deprive others of the fun we’ve had…