House Hunting in Paris Online

House Hunting Pour les Nuls; an Online Odyssey

Start looking early, they told us, it's Paris. Student rents go quickly, they said. Be careful, they warned, of anything that looks too good to be true and beware the ubiquitous dodgy landlord, lest the cruel hand of fate choose to smite you on the bottom for being so naïve.

But it's all right, We're far too clever for that. We can smile and rest easy, because we'll start early, find a dozen different places and visit them, then play the landlords off against each other to get the best deal. Life will be sweet. Most importantly, we won't get conned because we're not the sort of people who send money to a Nigerian prince called Jeremy (we'll come back to him later) via Western Union.

So we started early. One wants to say July, but having just checked the join date on various online accommodation services they reveal that we actually started looking in early June. June. Bags of time.

And where better to start off than Facebook? The power of social networking shall house us. Off to the Erasmus and Paris student pages then. The only problem was that there was nothing on them that was even vaguely related to our search, except for desperate Italian exchange students seeking accommodation. Not wishing for Fia to become just another statistic in this wave of Latin immigration, we decided to widen the net and look elsewhere on the 'net. Ho ho.

Cue a long list of French accommodation websites, promising the hebergement of your rêves. Enticing URLs and names such as Se Loger, mon-logement-etudiant.fr and Appartager, as well as the quirkier sounding Pap.fr and Locaflat, conceal a veritable minefield of hidden charges, bullshit search criteria and middle-aged men called Louis and Denis looking for young female lodgers (read: lovers) with whom to share their luxury Parisian pad. A sugar daddy could have been the answer to all Fia's woes, but not Tom's, although one of them was also willing to consider 'a young man in touch with his feminine side' (no, seriously, you could not make this crap up). Negotiating the navigational pitfalls and agency fees required a delicate touch (something Louis and Denis) would no doubt have appreciated) but we eventually came up with about six potential leads. Or, to be precise, Tom found one and Fia found five.

Tom's one turned out to be one Natalie Robson, who described herself thusly:

Hello Mate, I am Natalie robson a British Girl,self employed. I am currently in the United Kingdom (London), but not deprive me to leave my house for you. I came here to take care of my sick mother.

Appalling grammar aside, a number of alarm bells rang and we strongly suspected that 'Natalie' was none other than Jeremy, Prince of Nigeria whom we mentioned earlier.

Firstly the apartment was far too good to be true. 500 euros each for two en suite rooms, all bills included, in the 5^th arrondissement? Unlikely. Only 700 euros deposit between the two of us? Impossible. French landlords, it seems, always ask for two months' rent per person as a deposit (UK landlords tend to ask for 1 month's rent).

Secondly Jere-Natalie's English was ever so slightly terrible. This wouldn't be cause for suspicion if it weren't for the fact that he/she purported to be British. Furthermore his/her email address was natalieannan@hotmail.com, a rather French-sounding name. In all likelihood Jere-Natalie is British to the British students and French to the French ones.

Thirdly, we were generously invited to view the property on Google Maps, but not pay a visit in person. Jere-Natalie was apparently worried that we would turn out to be time wasters (Pot? Kettle?) and was not willing to pop over and show us round. Innocent enough in isolation perhaps, but combined with the fact that they were unable to meet us even in the UK and proposed to send the keys via courier after receiving our full contact details (including passport details) the deposit and rent, this was almost definitely a con. The final proof was Jere-Natalie's lack of response after a diplomatically worded email received no response (although he/she could have just taken offence to Tom's comments on their grasp of English).

Hurrah. We dodged a bullet. No impoverished exiled princeling was going to make a fool of us. Now that we'd evaded the omnipresent internet con artiste, we were safe. Lightning never strikes in the same place twice.

Or does it?