Finding a Room in a Shared Apartment in Rio de Janeiro

By Lisa Flueckiger, Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – As renting an apartment in Rio de Janeiro can be relative expensive, many foreigners would like to opt for sharing a place to live. However, this is not very common among Brazilians, where younger people rather stay with their parents than sharing a flat with their friends, so finding rooms can prove difficult.

One option to search for a room in a shared apartment in Rio is the Easyquarto homepage. Set up like a marketplace homepage (in Portuguese), one can either advertise a room or search for one.

However, options on the page as a non-paying member are restricted. For example, when finding a room that you like it will only let you send someone a message through the website. If you are not a paying member, you cannot read the response that comes back. Sometimes people will post their phone numbers or emails right in the ad, which makes things significantly easier.

Eqasyquarto is certainly the option to go with who favors quantity over quality. It boasts with posting over 1,000 rooms per day and a test account received seventeen private messages the first day only.

However, many ads on Easyquarto seem to be less about young people sharing an apartment and more about people with a spare room, which they rent out. This sometimes means restrictions in the use of the ‘common’ areas, such as this one ad where it generously states that “you can use the washing machine one time per week.”

Also, most ads prefer someone who works or studies “fora” (outside the house), so the person renting the room seems to be unwelcome to hang around all day.

Therefore, for those who look more for the shared apartments among young people common in the U.S. and Europe, Facebook seems the place to search. There are several Facebook groups, where one can find roommates, such as Rio Rentals, REI Moradia and RioRep Housing & Tourism.

Rio Rentals is a page dedicated to renting apartments in general, but is mostly used to announce free rooms in apartments. Rio Rep is a student community page, now dedicated to housing. They also announce parties and events.

For those who don’t want to skim through ads and wait until free rooms come up on these sites, it is always an option to get in touch with the foreigner community in Rio de Janeiro via friends or the Gringo Buy & Sell groups that are secondhand market place pages turned community advice sites and ask people directly about options available.

On average, a single room, furnished, including internet and expenses for electricity and gas, ranges from around R$500 to about R$1,200 a month depending on the neighborhood in which it is located. Of course there are some offers that are cheaper and many that are more expensive.

The good thing about going through people that rent out rooms in their apartment or even their entire apartment through this site is that conversation can be in English and most owners require less paperwork to rent a place, which can be an obstacle when going the “conventional” way.