This article is written primarily with Tbilisi in mind, but most of these things are applicable anywhere when you’re looking to rent in a foreign country.

1. Scams

While there are scams everywhere, Tbilisi is a bit of a hotspot in this regard. It’s a multicultural city with lots of people constantly moving in and out, in a country with low average income. There are a lot of people doing short-sighted shady stuff, trying to extract a bit of money wherever and in whichever way they can. The result: lots of scams of varying degrees of severity. Caveat emptor!

2. Short-sighted behavior from landlords

The scams may not always be intentional or pre-planned malice. Often these situations can be born out of short-sighted behavior from the landlords, because they know it’s easy to just find another tenant. They may not always understand (or care) that good tenants are not so easy to find, and can often behave in a very adversarial manner – perhaps “burned” by not-so-great tenants before.

3. Non-professional landlords

The local Facebook groups are filled with stories of unprofessional behavior from landlords, starting from unannounced visits with their own keys, all the way to all kinds of downright crazy behaviour. While most of the landlords may not be professional at what they do, at least they can act in a professional manner – but not all of them.

4. Lousy negotiating position

As a foreigner in a new city and country, you have a challenging negotiation position with local landlords. You’re probably under at least moderate stress and/or time pressure to just find some kind of a decent place, with poor local knowledge. The landlords are “in their lane”, not stressed, and usually not in a hurry. This is not the position you want to be in at a contract negotiation.

5. Language problems restricting your choices

When on your own, you’re restricted to a small pool of English-speaking landlords, a small subset of the total market. You’re unlikely to be getting the best selection.

6. No quality guarantees

Many of the apartments are not always that great and there are no quality guarantees. While you can spot obvious flaws on your first visit, it’s not the same as living in the place – that’s when all kinds of issues can start to pop up. The landlords _should_ fix these, but it’s not like you’re paying them any extra for it… so many might just decide not to fix the issues, or to do so very slowly or poorly. You’re still on the hook for having to pay the rent, even if it’s something serious like your AC not working in the middle of the summer.

7. Heavy time investment for little results

In a large city, lot of time is required to view the apartments, most of it just sitting in traffic getting from A to B. This is especially serious in Tbilisi, with the road system designed at a very different age.

8. Furnished apartment challenges

A furnished apartment can mean anything from having just the stuff that requires two people to carry, to being fully kitted out with what you really need. It can be a challenge to come to an agreement with landlords about what “furnished” should mean. Often it means fairly little, and you’re left with having to buy a lot of stuff that you might only use for a few months.

9. Difficulty of setting up your apartment

Even in a well-furnished apartment, you probably still need to buy a few things. In Tbilisi, it is very likely that the stuff you need is scattered around town in many different small or medium-sized stores. It can take weeks to find everything you need (source: trust me bro – seriously).

10. Short term solutions instigate short term behavior

When you don’t have a long-term relationship with your service provider (landlord), they have no incentive to go “above and beyond” with anything – you are very likely to get the bare minimum with everything. After all, you’re just a short-term tenant, so a calculating landlord sees no reason to give you anything other than “short-term” quality of service.

Getting a place through Sovereign Landing

We find the right place for you

With us, you get to bypass all the shady actors and scammers. We do all the time-consuming legwork and sit in traffic so you don’t have to – you can just check out the places online, reliably through the videos we do specifically for you.

Confirming the basics and signing the contract

After the right place is found, we create a shopping list of things that need to be included in a FULLY furnished apartment (not just a “furnished” apartment). If things are missing from the list, we will work it out with the landlord. You don’t need to bother yourself with having to buy the basics.

After we confirm that you will be able to arrive with hand luggage only, we will provide you with a rental contract that you can sign online. This is optional though: you can still arrive first and view the places in person before committing to anything.

Safe Online Renting Guarantee policy

The downside of coming to a country first to see the places for yourself is that it would re-introduce most of the traditional hassle into this process, and nobody wants that. Then again, isn’t it a risk to commit to a long rental contract purely online without seeing the place? It could be, and that’s why we have the Safe Online Renting Guarantee in place!

To make our online-first process as smooth as possible, we recommend that you reserve a place well enough in time before you land. What does “well in time” mean? Depends on what you’re looking for (how easy it is to find something similar) and how flexible you are – if you’re willing to wait a while in a daily rental, you may even decide not to reserve anything beforehand. To take their place off the open market, the landlord needs to know you’re serious – which means you need to put in a deposit.

Our Safe Online Renting policy guarantees that this deposit is the maximum you’re committing to before seeing the place. You do get to experience the place in person before fully committing to any longer term contract. And in case there would be something seriously wrong with the place – we do our work so this doesn’t happen – but _if_ – then you get even the deposit back.

Working with the landlord during your time of renting

While you will be in a contractual relationship directly with the landlord (not us), the landlord knows that they need to work with us, for us to find them new tenants after you leave. This turns a random short-term rental contract into a long-term mutually beneficial relationship, where the landlord has a serious incentive to work with us for your benefit. This significantly reduces your chances of landlord issues:

1. We do basic common sense pre-vetting of landlords that we work with – if they seem completely unprofessional, we won’t even start with them.
2. If it starts to seem like you might have an issue with your landlord, we can help sort it out with them – most likely it’s just a miscommunication.
3. We provide you with a rental contract that is very much on your side – if there would be actual problems, you have ways out of the contract (and we can help you find a better place).
4. If the landlord genuinely turns out less than co-operative, we can stop working with them. This incentivizes them to look at the bigger picture, instead of focusing too much on some small repair bill they might have in their hands.

When you’re with us, we have a long-term customer relationship to take care of. That makes your total experience completely different – we make sure that your overall experience is as it should be, all throughout your contract and the ones after that!