Vietnam 3 - Hoi An - The House

View from the upstairs

As indicated the plan for our time in Vietnam is to have a place to call home, not a hotel, and to explore the country using that as a base.

There are various ways of doing that of course – including Airbnb.  I got fairly lucky and found a Facebook group that focused on Expats and property in Hoi An.  So – I have been monitoring this group for a while to get a sense of what might be available, the costs involved and how to find a place.

As a result, it seemed like the best plan was to arrive here and then look.  General consensus was that everything looks great on the internet but you really need to see the place before committing.  The time of year helped too.  There would be plenty of availability when we were set to arrive.  This was a different approach than we took in Spain where I had the place nailed down early, and I think that had worked out very well there.

Now – heading to the other side of the world with no real plan was again a bit out of our comfort zone, but what the heck.

I arranged two means to checking houses – with a local property agent and direct with a home owner as found on the Facebook group. 

We arranged to meet the agent and she showed up with a motor scooter at the hotel (actually they showed up with 2 scooters).

Off we go - house hunting

We hopped on the backs and away we went to two different houses in the same general neighborhood.  The agent’s English was good and she was extremely professional.

Then later the same day we met with another person who met us at a street address that I had assumed was the property we were going to see (it was not), and again we hopped on her scooter, and that of the property owner, and headed off.  We had evaluated the location of the street address we met her at and it was well located for what we wanted.  However – they took us out past rice paddies and water buffalo to a cute place way the heck out of the way.  That was not going to work – so we headed back to the hotel and immediately put a deposit on one of the houses shown to us by the agent.

Our home for the next 3 months

So – why a house and not an apartment?  In Hoi An there does not seem to be much in the way of apartments, at least not furnished rentals.  Da Nang, the larger city nearby, has many apartments.  There however quite a few houses for rent in Hoi An.  We are told that this is a form of wealth transfer, someone can and does, build a second house, rent it out for a time, hopefully to foreigners who can pay at bit more, and ultimately it is passed to the children.

We ended up with an over the top, beautiful 3 bedroom, newly built place.  We are the first people to live in it.  Our landlords live next door and are totally lovely.  Costs are far less than with AirBnB, but that likely also has to do with the amount of time we are renting it.  Costs for entire 3 months will be less than one month of the furnished rental we did in Ottawa last year, and monthly it is less than our son’s studio apartment in Ottawa.

Seems like a lot of loot - but it was actually just fine

So – now we have a home!

(anyone want to visit?)