Furnished - exactly what does this mean?

Hi Kirsten

Fully furnished really does depend on the landlord. We were told in our first villa that we needed only our groceries but we had nothing in the kitchen.

Other villas that I have seen have brand new blenders, toasters, vacuum cleaners etc all still in their boxes.

This is part of the negotiation when you view a place. You want FULLY FURNISHED then you insist on it.

Probably best to buy your own bedding, but there are some beautiful places to buy things and not too expensive

You will want to make the place home so put aside a couple of hundred BD for pictures, ornaments etc as the places here are huge and really need filling.

Once here pop over and I will show you around my villa and a few others to give you an idea. I hope the company are going to put you in temporary accommodation while you villa hunt?

Hi

It will vary a bit from place to place, depending on the generosity of the landlord, but if it says fully furnished, it will include most of the essentials, including crockery, bedding, towels, kitchen equipment.  We are in an apartment on Reef Island and it came with all furniture, kitchen equipment, bedding etc.  There were a few glaring omissions in the kitchen - no chopping board or tin opener, but on the whole it was pretty well equipped.  We shipped out some of our most favourite items, but there are plenty of places here to buy whatever you need.

Brilliant - thank you. I wonder what I will wake up thinking about at 4am tomorrow morning/

Fully furnished usually includes everything you need. When I rented my flat, it included everything I need, from cups to cutlery to brand new beds to cookery to new towels, beddings and everything in between. This is usually the case with fully furnished properties. Usually the interior photos of the property will give you an idea of what's included and what's not. When you negotiate the rent, it's always wise to ask for the missing items in the flat to be bought by the landlord. They usually do it without a question.

The two comments about fully furnished meaning just that are both in apartments. It's different for villas. Double check when viewing. Usually unless you are told otherwise then what you see is what you get. So open all cupboards, drawers etc and negotiate hard.

Also, try and find one with a dishwasher. It's driving me crazy doing dishes for the 5 of us. Our landlord wouldn't buy one for us. I would say our kitchen came half stocked, there was plenty we needed to buy and most of the stuff that was there was really cheap and of poor quality.