Best Website for Room to Rent

Hi Caroline,
Please tell me your budget, district, bedroom then I can help to look for.
Regards,
Thang

Caroline43 wrote:

Can anyone recommend a website for low price accommodation . Obviously not this site . Who can afford 1000 $ a month rent ? Not me anyway .

www.batdongsan.com.vn

Can't say that it's the best one but it is quite popular among locals.
If you can search on the Vietnamese version (use Google Translation), you will get more choices.

Tips:
Cho thuê căn hộ chung cư == Rent an apartment
Cho thuê nhà riêng == Rent a house

Caveat Emptor:
This is a website for realtors and house owners to advertise their properties.
There's nothing called absolute trustworthiness on this kind of site. It's all your luck.

First ignore every real estate website in English. Those are only good for foreign companies sending employees to work here at their expected high lifestyle.

To search Vietnamese websites by yourself:
Use Google Chrome browser.
Use google translate https://translate.google.com/
Enter "rent apartment" and you get "thuê căn hộ"
Might not be the ideal translation, but it works for a first pass.
Also district  is quận, so "quận 1" etc.
Search for that, then you can browse a lot of places.
Translate the pages in Chrome to see the options for city, neighborhood, etc.

There are other ways to search in country.
-Try a couple real estate offices, they aren't all crooked. You will have a good idea of price from the websites. In D7 and other places where there are towers, RE offices manage condo rentals for owners, so you have to use them.
-Walk around the neighborhood you are interested in, look for "For Rent" signs, "Cho Thuê" on houses, apartment buildings.
-Hire a Vietnamese helper from the expat.com forum, or work or school.
-Note: most rentals expect a 1 year contract with 2 or 3 months down payment. Some will go shorter term but less selection and at somewhat higher cost.
Bring enough cash, rent payments are cash only in my experience.

The last time my Vietnamese wife helped me to find an apartment on Vietnamese-language websites - there are a half dozen - the cheap places were already taken by the time we got there. And anyway the cheapest were horrible so my tip is to pick mid-range. Huh, I guess that is my philosophy for buying most everything.

This is the way to look for a room...Cho thuê phòng trọ.

Do you guys get rental places listed in US$, the ones designed to rip off foreigners without a clue?

Its actually illegal to advertise in USD, but they all do.

my budget is 250 usd a month . Any district is fine thats convenient for D1 . ie Dist. 3, 5, 1 , 4, 10  etc .Thank you .

From the subject of this thread, it seems you already know what type of accommodation would fit your budget: a room in a house and not your own apartment.  The best thing to find such rooms would be, as Gobot suggested, to walk around the neighbourhoods of your choices and look at signs.  I've done that several times before, and I also asked random people if they knew any family who had room to rent.  Up until this year, all the accommodations I rented all over the country had been found by either way.

senwl wrote:

www.batdongsan.com.vn

Can't say that it's the best one but it is quite popular among locals.
If you can search on the Vietnamese version (use Google Translation), you will get more choices.

This is  but notice that one of the search boxes on the site listed above includes direction.  This can be very important to Vietnamese who employ fortune tellers to tell them which direction is best for their house to face.  For most Expats, it is probably a little less important unless perhaps you are planning a garden.      However if you are married to a Vietnamese, he/she may want to check that box, so be considerate and ask before you search. 

THIGV wrote:

This can be very important to Vietnamese who employ fortune tellers to tell them which direction is best for their house to face.  For most Expats, it is probably a little less important unless perhaps you are planning a garden.      However if you are married to a Vietnamese, he/she may want to check that box, so be considerate and ask before you search. 

Still  :  There is a Vietnamese adage about this matter: "Lấy vợ hiền hòa, làm nhà hướng Nam" (Marrying a gentle woman and building a house that faces South [are the keys to happiness] ).  Everyone believes in that principle because it's just common sense.  Who would want to be with a nasty wife or to live in a house that is too warm in the summer (facing West), too cold in the winter (facing North), or too dark that you would need to turn on the lights in the daytime?

It's not fortune tellers who help with the direction of the house, BTW, but Feng Shui practitioners.

Ciambella wrote:

THIGV wrote:

This can be very important to Vietnamese who employ fortune tellers to tell them which direction is best for their house to face.  For most Expats, it is probably a little less important unless perhaps you are planning a garden.      However if you are married to a Vietnamese, he/she may want to check that box, so be considerate and ask before you search. 

Still  :  There is a Vietnamese adage about this matter: "Lấy vợ hiền hòa, làm nhà hướng Nam" (Marrying a gentle woman and building a house that faces South [are the keys to happiness] ).  Everyone believes in that principle because it's just common sense.  Who would want to be with a nasty wife or to live in a house that is too warm in the summer (facing West), too cold in the winter (facing North), or too dark that you would need to turn on the lights in the daytime?

It's not fortune tellers who help with the direction of the house, BTW, but Feng Shui practitioners.

I first learned of this from my former landlady in Hawaii who insisted that for her the door had to face West.  She said fortune teller but that may have been as they say "lost in translation."

Facing south makes sense because most Vietnamese have their yards and gardens (if they have enough land) in the front of the house.  By contrast, many western cultures have a "back yard."  Just imagine if everyone demanded a south facing house.  All streets would have to run East-West and every street would have the fronts of homes on the North side of the street facing South while the other side would be only blank walls for the backs of the homes on the next street.  The homes would all be lined up like soldiers.    

Unfortunately someone has to live on the North facing side. 
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You just might find
You get what you need.-The Rolling Stones (1969)

THIGV wrote:

senwl wrote:

www.batdongsan.com.vn

Can't say that it's the best one but it is quite popular among locals.
If you can search on the Vietnamese version (use Google Translation), you will get more choices.

This is  but notice that one of the search boxes on the site listed above includes direction.  This can be very important to Vietnamese who employ fortune tellers to tell them which direction is best for their house to face.  For most Expats, it is probably a little less important unless perhaps you are planning a garden.      However if you are married to a Vietnamese, he/she may want to check that box, so be considerate and ask before you search. 

@THIGV
That site (Vietnamese version) is popular among locals.
It seems Feng Sui is becoming popular in the States these days, 

-----------------
One other point for OP …

It’s NOT mandatory to pay rents in cash.

For all long-term rentals (1 year or more), right from the beginning you can tell your agent or landlord that you WON’T pay in cash.  Tell them you’ll pay the rent through bank transfer on a certain day at the beginning of each month. That should be fine.
For short-term rentals you can pay in VND cash.

I’ve been paying my rents through bank transfer for the past almost two years here in HCMC.
Before that I did the same in Hanoi for more than three years. All my ex-colleagues did the same as well.
I/we never had any problem with any of our landlords.

Also, paying rent in USD cash is now illegal in Vietnam.

Also, paying rent in USD cash is now illegal in Vietnam.

Yet it's the payment of choice among the landlords.

QuidProQuo wrote:

Also, paying rent in USD cash is now illegal in Vietnam.

Yet it's the payment of choice among the landlords.

That's why I said, please make it very clear right at the beginning, (even before you decide to take a look at the property), that you will be paying the rents ONLY through bank/wire transfer.
If we play naïve, unfortunately we are the ones responsible for encouraging such habits among locals.
After all, who doesn't want to stash some $$ bills in his/her coffer?? 

Back in 2015 I spent four months in a rented room in  D3.  The landlady quoted the price in USD as usual, I paid in equivalent VND cash (@ then VCB rate) . No problem.

In 10 years living here, I have never paid in USD.

Do u have a room for under 150$ a month

I rent a room through this site servicedapartments.com.vn/. They seem to have decently priced rooms in central locations.