I moved from Nice back (sort of) to Paris almost 1 month ago, and rented a great apartment in a nearby city called Issy-Les-Moulineaux – which is seemingly so small it feels more like a neighborhood. I am in love with it and very pleased that my quest to find a place turned out to be more successful than anticipated.
Just in case you might be thinking about moving to France or know someone that wants to do it, I thought I’d write a little about the process and bring attention to possible issues and ways to work around them.
First of all, when I first moved to France for my Masters program in 2019, I stayed at a Crous residence. There are Crous residences all over France, and they are by far the cheapest type of lodging you can get as a student (€240/month in Rennes, for example). If you or someone you know is moving here to study, make sure you ask your university if they have any partnerships with Crous – it could make it easier for you to get a room there. Some buildings have studios, which are bedrooms that feature a bathroom and a very basic kitchen, some others (like mine) have bedrooms with private bathrooms, but a shared kitchen for the entire floor, and others have just the bedroom and a shared bathroom and kitchen. Cities that have multiple Crous buildings might have all of them. In order to book a Crous dorm, one must register at the website MesServices.etudiant.gouv.fr. It will let you know the date in which booking will be made available to your type of profile (some groups have higher priority, such as scholarship holders), and you’ll have a better shot if you’re connected at the earliest possible time that day.
My university had a partnership with Crous, and they actually booked a dorm for me. They did, however, forget to mention that detail, so I paid for 3 weeks at an Airbnb and spent the entirety of that time going out of my mind looking for places to rent. Finding out I had had a room that whole time was simultaneously an annoyance and a relief. 😂