Living in an apartment for rent can have advantages and disadvantages. Nowadays, it is very hard to buy an apartment or house which, by the way, is even harder to buy. The prices of real estates are astronomical. With the wages so low and expensive goods it is already impossible to rent an apartment not to buy it. In Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, the average price for a square meter is about 3500 €, so if you want to buy a one-bedroom apartment with 40 m² you have to pay 140 000 €. I wonder how it is possible for a family of 4 people to afford a bigger apartment. I think it is worth of mentioning that building companies build almost only luxury apartments where the prices for a m² are even higher.
Currently, I am a student and my boyfriend is employed. I work part time and altogether we have about 1400 € per month, which is a high amount of money for an average Slovene, but this is not really true. He works as a web developer, and comparing to the wages of a web developer in other countries, he works only for a small change. We have a car which, sadly, is a necessity here in Slovenia. For example, he commutes daily for work about 20 km far from where we are living. Some people have to commute even further for a much smaller wage. Now let’s calculate a bit.
| Wage |
1400€ |
| Expenses for the apartment |
200€ |
| Rent for the apartment |
400€ |
| Expenses on food |
250€ |
| Expenses on fuel |
200 – 250€ |
Additional expenses
(monthly bill for 2 cell phones, my ticket for the bus) |
60€ |
So monthly we can spare 290 € only if we do not have any unexpected expenses with the reparations of our car. The reparations of the car sometimes reach 1500 €. If we wanted a child, we could not afford it, let alone the apartment.
Renting an apartment is also expensive. There are several apartments on the real estate market designed for renting which are small and left in bad conditions (mould, broken furniture,etc.). The landlords demand high rents and they also impose stupid demands like: animals not wanted or students preferred. In all my history of looking for an apartment I have not seen many adds including any absurd demands. For some apartments I also saw they were being rented and sold at the same time. This is really unfair to the tenants, because they could live in the apartment for a certain time and then they would have to move out when the landlord would announce the apartment was sold.
I wonder where the right is hiding in this hard times? Sometimes I would like to move out from Slovenia only because of such things. I wonder how it is living abroad. Hope that it is better.
I had a lot of fun, though!
