Find an apartment

Now that my enrollment is confirmed, here comes the step I've been dreading:

looking for an apartment. Finding accommodation in Lisbon when you don't know the city is not very easy.

To start my search, I set some criteria: the apartment had to be close to the means of transportation to the university and also close to the center.

So my search began; I went on forums to have more information and advice about how to look for an apartment in Lisbon. And the main information that came out was that there are many scams. So in the last few weeks, I’ve spent some time on websites looking for accommodation, checking that they were not scams. And indeed, many were.

The Whatsapp conversation with the other students was again very useful as the person in charge of the international relations of the university gave us information about the city, the districts to avoid, the agencies through which we could book accommodation, as well as some advice. Moreover, on this conversation, students were posting interesting ads for apartments.

I finally went through an agency advised by the students: Uniplaces. During my research, I pinned down all the apartments I could find on a map of Lisbon, in order to have an overview of where they were located and which ones corresponded best to my search. Today I’ve finally found an apartment that met my criteria: in the center and near the metro lines.

Not being in Portugal and therefore not being able to visit, I trusted the pictures and hoped that this one was not a scam and would do the trick.

In any case, once there, it will be easier to look for another apartment if this one doesn't correspond to what i am looking for.