If you do not wish to go through the university residency CROUS procedure and choose to live on your own, practice French and meet new people, here are a few sites where you can find housing in the city.

Appartager

Appartager.com is a site dedicated to shared housing: http://www.appartager.com/?l=1

You need to create an account to log in. It is free of charge and you can put the settings in English. Once you are in, work on your profile. This is how people can also look for you and contact you if your profile fits the type of housemate they want. You can put the ads that interest you as “favorite” to save it for later and message people.

Some users are premium, which means that you can not see their numbers or contact them openly. It might require you to buy membership to contact anyone you wish. Just try it for free at first, and according to the people and ads you find interesting, you might not need to upgrade your membership. With the basic membership you can still show your interest to the people by sending a “message flash”.

This is a reliable site to find good housing in France.

Le Bon Coin

This is a site where you can find a lot of different ads for different things, e.g. furniture, or language courses, work etc. One part of the site is dedicated to housing. You can also post your own ad on the site, explaining what you are searching for.

Here is the link for housing in Burgundy and more specifically Dijon:

http://www.leboncoin.fr/colocations/offres/bourgogne/?f=a&th=1&location=Dijon%2021000

Through this website you can contact the people directly by email and/or phone according to their preferences. The account is for free and makes saving interesting ads easier for you.

When searching for rooms or apartments, you can select minimum, maximum price and cities. Other filters are available too.  

This is what it looks like. You can select your min and max price of research. You can add cities on the top right hand corner.

You can create your account for free, which will make saving interesting ads easier for you.

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Useful vocabulary for housing

Colocation- Shared housing

Loyer-  Rent

Meublé( e )- Furnished

Machine à laver/lave linge- Washing machine

Facs- University (faculty)

SDB-  Bathroom

WC- Toilettes

Fumeur/non-fumeur-  Smoking/non smoking

Chambre simple / chambre double- Single room / double bed room

TCC: Toutes charges comprises or CC = charges comprises- Means all taxes included. It’s up to you to ask for confirmation, on internet, electricity, water, heating or “copropriété” (“copropriété” is translated as condominiums in English and this applies to you if you live in an apartment building for trash etc.).

EDF- Electricity company in France

APL- Remember to ask if the place is available to ask for APL, this governmental aid from CAF for housing. (see the page “CAF procedure” under housing on the blog)

Bail- Lease, you should ask if it is “individual” or “indivision”. An individual renting agreement means you are alone on your “bail”, your name appears and you are only responsible for your part of the rent. “Indivision” means you are responsible to pay for all, so if your roommate moves or cannot pay, you have to cover the whole rent on your own.