I'm thankful that I didn't have to deal with many landlords. It's crazy dealing! The norm in PNR is you contact an agent, tell them what you're looking for and they'll do the "work". For each day they take you apartment/property viewing, there's a 5000FCFA charge that's minus taxi fare or fuel if you are driving.
Apartments abound in PNR, it's the standards that present problems. What is a bedroom to you may well be an entire apartment to another. And Congolese love entertaining, that shows in the layout of the properties - living room is usually the largest.
Back to the agents. It took only one day for me to give up this agent business. The one I got through a colleague in the office took me to some hardly remarkable ones, I was fortunate to have "Hollon" come with me plus another male colleague and a driver. They were put off by the apartments we saw and the locations so I know I wasn't being picky.
Narkwor and Juliet offered for us to move in together to the 3 bedroom apartment if I couldn't find a place. It is a lot easier to get a multiple bedroom apartment than a one bedroom. I took up the offer.
It's best to go property viewing in the rainy season - gives you a good idea of what to expect with regards to road passability and the quality of roofing/windows & doors. You are sure to know if the place gets flooded. There's nothing like light rain in Congo. You've been warned.
To secure a place you need to pay 3 months security deposit. That's it. Rent is collected monthly. Be careful though, rent usually comprises utilities but some landlords try to pull a fast one on unsuspecting tenants.
You may pay extra for back up electricity and water. Supply in some areas is erratic but it's safe to say it cuts across. Some places get water supply once a week, electricity goes off once a week as well. Other places do not receive water only once a week, electricity supply may just be like a switch in the hands of a child with a huge sugar rush.
Most landlords have a representative especially if they don't live in PNR. The representatives can be a different headache altogether.
Like Emery, our landlords rep. When I encountered him, he came across as a cool & level headed guy. The devil is in the detail.
Emery showed up between the 8th & 10th of every month to collect the rent unfailingly. There was a power crisis which made the erratic supply even worse. He'd show up from time to time to collect extra monies from tenants for fuel to power the gen set or water from a delivery truck when the taps had not been flowing. Most homes have a sort of storage facility. For some reason that of our apartment was in the ground. Never made much sense to me given it's a 3 storey structure. In my lay mind, placing the storage above the structure makes it easy to receive water without resorting to an electricity powered pump - extra cost. That's not the weird part. The pump was constantly on. Whoever designed the system chose to have residents using water from the storage all the time instead of using the taps and resorting to storage when the taps weren't flowing.
Given the frequency of collection we figured someone was running some game on us. We were right. Turned out we were the only tenants out of 6 paying our rent faithfully, we also were the only ones paying the extra charge for back up electricity and water. We stopped paying.
Not too long after that Emery showed up one day for rent. Narkwor was out of town, I think. Juliet was @ work. I paid the rent and he handed me a sheet from the Congolese tax collection agency. It was an invoice for rent tax. I queried him. How could we pay tax on a property that we didn't own? In fact I said to him "tax is collected on what you earn so you are to pay the tax for the rent you collect". He tried to sell me a story in frenglish. He spoke a little English but mostly he tried to run this game in French! I told him to come back later.
I called Congolese colleagues to verify, none of them had heard of this tax. Juliet got home to a tax invoice with her name on it and boy, did she get annoyed. I even sent this invoice to the office, office manager said it looked dubious. I called Emery and told him we were not going to pay said tax but he wouldn't budge.
We recruited Evariste - Congolese colleague who is very popular all over town - to sort the issue out. Emery showed up to the apartment with a file full of invoices and receipts to prove his claim. Juliet wasn't having any of it. For me, it was comedy, I kept laughing the whole time. Evariste's verdict? The guy wasn't being straight with us, some shady dealing was going on.
Narkwor and Juliet offered for us to move in together to the 3 bedroom apartment if I couldn't find a place. It is a lot easier to get a multiple bedroom apartment than a one bedroom. I took up the offer.
It's best to go property viewing in the rainy season - gives you a good idea of what to expect with regards to road passability and the quality of roofing/windows & doors. You are sure to know if the place gets flooded. There's nothing like light rain in Congo. You've been warned.
To secure a place you need to pay 3 months security deposit. That's it. Rent is collected monthly. Be careful though, rent usually comprises utilities but some landlords try to pull a fast one on unsuspecting tenants.
You may pay extra for back up electricity and water. Supply in some areas is erratic but it's safe to say it cuts across. Some places get water supply once a week, electricity goes off once a week as well. Other places do not receive water only once a week, electricity supply may just be like a switch in the hands of a child with a huge sugar rush.
Most landlords have a representative especially if they don't live in PNR. The representatives can be a different headache altogether.
Like Emery, our landlords rep. When I encountered him, he came across as a cool & level headed guy. The devil is in the detail.
Emery showed up between the 8th & 10th of every month to collect the rent unfailingly. There was a power crisis which made the erratic supply even worse. He'd show up from time to time to collect extra monies from tenants for fuel to power the gen set or water from a delivery truck when the taps had not been flowing. Most homes have a sort of storage facility. For some reason that of our apartment was in the ground. Never made much sense to me given it's a 3 storey structure. In my lay mind, placing the storage above the structure makes it easy to receive water without resorting to an electricity powered pump - extra cost. That's not the weird part. The pump was constantly on. Whoever designed the system chose to have residents using water from the storage all the time instead of using the taps and resorting to storage when the taps weren't flowing.
Given the frequency of collection we figured someone was running some game on us. We were right. Turned out we were the only tenants out of 6 paying our rent faithfully, we also were the only ones paying the extra charge for back up electricity and water. We stopped paying.
Not too long after that Emery showed up one day for rent. Narkwor was out of town, I think. Juliet was @ work. I paid the rent and he handed me a sheet from the Congolese tax collection agency. It was an invoice for rent tax. I queried him. How could we pay tax on a property that we didn't own? In fact I said to him "tax is collected on what you earn so you are to pay the tax for the rent you collect". He tried to sell me a story in frenglish. He spoke a little English but mostly he tried to run this game in French! I told him to come back later.
I called Congolese colleagues to verify, none of them had heard of this tax. Juliet got home to a tax invoice with her name on it and boy, did she get annoyed. I even sent this invoice to the office, office manager said it looked dubious. I called Emery and told him we were not going to pay said tax but he wouldn't budge.
We recruited Evariste - Congolese colleague who is very popular all over town - to sort the issue out. Emery showed up to the apartment with a file full of invoices and receipts to prove his claim. Juliet wasn't having any of it. For me, it was comedy, I kept laughing the whole time. Evariste's verdict? The guy wasn't being straight with us, some shady dealing was going on.
About 6 weeks later the landlord showed up for an impromptu meeting. Mind you, we had never met him.
He had somehow got wind of this tax hustle. He collected all the invoices in disbelief and issued a decree, if you like. No one was to pay any more rent to Emery. There'll be no more extra charge for back up electricity and water, those were also part of the rent charge. Turned out Emery was even issuing his own receipts for monies he collected. We never saw him again.
Our first problem with the new rep? The gen set wouldn't start on a day the lights had gone out. We were all at work and so naturally we didn't know what was going on. We got home and still no light, the caretaker said he was going to get fuel for the generator. An hour later, still no electricity. Apparently the gen set wouldn't start as it hadn't been serviced in a long while.
There's no way you could sleep without electricity. See, the windows were all made of glass, no netting for you to even open for air. So opening windows was out of the question. Besides, mosquitoes in PNR are not forgiving. You could dispense an entire can of insecticide in a room and still come back to the sight and sound of mosquitoes.
I called this new rep and all he had to say was to pardon him and that he'd asked for the set to be serviced the next day. I asked him how he expected us to sleep in "windowless" rooms. About an hour later the generator was working. I don't know what happened.
We were to have another problem collecting our security deposit when we were leaving. We resorted to not paying rent for 2 months but that wasn't enough to cover the deposit we had paid. I found out from Andy it was rare for landlords to return it. He had been in about 3 places but had never received a dime. We gave it up.
He had somehow got wind of this tax hustle. He collected all the invoices in disbelief and issued a decree, if you like. No one was to pay any more rent to Emery. There'll be no more extra charge for back up electricity and water, those were also part of the rent charge. Turned out Emery was even issuing his own receipts for monies he collected. We never saw him again.
Our first problem with the new rep? The gen set wouldn't start on a day the lights had gone out. We were all at work and so naturally we didn't know what was going on. We got home and still no light, the caretaker said he was going to get fuel for the generator. An hour later, still no electricity. Apparently the gen set wouldn't start as it hadn't been serviced in a long while.
There's no way you could sleep without electricity. See, the windows were all made of glass, no netting for you to even open for air. So opening windows was out of the question. Besides, mosquitoes in PNR are not forgiving. You could dispense an entire can of insecticide in a room and still come back to the sight and sound of mosquitoes.
I called this new rep and all he had to say was to pardon him and that he'd asked for the set to be serviced the next day. I asked him how he expected us to sleep in "windowless" rooms. About an hour later the generator was working. I don't know what happened.
We were to have another problem collecting our security deposit when we were leaving. We resorted to not paying rent for 2 months but that wasn't enough to cover the deposit we had paid. I found out from Andy it was rare for landlords to return it. He had been in about 3 places but had never received a dime. We gave it up.
