Houses for sale in Cité Ettadhamen

A house in Cité Ettadhamen reads from the bottom up. On the ground floor, the oldest room, sometimes turned into a shop. On the first floor, the eldest son's storey. Above that, reinforcing bars waiting for the next concrete slab. The district, one of the most densely populated in Greater Tunis, has been built this way since the 1970s, by families from the country's North-West who built without a developer and without a loan, at the pace of their savings.

The houses for sale in Cité Ettadhamen are therefore almost always family homes, sold by the people who built them or by their heirs. What is published online is thin, a few listings at best, and it comes mostly from private sellers. To widen the search to Raoued, Kalaat El Andalous or Sidi Thabet, all the houses for sale in the Ariana governorate are gathered on a single page, with direct contact with each seller.

Three kinds of house

The first kind, and the most common, is the house with one or two upper floors on a small plot, with self-contained storeys occupied by several branches of the same family. It is sold whole or floor by floor. It is the most interesting option for a buyer who wants to let one part and live in the other.

The second is the ground floor still to be finished: walls up, slab poured, but plaster, tiling or joinery missing. The price is lower, and a buyer who is handy finds the genuinely cheap house for sale in Ettadhamen here. Work out the cost of the finishing before making an offer, it often comes as a surprise.

The third is the house with a shop on the street, much sought after on the busy commercial roads. The ground-floor unit, let or run by the owner, completely changes the economics of the purchase. This type of property also belongs on the page of offices and shops for sale in Cité Ettadhamen.

From one sector to the next

The central streets of Cité Ettadhamen, dense and lively, have everything within walking distance: market, schools, mosques, transport. Houses there are tall and packed together, and ground floors often get little sun. In the 9 Avril and 18 Janvier estates, the fabric is a little more open and there are more single-storey houses, ready to be built upwards. Mongi Slim, smaller, remains a sector of long-settled families, where sales often happen between neighbours.

The price gaps between two houses of the same size come mostly down to the street: its width, car access, and whether there is a sewer and street lighting. A house for sale in Cité Ettadhamen on a busy tarmac road can be worth noticeably more than an identical house at the end of a cul-de-sac.

Checks specific to the district

The first point is the land title. A large share of the houses have no individual land title; ownership rests on a chain of private contracts. Ask for every successive deed since the land was first bought, and have them checked by a lawyer or a notary. The second point is the building permit: the floors added over the years were rarely authorised. The third is joint ownership: an inherited house must be sold with the signature of every heir, including those who live abroad.

On the technical side, look for cracks between two floors built at different times, the state of the top-floor slab and the actual connection to the SONEDE water and ONAS sewerage networks. If you are thinking of adding a floor, have an engineer assess what the structure can carry.

Whole house or single floor

Depending on your budget, one floor may be enough. Self-contained floors and the district's few flats are gathered on the page of apartments for sale in Cité Ettadhamen. The market picks up mostly at the end of summer, when families settle inheritances and emigrants home for the holidays decide to sell.