Flatshare in Sfax Ville

Every September, Sfax takes in several thousand students who have no place in a university hall of residence, plus the hospital residents, the bank interns and the new hires of the industrial zones. All are looking for the same thing: a room at a reasonable price, within walking or bus distance of the faculties and the centre. The Sfax Ville delegation, which runs from the medina to the first kilometres of the roads to Tunis, Gremda and Gabès, is the first place they look.

This page gathers every form of shared housing published in Sfax Ville: the room in a family home, the house floor let to two or three, the apartment in a flatshare. The listings come almost entirely from private individuals, often families letting the room of a child who has left for Tunis, and contact is made directly with them. Supply remains modest against demand; to widen the search, all the flatshares and rooms in the Sfax governorate are gathered on one page.

The room in a family home, the Sfax formula par excellence

In the delegation's districts of houses, Bassatine, Sidi Abbes, Cité Mohamed Ali, Cité Ettaouidhi, families have often built an upper floor for a son who ended up settling elsewhere. That floor, or a room with a shower room and an entrance off the outside staircase, is let to one or two students, preferably of the same sex and recommended by an acquaintance. The rent is low, often between 150 and 300 DT (Tunisian dinars) per person, water and electricity sometimes included, and the family keeps an eye on the hours.

It is the formula parents from the southern regions choose for a daughter in her first year, and the one many Sfax owners prefer, as they do not like letting a whole home to strangers. In return, it means accepting the house rules: no late guests, no noise after a certain hour.

The floor or apartment shared between young professionals

Closer to the centre, in Bab Bhar, around the railway station and on the route de Tunis, sharing takes the form of a whole apartment let to several people. The public is different: hospital residents, contract teachers, young engineers from the industrial zones of the Poudrière or the route de Gabès, who want an independence the room in a family home does not give. An S+3 (three bedrooms plus a living room) in the centre shared by three costs each of them roughly the price of a room in a family home, with a living room thrown in and no owner on the stairs.

The shared flats in Sfax Ville page details this segment, with its prices and its pitfalls. And for those who in the end want a place of their own, the homes to rent in Sfax Ville, apartments and houses, are on the delegation's general page.

The calendar and the guarantors

The shared housing market in Sfax has two seasons. Between June and July, rooms free up with the exam results; that is the time to visit and reserve for September by paying an advance. Between late August and mid-September, everything decent goes within days. The rest of the year, the offers are mid-lease replacements, often in a hurry and therefore negotiable.

Sfax families almost always ask for a guarantor, the father as a rule, and sometimes a copy of the student card or the internship certificate. A written contract, even a simple one, protects both sides: duration, rent, bills included or not, and what becomes of the advance if the student does not turn up in September.

What to check on the spot

A room in Sfax is judged on four points. Orientation and ventilation, because summer lasts into October and the upper floors of houses heat up hard. Water on the upper floor, as the pressure drops in summer in several districts; ask whether there is a tank. The internet connection, which the owner may or may not share. And the real journey to the faculty or the hospital at rush hour, to be tested on a weekday morning rather than trusting the distance on the map. The route de Tunis and the route de Gremda jam between 7:30 and 9 am, and a promised quarter of an hour becomes three.