Homes for rent in Ghar El Meleh

This page covers every kind of rental in the delegation of Ghar El Meleh: the whole house, but also the upper floor of a family home, the flat fitted out above a garage or the small annex let to a civil servant on a new posting. It answers a question that comes up often, in Arabic as in French: where do you find a flat for rent in Ghar El Melh when the town has hardly any apartment blocks? Most of the time, the flat in question is a self-contained floor in a house.

Listings are rare and come almost always from private owners, who post on Houni themselves and answer the phone. No agency is based in the town, and a good share of homes are still let through personal connections. If what is on offer right now does not suit you, widen the search to all the homes for rent in Bizerte governorate, especially Ras Jebel and Bizerte city, where the market is better stocked.

The self-contained upper floor, the most common option

In Ghar El Meleh, as in many towns in the north, a family builds the ground floor and then adds an upper floor for a son, for the summer or to let. This floor, with its outside staircase and sometimes its own meter, is the home most readily let for the year. It is usually an S+1 or S+2 with a comfortable floor area, a terrace and often an open view of the lagoon or the mountain.

Typical tenants are teachers posted to the delegation's schools and lycée, health workers, staff from the fishing port or the municipal services, and young local couples waiting to build. Rent for this kind of home stays modest, often between 300 and 550 DT a month depending on condition and fittings, nothing like the city of Bizerte.

A studio or a furnished room is also available now and then, mostly for trainees or seasonal workers, but they rarely appear online: you often have to ask at the café or the local grocer's. When such an offer does come up on Houni, it goes fast, especially at the start of the school year in September, when the newly posted staff all arrive at once.

The town, Ousja and Zouaouine

In the town of Ghar El Meleh, homes are clustered around the old port, the centre and the newer neighbourhoods spreading towards the Bizerte road. Life is lived on foot: market, cafés, public offices, the port beach. The old dars of the historic centre are sometimes let, but they often need work and are better suited to a summer let than to settling in for good.

Ousja and Zouaouine are smaller, more agricultural places. Housing there is almost always a village house or a floor in the owner's home, with a courtyard and sometimes a patch of garden. Rents are the lowest in the delegation, but a car is essential and public transport to Bizerte or Tunis is limited. For anyone who wants a whole house, especially for the summer near Sidi Ali El Mekki, the page of houses for rent in Ghar El Meleh is more targeted.

A two-speed calendar

From June to September, many owners prefer letting by the week to holidaymakers rather than for the year. Finding a long-term home in the middle of summer is therefore hard: upper floors are taken by family back from abroad or booked by holidaymakers. The right time to find a yearly rental is autumn, from late September to November, when houses empty and the new school year brings in newly posted civil servants.

Before signing, ask for a written contract registered at the tax office, agree on the deposit, usually one month's rent, and on how bills are split if the water or electricity meter is shared with the owner. Check the roof terrace waterproofing before winter, as damp is common near the lagoon, and the water supply in summer, when the town's consumption rises sharply.