Homes for rent in El Ouardia

When you are looking for a home south of Tunis on a tight budget, El Ouardia soon comes up in the conversation. The delegation stretches from Bellevue and El Ouardia 1, at the gates of the city centre, to Cite Mohamed Ali and El Ouardia 5 on the Ben Arous road side. It is a dense fabric, with almost no upmarket blocks, where a home to rent takes every form: a house floor at a private owner's, a flat in a small rental block built by a local owner, a ground floor with a yard, sometimes a separate room on the roof.

This page gathers everything let in the delegation, flats and houses together, because a tenant in El Ouardia does not choose a category: they choose a rent, a street and a distance to the light rail. The supply posted on Houni is modest, very few listings online, nearly all from private owners, and it turns over fast. To compare with Jebel Jelloud, El Kabaria or Sidi El Bechir, all the homes to rent across the Tunis governorate are on a single page.

Who rents in El Ouardia, and why

The dominant profile is the household that works in Tunis and refuses to pay Ariana or northern suburb rents. City-centre employees, workers from the Ben Arous and Jebel Jelloud industrial zones, young couples from the neighbourhood leaving their parents' house for the floor next door. You also meet families from the interior of the country, drawn by a low rent and the light rail line that reaches place de Barcelone in a quarter of an hour.

What keeps this market going is transport. Light rail line 1 crosses the delegation towards Ben Arous, buses on the Ben Arous road fill in, and the Bab Alioua coach station, for departures to the Sahel and the south, is not far from El Ouardia 1. A tenant without a car gets by, which is rare in Tunis at this rent level.

House floor or flat: what changes

The house floor is the most common product. Separate entrance, two or three rooms, a kitchen, a shower room, and the owning family on the level below. It lets unfurnished, often between 450 and 750 DT for an S+2 depending on condition and how close it is to the light rail. It is the right choice for a family, less so for a young professional who gets home late. The details of this segment are on the page of houses to rent in El Ouardia.

A flat in an apartment block is rarer and more varied. There are older blocks without a lift in El Ouardia 2, 3 and 4, where an S+2 lets at prices comparable to a house floor but with almost no service charges and upkeep that is sometimes neglected; and a few more recent blocks of three or four storeys, built by owners on their old plot, where an S+1 to rent in Ouardia is aimed at couples without children. The delegation's flats page singles them out when there are any.

Furnished lets are almost absent. If a listing says "furnished", it generally means a fitted kitchen and a few pieces left by the previous occupant; ask for a precise list before signing.

The calendar and the pitfalls

Homes come free mainly at two moments: late August, when families move before the new school year, and in spring, after the winter weddings that free up a room or a floor. In between, choice is thin and good listings go within a few days, often to someone recommended by a neighbour. Call quickly, and visit the same day if you can.

Three checks are a must. The contract, written and registered, setting the rent, the deposit and the term. The water and electricity meters, which must be individual or whose split must be set down in black and white. Damp, finally: ground floors and homes giving onto enclosed yards are poorly ventilated, and the marks at the bottom of the walls show mostly in winter. Listings for Cite Mohamed Ali, all types of home are also grouped separately for anyone targeting that specific area.