Apartments for rent in El Menzah 6

El Menzah 6 looks little like the usual idea of a flat district. No towers, no big residences with a pool: winding streets, pale-walled villas behind their hedges, and owners who one day added a floor, for a married son or daughter or to let it out. When you start looking to rent in Menzah 6, that upper floor is almost always what you end up visiting.

The district belongs to the Ariana Ville delegation, south of Ariana's old centre and a few minutes from Ennasr and Menzah 5. To compare the districts with one another, the page of flats to rent across the Ariana Ville delegation gives the overall picture; here we stay at the scale of the neighbourhood. Listings come from private owners and agencies, and it is the advertiser you call.

A villa district where most lets are single floors

The vast majority of flats to rent in El Menzah 6 are villa floors: an S+2 or S+3 (two or three bedrooms plus a living room) taking up the whole level, with an outside staircase, a private entrance and sometimes use of part of the roof terrace. Floor areas are often more generous than in a recent residence, the rooms well laid out, with windows on three sides. On the garden level you also find S+1 units fitted into the old garage or outbuilding, which listings are happy to call studios.

Proper apartment buildings exist, but there are few of them: a handful of small three or four storey blocks near the roads that border the district. A flat to rent in Menzah 6 in this kind of building will have modest service charges and seldom a lift.

Who looks here? Families with children at school in the area, couples who work in Tunis or Ariana and want quiet evenings, retirees moving back near their relatives. Expatriates and more mobile tenants tend to look at the furnished flats in Ennasr instead.

Rents: a notch below Ennasr

An S+2 villa floor often rents for 900 to 1,300 DT depending on its condition, the terrace and whether there is a garage. An S+3 taking the whole level rarely goes above 1,700 DT, unless it has been fully renovated or carefully furnished. That is a little less than in Ennasr 1, clearly less than in Ennasr 2 for a similar size, and generally a bit more than a flat on an older estate: the flats to rent in Menzah 5 are in fact the usual benchmark for families who are torn between the two.

Supply varies from week to week and is rarely plentiful, because tenants stay for a long time. It tightens at the end of summer, when families want to be settled before the school year. If your timing allows, searching in spring or winter leaves more room to negotiate. Those who want a newer building with underground parking take a look at the flats to rent in Ennasr 1, a few minutes away by car.

Living with the owner upstairs or downstairs

Renting a villa floor means sharing a house. Before signing, ask whether the STEG and SONEDE meters (electricity and water) are separate: in villas divided late in their life they are not always, and the bill is then split pro rata, a classic source of friction. Get the use of the garden, the garage and the terrace set down in writing, along with who goes up to clean the roof before winter.

On a top floor, look at the corners of the ceilings: tired waterproofing shows with the first rains. The lease must be written and registered at the tax office, the deposit is usually one or two months' rent, and the inventory of condition deserves dated photos. Day to day, the district has few shops: people do their shopping towards Ariana or Ennasr, and a car remains almost essential.

If a flat is not enough, the villas and other homes to rent in El Menzah 6 are grouped on a separate page.