Houses for rent in El Hrairia

Renting a whole house in El Hrairia means choosing space over address. For the price of an S+2 (two bedrooms plus a living room) in the northern districts of Tunis, a family can find a three-bedroom ground floor with a courtyard here, sometimes a garage, on a street where children still play outside. The delegation covers Ezzahrouni, El Akba, El Akba Supérieur and Hrairia, in the west of the capital.

These houses are almost always let by private owners: an owner who has moved elsewhere, an emigrant keeping the family home, heirs waiting to sell. On Houni, they post the listing and you contact them directly. The supply of houses for rent in El Hrairia stays limited depending on the week; to compare with neighbouring delegations, the page of houses to rent in Tunis governorate covers the whole capital.

What kind of house you rent in western Tunis

The usual model is the neighbourhood house built by a family on a medium-sized plot: a full ground floor, a staircase up to a roof terrace, and often an upper floor either started or finished. When the upper floor is occupied, you are in fact renting only the ground floor, which the listing should make clear. A genuine detached house, with both levels for a single household, is rarer and goes quickly.

In Ezzahrouni, houses are terraced and tightly packed, with little or no garden but an inner courtyard or patio that serves as the summer room. A house rental in Ezzahrouni appeals to those who want everything on foot: market, mosque, primary school, bus stop.

In El Akba and above all El Akba Supérieur, buildings are newer and plots a little wider. You find houses with a patch of garden, a closed garage and brighter rooms. A house for rent in El Akba costs a little more, and often means having a car to get into the centre.

The families who look here

The most common profile is the family with children who need three bedrooms and cannot afford them in a flat. Next come families from the interior of the country, the North West in particular, who keep ties in the neighbourhood, and craftsmen looking for a ground floor with a garage they can use as a workshop or storeroom.

Owners, for their part, favour stability. Many prefer a family that stays for several years over a higher rent, and readily ask where the tenant works and where their family comes from. It is not mistrust for its own sake: on a street where everyone knows everyone, the neighbours matter.

Rents for a whole house remain moderate for Tunis: often between 600 and 1,000 DT depending on size, condition and sector, rarely above that except for new builds in El Akba Supérieur. These orders of magnitude move with the condition of the house more than with the season. For a tighter budget or a smaller household, the homes to rent in El Hrairia include house floors and small flats.

Before signing for a whole house

A house calls for more checks than a flat. Walk round the roof terrace: waterproofing is the weak point of buildings in western Tunis, put up in stages and sometimes left unfinished. Turn on the taps upstairs, look at the water tank and the water pressure, and ask whether the meters are in the owner's name and the bills paid up.

If one floor is still occupied by the landlord's family, have the use of the courtyard, the roof terrace and the garage set out in writing. The rental contract must be written and registered, with the deposit stated in black and white along with its term, usually one year renewable.

The best time to look is still the end of summer, before the school year starts, when families move and houses come free. Those thinking about buying instead will find the houses for sale in El Hrairia on a separate page.