Houses to rent in La Marsa

Every year at the end of August, expatriate families arrive for the start of term at the Lycee Gustave Flaubert and the American school, and the villas available in La Marsa are gone within days. The rest of the year the market breathes a little, but a well-placed villa never stays empty for long.

This page gathers the house listings posted on Houni for La Marsa: whole villas in Gammarth, town houses near the corniche, villa floors in Marsa Erriadh and Sidi Daoud. Owners post here themselves, alongside the local agencies.

Whole villa or villa floor: two markets that never meet

The villa let whole, with a garden and often a pool, addresses a specific clientele: expatriate managers, diplomats, company directors. Rents start around 3,000 DT for a simple house in Marsa Erriadh and climb quickly past 6,000 DT in Gammarth or on the Sidi Daoud heights, furniture included. When that budget is not there, the apartments to rent in La Marsa are the serious alternative.

The villa floor is another story. It is the usual arrangement when you are looking for a house in Marsa on a Tunisian family budget: an S+3 (three bedrooms plus a living room) on the first floor of a house whose owners live on the ground floor, with a separate entrance and sometimes a terrace. Expect 1,200 to 2,000 DT most of the time. The advantage is space; the drawback is sharing the building with the owner, who is not always discreet. For comparable rents, the southern suburbs and the centre can be read on the houses to rent across the Tunis governorate.

Gammarth, the sea and the hotels

The name Gammarth village covers several different places: the old village near the beach, the housing plots of Gammarth Superieur up in the woods, and the hotel strip along the Raoued road. A villa to rent in Gammarth is mostly in the first two, either in a gated development or on a quiet street.

What wins people over here is the quiet and the view. What wears them down is the distance: without a car Gammarth is isolated, the TGM stops at Marsa Plage and buses are rare. If you work in central Tunis, try the journey on a Monday morning before you sign.

Summer changes every rule

From June to September, some owners switch their house over to seasonal letting, by the week or by the month, at prices two or three times higher, aimed at diaspora families and Algerian holidaymakers. The consequence is that hunting for a year-round house in La Marsa in the middle of July is a frustrating exercise.

Having watched several of these cycles, the right calendar is clear: start looking for a yearly rental in October or in February, when the owners who found no summer tenant finally accept a twelve-month lease at a sensible rate.

The gardener, the pool and the meter, three lines to negotiate

When you rent a house in Marsa, the rent is only part of the outlay. Ask who pays the gardener and the pool maintenance (often 150 to 300 DT a month for the two together), whether the cistern and the booster pump work when the water is cut, and whether the house you are viewing has its own STEG electricity meter or shares one with the owner's floor. Have a photographed inventory drawn up, and insist on a registered tenancy contract: that is what counts if there is a disagreement over the deposit.

For the older houses in Marsa Ville and the Medina, look at insulation too. Winters here are damp, and a house with no heating and no double glazing can get uncomfortable from December to February. Anyone thinking of buying will find on the houses for sale in La Marsa an idea of what the property they are renting is worth.