Expatriates Forums in Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan Info · Joined: 20 Apr 2007 Posts: 15 Home Country: azerbaijan

HOUSING IN AZERBAIJAN

Expatriate housing in Baku is a mixture of small apartments and houses. Many local apartment buildings are left over from the Soviet era and there are unpredictable power cuts, low gas pressure and/or a lack of hot water on a daily basis.

Mara · Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2009 3:39 pm Post subject:

Not the first time i come to Baku, sometimes as a tourist, sometimes as a person on an assignment. From my personal abundant experience i found out that most of the hotels in Baku are either very expensive (as IRS Plaza, Hyatt, Europa, Park Inn etc) or very cheap and uncomfortable (as Canub, Araz, Absheron).By the way, even in those cheap hotels the price for a good room is nearly 90$ per night per person (if you are traveling with somebody it hits in your pocket ).Of course, they have several rooms, which price is cheaper, but everytime i tried to reserve any cheap room i am always told that they are already reserved and i am offered to reserve the expensive one. I think it is the special maneuver to force travelers reserve expensive rooms. I also have been in Canub hotel. The first, i was surprised to find out that the prices were higher in 2-3 times than it was written in any travel forums (for example, Lonelyplanet) or city guide books(though, might be, that was old info and cos of inflation the prices are growing by leaps and bounds). The second, i was shown their rooms and i was shocked – they were so dirty, with only one bed and table and nothing else and moreover i could not bear that musty smell from the toilet.

So, i decided to find any real estate agency. I tried different agencies, saw big amount of apartments, but the story was the same. Good apartments were very expensive, cheap were in terrible condition. By the way, when i was in Baku as a person on an assignment, i needed special cheque for my company's account department to take my [spam word detected], which i spent for renting apartment, but no one agency could provide me with it. After long searching i contacted BakuRealEstate (search by Google). They offered me very lovely one room apartment by 35$ per night just in the centre of Baku, in 3 minutes walking to Fountain Square.
The apartment was renovated, furnished, with all public utilities round the clock and all household in it. Also, they gave me the cheque for this service and when i came back home i took my [spam word detected] from the account department of my company.