The *genkan *referred to in that article is not a common feature of American houses or apartments. It’s not surprising that a culture where everyone leaves their shoes by the front door has a designated space for it - but I also wonder if there are any other cultures (other than large US cities) where sharing an apartment with virtual strangers is common? There’s two parts to the issue - one is that no matter what Acsenray thinks ," no shoes in the house" is not even close to universal in the US. The second, related part is roommates - if your landlord rents the four bedrooms out separately you’re likely end up with a mix of “shoes off” and “shoes on” people.
As it happens, my house is a shoes off house and we have an enclosed porch. Which would be nothing but shoes if we didn’t keep them hidden in cabinets.
I’ll check that out when I am at a conference in Barcelona in five weeks time.
I am pretty sure that not just Barcelona does this, and it will quickly become widespread throughout Europe. The contactless direct debit thing makes it possible to do low value transactions very quickly, which is just what is needed for things like public transport and parking tickets. BTW, there is a limit of AFAIK 30 Euro on any such transactions, to provide some protection if your Smartphone goes astray.
I live in the UK, not the US, and it’s pretty common over here, especially in larger cities, but I can find adverts for just one room in a share in my local town, population around 10,000.
Also common in Spain and France. In Spain the smaller places tend to go word of mouth, but you can find a “to share” section in every housing website or app.
I might not have been clear enough - I’m sure that there are many places where three existing roommates might find someone (through a listing or word of mouth) to replace the fourth one who moved out. What I’m not sure about is whether there are other places where the landlord would place the listing and rent the room with absolutely no input from the three existing tenants, who may not even meet number 4 until he’s moving in.
Sometimes tenants will band together to rent out a whole place and split it. Many landlords won’t allow that though; they want to pick their own tenants, and not risk the original renters letting their flaky idiot friend move in if someone leaves. Landlords have more control if rooms are let individually, directly by them or a management company.
The obnoxious shoe-leaving stuff-nicker I mentioned in post #147 actually moved in while I was on holiday. Some random girl opened the door as I was rummaging for a key. The landlord hadn’t even mentioned he was getting a new tenant, though I had been in touch with him while I was away.
Ha, so it’s way lower in France, min size for a studio is 16 or 18 square meters. With the main room being at least 9 square meters. (Though there can be exceptions, and it depends on the height of the ceiling.)
One oddity of American housing is built-in closets. In many other countries, it’s common for you to have to buy wardrobes to put your stuff in, because there aren’t any built-in closets.
However, a lot of local/municipal governments here bar a property owner from advertising a room as a bedroom unless it has a built-in closet (essentially a tiny room inside a room) and an external door or sufficiently large window that can be used as an emergency exit.
A room without a closet would have to be relabeled, for example, as a “den” or storage space, even if it’s expected that the residents will use it as a bedroom.
So that incentivizes property owners to build closets, because the greater number of bedrooms, the higher the price you can seek.
Though note that page also says ‘micro flats’ as small as 13m² are also available in London. Out of curiosity, I had a peek at the micro flats’ page; estimated cost for one is £1272 a month, in zone 1, and you may not even get a kitchen. Eesh. You could rent a small Northern town for that.
I grew up in the US, in a Victorian house built in 1886. There was an entrance corridor with doors leading to a parlor and a dining room. These two rooms were also separated by pocket doors. The kitchen was behind the dining room, separated by a door. A staircase led from the corridor to the second story.
Most houses I see from this time have since been renovated to eliminate these features. Typically, the entrance corridor gets absorbed into a living room.
I wish we could install our own light fixtures. I rent an apartment, and everything is hideous.
I grew up in a farmhouse build not much later than that, and the upstairs had probably been renovated at some point or the builders had gotten lazy. There would have been a large corridor upstairs to the three bedrooms, but one of the walls was no longer there, so it turned into a combination corridor/playroom … with a closet I count it as having a corridor because we didn’t play in the corridor part too much because it still felt like a corridor.
While uncommon, in Spain we also still have pensiones, which are officially ranked as the lowest class of “public accomodation” (below hostales, and these below hoteles): in those, you may rent for any period of time from a night to years and you get room, boarding, no right to cook, share bathroom and dining room with everybody else. The landlord (usually a landlady) does the cooking.
That’s two different things: built-in closets are common in Spain for houses less than 50 years old; walk-in closets are not.
I am German and live in that country. I couldn’t even imagine renting a fully furnished flat except for very short time stays. Otherwise, just to consider that hordes of previous tenants may have farted into the sofa, not to speak of activities that are even less desirous to consider having been done by people on the same spot that I might want to lay my head in the evening while watching TV. Urgh.
In principle the same would apply for all fixtures and furnitures. If the landlord has or the previous tenant had a taste in baroque-ish chandeliers, why on earth should I burden myself with that monster? I just install whatever I like.
We (Germans) also have a shoes-on policy but many people I know insist on even guests taking off theirs - some even provide felt Slippers - in order to protect their wooden floors. Ours are wood nicely laid out too but they are made to be stepped on, plus they’re nicer with a bit of “used look”.
I’m not talking about walk-in closets, which is just a subset of closets. No one mandates a walk-in closet, but it would satisfy the closet requirement.
I count it as having a corridor because we didn’t play in the corridor part too much because it still felt like a corridor.