As much as we love comments from our readers – and we really do – we enjoy your questions even more. Here is one we just received:
Hi Dan & Linda,
I came across your blog while researching on furnished apartments in Cuenca as I am planning to make a trip to Cuenca in comming fall and stay there for 2 or 3 months. I love travelling and whenever possible I try to live for a few months in different parts of the world.
I don’t know where you are now but I am wondering if you could guide me with a little help on how to find and rent a furnished apartment in Cuenca. I can see that you found your furnished apartment in Cuenca with a help from a local realtor. Would you be able to give me how I can reach him once I am in Cuenca? Does he speak good English? Are those furnished apartments offered for short terms such as 2 months? Your help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Andy
Judging from the popularity of our post about Our First Furnished Apartment in Cuenca’s El Centro, a whole lot of people are considering relocating to Cuenca and have no idea how to find a place to live. Certainly Andy isn’t the first person to ask us for more information. So I guess it would be good to actually explain how we managed to do it as a public service. 
We’re just here to help
I’m happy to share what I can, but please understand that we don’t have all the answers. I can only share what we’ve learned and tell you what we did, hoping that this page will give you some direction as you begin your own apartment search.
As they say, your mileage may vary.
OK, enough about that. If you want to rent a furnished apartment in Cuenca, here are the best ways that we know of to find one. Hopefully knowledgeable readers will share even more tips in the comments.
Short-term apartment services
This is obviously the easiest way to find a furnished apartment. On these sites you can find rentals from anywhere from one night to a year or more. Some are pet friendly. We love this option.
We’ve discovered that it’s wiser to get to know an area before you commit to a long-term rental in a neighborhood you don’t like. When we first moved to Panama we stayed in a hotel for a week. Big mistake: Hotel stays are not budget-friendly and eating out all the time is not kind to the waistline. We decided not to do that when we moved to Cuenca.
Unsure of what part of Cuenca we’d like most, we chose to rent a room for a couple of weeks while we got to know the city and found a more affordable, long-term alternative. It worked out well for us; we became friends with another expat couple who were staying there. We would compare notes in the evening and share our discoveries of unique markets, museums, and restaurants. And our English-speaking landlady, who lived nearby, would stop by occasionally to say hi and was available 24/7 by phone, so we had lots of help learning our way around.
This street in El Centro is chock full of apartments.
There is something to be said for this style of living. It’s usually more affordable than a hotel, you can cook your own food, and the locals can explain things like how to get around the city, where to shop and which places should be avoided after dark. Depending on your preference, you can stay as the honored guest of a local family in a homestay, rent a furnished room (you do your own thing), or be left alone in your very own apartment. The most popular are Airbnb, Flipkey and HomeAway but Google offers many other good options.
You may want to check a few websites to see what is the best fit. Be sure to verify the total cost for your stay before you book; some sites have add-ons, like security deposits or a one-time cleaning fee. That said, in some locations hotels actually are less expensive. So don’t rule them out without comparing prices first.
Living with Cuencanos can be a great experience!
Word of mouth
As soon as we arrived we started our search for our next apartment by asking all the expats we met. There are a number of weekly expat meet-ups around town and you never know when someone may know of a good place to rent short- or long-term.
That’s how we found our very first apartment in Cuenca. The building was in “Gringolandia,” a part of the city that is chock-full of new condos and popular with North American expatriates. We liked that we could walk to the Feria Libre market and a huge American-style grocery store. We were impressed that it had full-time security, a gym, a pool, and the building administration spoke English. We were enchanted by the beautiful view of the Cajas mountain range from our windows. The downsides were the higher price, that the cost of some utilities was shared among all tenants, and that it was far from El Centro, our favorite part of Cuenca. We also hadn’t made any real friends in the building. That mattered, too.
We had negotiated a three-month lease (“take it or leave it”) with the option to renew for a year. When it was time for the lease to expire there was no way to get another three month lease; he was sticking with one year. By this time we had realized we really didn’t like being insulated from Ecuadorians anyway – that’s why we’d moved there, to experience the culture – so we decided to move to El Centro. We’d never lived in a UNESCO site before.
Street signs
This is how you get the best prices because you don’t have any fees from agents and websites. If you keep your eyes open as you walk around town, you’ll see signs that say se arrienda (“for rent”). If they are furnished they will also include the word amueblado. Some Cuencanos prefer to rent only to locals (similar expectations, culture and language), some raise the price for gringos, and others don’t care who you are; they’ll rent to anyone who’s interested. Some will consider short-term stays, some won’t. You just have to ask.
Here are a few tips:
- If you find a great apartment at a fabulous rate, you must decide quickly. Low priced rentals don’t stay on the market for very long.
- Make sure the landlord includes things like cooking pots, towels, shower curtains and dishes. You shouldn’t have to spend money buying necessities for a furnished apartment, especially since you’ll probably not want to keep it when you leave. It’s fine to negotiate for everything you think you will need before making a deal.
- The sheets in Ecuador are low quality; they will pill within a few weeks. If you can manage it, bring a set of sheets from home. Same tip if you like fluffy towels.
- If you don’t speak Spanish, bring along a Spanish-speaking friend as it’s common to negotiate heavily.
GringoTree
If you are headed to Cuenca, I hope you know about GringoTree. Cuenca’s expat newsletter has over 10,000 subscribers and has become the #1 English-language website in Ecuador. It’s a great resource for what’s going on in town, has a business directory, and offers tours for expats at great prices. (As a side note, we had great times on their trips; one was a day trip to local Inca sites and another was a 5-day trip to Baños and the Amazon, all in English.)
Another useful website is GoGo Gringo. We didn’t find them until later but they also have some good information, including an article entitled How I found a furnished apartment in Cuenca, Ecuador. Head on over there. I’ll wait. 
Both GoGo Gringo and GringoTree have classified ads. You can also consider placing a post on their classifieds for “apartment needed.”
Some apartments overlook parks like this.
Real estate agent
Researching online, we read that apartments can rent for as little as $250-$300 per month. That’s only possible if you stay away from Gringolandia and don’t mind unfurnished or partially furnished places. We hired Frank and Angie at $300 Cuenca Rentals; they charge a flat $337 fee to search for a suitable apartment and negotiate the best rate. They found good candidates but nothing worked out for us.
Around the time we started looking, we found an ad in GringoTree for a one-year rental that sounded perfect. A few emails later, we met a real estate agent to see an apartment in El Centro. This one was more to our liking and rented for $200/month less that our place in Gringolandia, and this one included utilities! Yes, this is the apartment that we wrote about in our hit article, Our First Furnished Apartment in Cuenca’s El Centro.
Roberto Cruz now offers his services exclusively through GringoTree’s new real estate division. He speaks fluent English, German and Spanish, did all the negotiation for us, and gave us a printed English translation of the contract we signed. We are very glad we used him, but I don’t know how helpful he can be for a short-term rental. Still, it doesn’t hurt to ask. And would you please let me know what you find out so I can update this article?
For $450 we had everything we needed.
You may be surprised to know that Re/Max has opened a real estate office in Cuenca. Google will probably offer more, but again, I’m not sure how helpful they can be for short-term rentals.
Some say that an apartment will be more expensive if you use a real estate agent. Maybe, maybe not. We were very happy to pay $450 per month for a furnished apartment that included TV, internet, and electric. Our landlady even did our laundry. So we had to pay for gas, big deal. A tank lasted for three weeks and only cost $2.50 to replace.
Other options
Depending on your comfort level, you might consider a hostel like La Casa Cuencana, checking bulletin boards in town, or reading the local paper. I can’t speak to those, as I haven’t tried them. Perhaps others can add more options.
Did this help?
As we said earlier, we don’t have all the answers, but we’re happy to share what we know. After all, that’s what As We Saw It is here for: to empower you to be a wise traveler.
We hope you like Cuenca as much as we did, if not more. Please leave a comment below if you found this article helpful or if you have any additional tips for apartment searchers. We also invite you to explore our website and subscribe to our newsletter (at the right) because we are still writing articles about Ecuador and creating videos on our YouTube channel for you to enjoy.
email (Visited 1 times, 1 visits today)
