Renting an Appartment in Paris
First of all, the information in this text are meant to be some guideline to circumvent some of the obstacles I crashed into. I guess they are neither exhaustive nor complete so if something does not work as explained here and/or a french administration worker starts yelling at you -- I do not take blames. That said, let's hop right into the sometimes messy business of getting your own appartment in Paris.
Finding an apartment
In general, there are two ways of getting an apartment: From a private person or via an agency.
The most common source for finding apartments from private person is particulier-a-particulier, a newspaper devoted to announce appartments and houses. They also have a nice webpage where you can check the announcements and set email alerts. Also check out the links on our "Visiting the Group" page.
If you decide to find an apartment via an agency, you will find millions of them on every corner of almost every street. However, each of these agencies has its own small pool of apartments for renting, so you will have to check several of them to get what you want. Agencies require you to pay a honoraire for their work, usually between one and two months' rent, depending on the agency. There are also a lot of websites where agencies announce their appartments, often with photos and/or videos to get a first impression. Agencies will not charge you for visiting appartments.
Prices: Currently (Sep. 2007), everyone is happy about stalling rents. However, this is Paris, so be prepared to pay about 500-600 euros/month for a small studio and 800-1000 euros/month for a two-room apartment. Rents are significantly lower in the suburbs.
The standard contract also ask for a security deposit (caution) of usually two to three times the monthly rent. If the house owner finds your appartment in a sufficiently good condition once you move out again, you will get this deposit back.
Colocation
If you think about sharing an appartment with someone else, you will find lots of webpages devoted to finding the ideal person(s) to do so. One of these is A Partager.
The ''garant'' stuff
All agencies and presumably many of the private house owners will ask you a garant before signing the contract. This garant must be a person who already paid taxes in france, lives in france and ideally is a french citizen. He will guarantee your rent in the case that you do not pay. The rule of thumb is that this person must have an income of at least three times the monthly rent. Most agencies also accept if you pay one year of rent in advance. Foreigners are usually not accepted as garant.
But there is hope: Since you work at Institut Pasteur, you are allowed to ask for a Garanti LOCAPASS, where, basically, the institute guarantees for you. I am not fully aware of how this works, but it did for me. You can apply for this guarantee via Astria. They also offer to reimburse the caution, a service called Avance LOCAPASS. Applications for both seem to go quite smoothly and are usually accepted within 14 days.
Insurance
As part of the renting contract, you must have an insurance habitation. You can get this insurance in several different flavors from many small insurance companies on the street or from your bank. From my bank, it took me about half an hour to get insured. For a small appartment, these insurances are about 10-20 euros/month. If you do not bring items of very high value into your appartment (such as an expensive hifi-system or your grandmother's jewelry), the basic contract should be sufficient.
Making administration know your new address
Once you move to a new address, you can make most of the french administration know your new address on-line via Gouv.fr. This includes the french electricity company EDF and the health insurance Ameli.