The week starts with a countdown. Three days of temporary accommodation left, a suitcase that still smells like the flight, and a landlord on the phone who asks, in rapid Mandarin, for something called a “guarantor letter.” You catch one word: “bank.” You don’t have a local bank account yet. You don’t even have a local phone number that works reliably. The call ends, and you stare at the wall of your tiny Airbnb, doing the math on how long a hostel bed will stretch your savings.
Marta knew this feeling. A graphic designer from Lisbon, she landed in Taipei in early autumn with a short-term rental, a folder of Portuguese documents, and a plan that had looked solid from 11,000 kilometers away. By day three, the folder felt useless. Every listing she messaged wanted paperwork she didn’t have: a work permit copy, a local guarantor, proof of income in a format she hadn’t seen before. One agent told her, kindly, that many landlords simply preferred tenants with an established local footprint. She had been in the country for 72 hours.
The good news: this is solvable, and the solution starts before you send a single message. The bad news: it starts earlier than you think, usually around day one.
Build the first-week housing plan before the jet lag fades
The instinct is to book viewings immediately, to see everything, to say yes to the first place with a bed and a window. Resist it. Housing in a new city rewards a structured first week, not a frantic one, because the paperwork you collect in the first few days unlocks the apartments you actually want.
Your first task isn’t finding a flat. It’s assembling the evidence that makes you a credible tenant. That means opening a local bank account early, even if the balance is small. It means getting a work permit or student status confirmed in writing, not just verbally. It means gathering proof of address, which sounds absurd when you don’t have an address yet. This is the catch-22 every newcomer hits: landlords want proof you live somewhere, and you can’t get a place until you prove you live somewhere.
The way through it is sequencing. One genuine booking, a hotel confirmation or a friend’s address, often satisfies the “local address” requirement for the first official steps. Then the official steps, the bank account, the registration, produce the documents that make landlords take you seriously. It feels circular. It is. But each small document unlocks the next, so the order matters more than the speed.
What to settle before the deposit leaves your account
In the rush to secure a place before the temporary accommodation runs out, it’s tempting to hand over a deposit and hope the details work themselves out. This is where the budget dies. A deposit is usually significant, and in a competitive market, agents may ask for it quickly to hold a unit. Slow down.
Before paying anything, confirm four things in writing:
- The total monthly rent, and what it includes. Utilities, internet, building fees, none of it is obvious.
- The deposit amount, the exact conditions for getting it back, and the timeline for the return. Ask what happens if the sink drips, because that question reveals how the landlord handles maintenance.
- The lease term and the notice period. Can you leave after six months? What happens if your job or your course ends early?
- Whether the landlord accepts foreign documents, or whether you need a local guarantor service. This one decides whether the apartment is even possible.
Ask these questions by message, not just in person, so you have a written record. A landlord who answers clearly in writing is a landlord who will answer clearly later. One who deflects, who says “we’ll sort it later,” is showing you how the year will go.
The viewing that changes everything
On day four, Marta had a viewing for a small apartment near a park she’d walked past twice. The agent, a woman who wore the same bright raincoat every time, remembered her name. The place was light, the rent was reasonable, and Marta had already learned to ask the four questions before saying yes. The agent paused at the third one. The lease term was twelve months, she said, and the notice period was thirty days. That was fine. Then Marta asked about the guarantor, and the agent smiled. Because Marta had opened her local bank account on day two, because she could show a confirmed registration and a work permit in hand, the landlord was willing to waive the guarantor requirement for a slightly larger deposit.
The outcome was genuinely in doubt for a moment. Marta had forty-eight hours left in her temporary place, and the backup option was a hostel with six beds to a room. If she hadn’t done the paperwork first, the agent would have moved to the next applicant. Instead, she signed a lease with a written record of every term, paid the deposit by bank transfer with a receipt, and photographed the meter readings before she’d even unpacked.
Three weeks later, she texted a friend in Lisbon a photo of her balcony at sunset. Not because the apartment was perfect, it had a fridge that hummed and a shower with mysterious water pressure, but because she’d stopped waking up to a countdown. The city had shifted from a place she was visiting to a place she lived. That shift, the feeling of being settled, is the entire goal. The lease is just the paperwork that gets you there.
When your own first week starts, begin with the bank account and the registration, not the viewings. The address registration matters more than it looks like it should, and it makes every later step, including the housing search, go quiet. Do the unglamorous tasks first. The apartment will follow.
