Student housing in Buenos Aires: the complete guide to finding and booking your room

1. Which types of housing exist in Buenos Aires

In Buenos Aires, an exchange student chooses between four main options, all furnished: a room in a shared flat, a studio, a shared apartment and a room with a local family. Each one is a different way of living your porteño semester.

• Room in a shared flat: a furnished room in a departamento or a shared house, with a kitchen and living room in common. It is the option of impromptu late dinners, mate shared before class and flatmates you still talk about years later.
• Furnished studio: your own space, at a higher price, for those who prefer independence to group living.
• Shared apartment for two or three: you rent together and split the rent, a middle ground between privacy and shared life.
• Room with a local family: you live with a porteño family and step straight into the rhythm of the city.

Everything is rented furnished on the student side: you arrive with your suitcase and leave with it, with nothing to buy to settle in and nothing to sell when you go. Rentals run by the semester, for five months, or by the year, for ten months, which suits a stay of one or two semesters.

2. What student housing costs, in brief

For good-quality, well-connected housing in Buenos Aires, expect to pay between €400 and €600 a month for a room in a shared flat. Rent is the biggest item in your budget, ahead of food and transport.

On the local market, rents offered to foreigners are often quoted in dollars, and the peso moves fast: that is why the ranges here are given in euros. On top of these amounts you may have to pay expensas, the building service charges, as well as utilities. Overall, a student's budget in Buenos Aires comes to around €1,000 to €1,250 a month, housing included. To compare line by line, look at the complete student budget for Buenos Aires, and cross-check with the public data on Numbeo for Buenos Aires.

3. Which barrios to live in

International students live in many different barrios of Buenos Aires, each with its own atmosphere: Palermo, San Telmo, Recoleta, Belgrano, Caballito or Almagro, among others. None is a must: what matters is the journey to your classes and the atmosphere you picture yourself living in for five months.

Palermo

Palermo is split into several areas, Palermo Soho, Palermo Hollywood and Palermo Botánico, which porteños name as neighbourhoods in their own right. It is one of the hearts of the city's nightlife, with bars and clubs that fill up after midnight, and one of the places where students meet to eat and go out.

San Telmo

On Sundays, the Feria de San Telmo takes over Plaza Dorrego and the streets around it. The rest of the week, the barrio lives to the rhythm of its bars and evenings out, and remains one of the spots where students eat without spending a fortune.

Recoleta, Belgrano and Núñez

These barrios often serve as landmarks because several universities are located there: UADE is in Recoleta, UTDT in Núñez, and the UBA's Ciudad Universitaria between Belgrano and Núñez. Note, however, that the UBA has faculties spread across the whole city: the exact address of your classes, more than the name of your university, decides your commute.

Caballito, Almagro, Villa Crespo and Chacarita

These barrios make up another part of the student map, each with a neighbourhood life of its own. The Abasto area, on the edge of Almagro, is one of the places where students like to meet for dinner.

4. Choosing your room with the Subte in mind

In Buenos Aires, the right way to choose a room is to look at the Subte or colectivo line that connects it to your classes, even before the barrio. The Subte, the porteño metro, and the colectivos, the buses that porteños also call bondis, shape every daily journey.

The SUBE card

The SUBE card pays for the Subte, the colectivos and the trains. You can buy it without any paperwork, then register it in your name with your passport at a SUBE centre. Once registered, you pay the standard fare; without registration, each journey costs noticeably more.

What a journey costs

As a guide, with a registered SUBE, a Subte journey costs around €1 (about 90p) and a short colectivo journey a little over €0.50 (about 45p). Fares are adjusted every month in line with inflation: keep the order of magnitude in mind rather than the amount in pesos. On the Subte, discounts apply to frequent users, from 20% off after 20 journeys in the month up to 40% off after 40 journeys.

Paying by bank card

Contactless Visa or Mastercard and QR payment are accepted at every Subte station and on equipped colectivos. On colectivos, this payment method applies an average fare instead of the distance-based scale. To plan your journeys, the apps Cómo Llego, the official one, and Moovit do the job. The full detail on lines, fares and cycling is in our article on getting around Buenos Aires as a student.

5. Booking your room from abroad

Yes, you can book your housing in Buenos Aires before you leave, without an Argentine bank account and without being there. Everything is done online, from the listing: photos, description, price and rental dates.

In practice, paying officially reserves the room. When you confirm a booking, you pay the deposit, the equivalent of one month's rent, and nothing else. The owner has 24 hours to accept. If they decline or do not reply, you are fully refunded. If they accept, your room is confirmed and they sign the rental contract electronically: you leave with your contract already signed.

Payment is made by international bank transfer from a European account, and the price is fixed at the time of booking: it does not change afterwards, whatever happens to the peso before you arrive. In a city where even transport fares are adjusted every month, that is real peace of mind. The full process is explained in how it works, and if you want to know who is behind the platform, see the about page.

6. Depósito, expensas and the contract

A few words come up again and again in Buenos Aires listings: alquiler, which means the rental and the rent, depósito and expensas. Understanding them saves you from misunderstandings when you book.

The depósito

This is the deposit, and it is exactly the sum you pay to book: nothing is added on top. With Flatmaters, it is a single month's rent, held in a separate account for the whole rental, then returned at the end of your stay after the condition of the property has been checked.

The expensas

These are the service charges of a building, the porteño equivalent of the Chilean gastos comunes: upkeep of the shared areas, the concierge, the lift. Their amount depends entirely on the building and the services it offers, and they often come on top of the rent in your housing budget.

Utilities

In some properties, water, electricity and gas are not included in the rent and are paid separately, according to what the flat actually uses. It is a budget line to plan for, just like the rent.

The contract

With Flatmaters, the rental contract is signed electronically by the owner as soon as your booking is confirmed, well before you leave. You land at Ezeiza with your housing and your contract already sorted, and all that is left is to head to your room.

7. When to start your search

The earlier the better, to have a wider choice: the sooner you book, the more access you have to well-placed shared flats and studios on your Subte or colectivo line, instead of settling for what is left.

Exchange students arrive in large numbers at the start of each semester, and the best-located rooms go first. Choosing early also means being able to weigh up calmly a shared flat, a studio or a room with a local family, and a semester rental against a full-year one.

Booking ahead also means arriving straight at your own place, without a week in a hostel or a last-minute search, and spending your first days discovering the city rather than looking for a roof. To picture your future daily life, have a look at student life in Buenos Aires.

8. Frequently asked questions