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

1. Which housing types exist in Santiago

In Santiago, exchange students choose between five main options, and a room in a shared casa is as popular as a flatshare in an apartment. The city is huge: houses with patios in residential areas, apartment blocks in the denser districts, which gives a wide range for one semester.

• Room in a shared casa: a furnished room in a house, with a shared kitchen and living room, often a patio or terrace. This is the option of weekend asados and of flatmates who become your crowd for the semester.
• Room in a shared departamento: the same idea in an apartment, in a block.
• Furnished studio: your own space, 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 host: you live with a Chilean family, at the rhythm of their home.

Everything is rented furnished on the student side, by the semester (5 months) or by the year (10 months). You arrive with your suitcase, you have nothing to buy to settle in and nothing to sell when you leave.

The casa has a charm of its own in Santiago: the patio where an asado gets improvised on a Saturday, the nights out organised as a group, and Wednesday evening at Miércoles Po', the exchange students' party night and their favourite, where Flatmaters students get free entry all semester. If living with people you do not know yet makes you hesitate, read why a flatshare with strangers often clicks.

2. What student housing costs in Santiago

For a good-quality room in a casa or flatshare in Santiago, expect €350 to €500 a month. Rent remains the biggest item in your budget, ahead of food and transport.

The pound, dollar and peso amounts are approximate, converted at the rate used for this guide (€1 is about 1,091 CLP, £0.85 and US$1.12). On top of these rents come the gastos comunes when the home is in a block, and, in some homes, water, electricity and gas bills (all explained below). In total, a standard student budget in Santiago is around €1,055 a month, housing included, which is 10 to 15% less than a typical European student city. The item-by-item detail is in the monthly budget of a student in Santiago, to be cross-checked with the public data from Numbeo for Santiago.

3. Where to live in Santiago: areas and metro lines

In Santiago there is no single student neighbourhood: universities are spread across the whole city, and it is the metro that decides your daily life, much more than the name of the area.

The network has 7 lines (1, 2, 3, 4, 4A, 5 and 6). A metro trip costs 895 CLP at peak hours (about €0.82 or £0.70), 815 CLP off-peak (€0.75 or £0.63) and 735 CLP early in the morning and late at night (€0.67 or £0.57); the Red bus costs 795 CLP (€0.73 or £0.62) at any hour. You pay with the Bip! card, or directly with your contactless bank card in all metro stations. Timetables, connections and the other modes are covered in our guide to getting around Santiago as a student.

When they look for housing, students first consider three things: proximity to the metro, proximity to university centres and how safe the area feels. Santiago Centro, Ñuñoa and Macul often come up in their searches for these reasons. No area is better than another: each has its own atmosphere, and it is your everyday journey that makes the difference.

The centre: Santiago Centro, Lastarria and Bellavista

The heart of the city is a reference point for several campuses: Universidad de Chile on the Alameda, UDP in the university district, the PUC Casa Central, the UNAB República campus. You will find La Vega Central for fruit and vegetables, Cerro Santa Lucía, and the streets of Lastarria and Bellavista, where a good share of student nights out happen, at the foot of Cerro San Cristóbal.

Providencia, Ñuñoa and the east of the city

To the east, Providencia and Ñuñoa, then Las Condes and Vitacura, form the other large group of areas where students live. It is also the direction of UAI, based in Peñalolén, and of the Andes, which close the horizon: Farellones and El Colorado are about 36 km away and Valle Nevado about 46 km, enough to go skiing at the weekend during the season, from mid-June to early October or so.

The west and the south

USACH is in Estación Central; further south is the PUC San Joaquín campus. These reference points say one thing above all: with campuses this spread out, the right room depends on your journey, not on a fashionable address.

4. Booking from abroad, without a Chilean account

You can book your room in Santiago from home, before boarding the plane and without a Chilean bank account: booking is done online, from the listing.

Paying officially reserves the room as soon as it is validated. When you book, you pay the deposit, the equivalent of one month's rent, and nothing else. The landlord has 24 hours to accept: if they decline or do not reply, you are fully refunded. If they accept, they sign the rental contract electronically and your room is confirmed.

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, whatever happens to the peso before you arrive. Every step is in our article on booking your room in Santiago from abroad. How the platform works is summarised in how it works, and the team behind it is introduced on the about page.

5. Garantía, gastos comunes and the contract

Three words come up constantly in listings in Santiago, plus a budget item of its own: understanding them avoids misunderstandings when you book.

The garantía

This is the deposit, and it is exactly the sum you pay to book: nothing is added on top. At Flatmaters it equals 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 home is checked.

The gastos comunes

These are the building's service charges: upkeep of shared areas, the concierge, the lift. They mostly concern homes in apartment blocks. Their amount depends entirely on the building and the services it offers, and they add to the rent in your housing budget.

Utility bills

In some homes, water, electricity and gas are not included in the rent and are paid separately, according to what the flatshare actually uses. It is a budget line separate from the gastos comunes.

The contract

The rental contract is signed electronically by the landlord as soon as your booking is confirmed, so before you leave: you travel with your contract already signed. When you arrive, make a habit of quickly reporting any difference between the listing and the home.

6. The right moment to start looking

To have a choice in Santiago, the earlier the better: the sooner you book, the wider the range of available rooms.

The Chilean academic year is inverted compared with the northern hemisphere, with two intakes: early March for the first semester, early August for the second. You aim for one of those two windows, like every international student of your semester.

Booking early means access to casas with patios, to flatshares close to the metro line that suits you and to studios, instead of choosing from what is left. It also means arriving straight at your home, dropping your suitcase and heading out that same evening to discover Lastarria or Bellavista, rather than spending your first days searching. To picture your future daily life, take a look at student life in Santiago.

7. Frequently asked questions