Type: Room in shared apartment
Size: 15 sq m
Cost per month: 170,000 ISK
Available on: housinganywhere.com
The state of the Icelandic rental market is unavoidably bleak. With demand far outstripping supply, even the direst of bedrooms get swooped up in a second, and Facebook groups are full of heartbreaking posts from students, foreign workers and single parents desperate for a place to stay.
While most landlords in Reykjavík are not objectively bastards, there are definitely those who have used the worsening crisis to make a quick dime out of human suffering, or at the very least to allow them to rest on their laurels when it comes to property maintenance. Because if you have an issue with something, what does it matter? There are a million other yous queuing up to take your place.
While this month’s property isn’t the worst of the worst, it certainly won’t be sitting at the top of anyone’s dream home list. Situated in a basement apartment, the slightly-subterranean room (we can’t emphasise this enough—it’s just one room) looks like a living room in the advertisement photos. Indeed, it probably was once a living room, before the landlords decided that it was far better to cram another poor bill-paying sucker into the space, rather than give their tenants anywhere to relax or socialise. Who really has time to ‘live’ anyway, when you’re working round the clock to make enough money for your capitalist overlords?
And work you must, for despite the crummy looking kitchen, the shabby and unkempt garden and the minuscule shared bathroom, this room is rented for the staggering price of 170,000 ISK. That’s more than 2 million ISK for a year’s rent. For a room. If you’re wondering what else 2 million ISK can get you, it’s just about equivalent to the price of a human liver on the black market. Which is totally chill, of course. Who needs a liver when you’ve got a nice, cosy room to not-live in? Sleep tight.
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