We have lived in the same house in Mauritius for five years; it is a large house with five bedrooms, two bathrooms, two living areas, nice balconies, good size garden with swimming pool and lock up garage. It is an older home with many little unique' problems but nothing major; it is a little dated especially the kitchen but overall a really great house, we have our own furniture which makes it home' and we have enjoyed living here.
The house is in the north about 15 minutes from Grand Baie. We no doubt have a pretty good deal at around Rs30,000 per month and on the flip side we consider ourselves excellent tenants. In the five years we have lived here we have always paid our rent on time, rarely troubled the landlord for maintenance and have made improvements in the way of installing an extra air conditioner in the room I use as my office and ceiling fans throughout the house, we have also improved the garden dramatically during that time. We treat the house as if it was our own home and the landlord is very happy to have us as his tenants.
Recently a house has been built two doors away and we have lost our privacy, the balcony of this new home overlooks our garden and pool area, on top of that, another house will be built next door between us and this new home pretty much right next to our fence and we really feel it may be time to move.
So that is my long winded explanation to the title of this post Cost of rental homes in Mauritius. We are amazed at the number of properties on the market for Rs 60,000; 80,000; 100,000; 120,000 and even more than that. The homes in the 30,000 to 40,000 range that we have seen are much smaller than what we currently have and do not suit our needs; they are also often very average homes. Sure the homes at Rs100,000+ are very nice but who is paying these kind of rents? Even homes in the Rs60,000 to Rs80,000 are ok but we are not prepared to pay that kind of rent. $1,000 per week just seems outrageous to us for Mauritius.
Are expats really paying Rs100,000k per month and more? It seems an enormous amount of money to be paying in rent, just to pay off another persons house for them. At over one million rupees per year, those paying those rents must be earning very high incomes. Perhaps the companies they work for are paying these rents?
It also seems that there are literally hundreds of empty homes in Mauritius so I just don't understand the market. There certainly seems to be many high priced homes sitting without tenants for months on end. A long term tenant paying less and really looking after the property would surely make more sense? Perhaps the rental bubble in Mauritius will burst.
For those of you who don't mind sharing, what area do you live and what range of rent are you paying for what type / size of house and do you believe you have value for money?
Interested in your thoughts and experiences.