Flats for rent in XXIII. Soroksár

Soroksár is the far south-east of Budapest and feels closer to the villages beyond it than to the city. The old centre on Grassalkovich út has a Swabian-village layout: a baroque church, the town hall, a row of low houses with gates, and a market. The district is long and thin, following the Ráckeve Danube arm, with fields, allotments and the Soroksár botanical garden filling the gaps between the built-up parts.

Housing is family houses almost everywhere, from old peasant houses in the centre to 1980s two-storey houses in Újtelep and newer builds on the former fields. There is one small estate of blocks in Újtelep and a few newer condominiums near the HÉV. Molnár-sziget, the island in the Danube arm, is holiday houses and boat clubs.

The district has the cheapest rents in Budapest along with the far north-east, and the least to do in the evening. Shopping is the Auchan by the M0 junction and small shops in the centre. What people rent here for is a house, a garden and a quiet street inside the city limits.

Expect whole houses: old single-storey village houses with a long garden, often renovated inside but with older windows and gas convector heating; 1970s and 1980s two-storey houses with a garage and a cellar, sometimes rented as two flats; and new terraced or semi-detached houses on the Újtelep and Millenniumtelep edges with heat pumps or condensing boilers. A three-room listing here is almost always a house, and the rent covers the garden and parking that a flat would not.

Flats are limited to the Újtelep blocks, 50 to 60 square metres with district heating, and a handful of newer small condominiums near the HÉV stops. In older houses check the septic or sewer connection, since not every street was on mains sewerage until recently, and ask how the house is heated in winter, because a large, uninsulated house on gas is expensive to run.