Apartments and Homes for Rent Across Hanoi

Where expats live in Hanoi

Hanoi spreads a long way, and renters arriving from overseas tend to concentrate in a handful of its districts. Tay Ho, the district wrapped around West Lake, is where most people start looking: it holds the largest share of serviced apartments and garden villas, and the lakeside strip is where the international community has settled. Hoan Kiem is the historic core, so a flat above the Old Quarter trades floor space for being able to walk almost everywhere. Ba Dinh carries the diplomatic quarter, with wide, tree-lined streets and a quieter feel than its position on the map suggests.

West of the centre, Cau Giay and Nam Tu Liem are the newer and taller half of the city, built around office towers and master-planned townships, and they are usually where a family gets the most room for the rent. Long Bien sits across the Red River, which puts a bridge between you and the centre but buys gardens and gated compounds. Dong Da, Thanh Xuan, Hai Ba Trung, Hoang Mai and Ha Dong fill in the rest, and each one has its own character worth a look before you rule it out. The neighbourhood comparison sets them side by side.

What renting through Nest Living is like

Every home listed here is one Nest Living manages, so the person who shows you the flat is the person who handles the lease and anything that goes wrong afterwards. There are no tenant fees. The rent on a listing is the rent you pay, and where a landlord has itemised the bills the listing shows them rather than leaving them to be discovered at the viewing. Advisors work in English and in Vietnamese.

The parts of the move that sit outside the lease are handled alongside it, including bringing a dog or cat into Vietnam, which runs on its own permit and vaccination clock and has to be started months before the flight.

Most homes here are let on long leases. A smaller set are serviced or short-stay apartments, which suit people arriving on a fixed project or a probation period, and the short-term filter on the search page is where those appear. If you already know the district you want, the pills above take you straight to it, and each district page shows only what is genuinely available in that district today.

Worth doing before you sign

See the home in person, or on a video call if you are still overseas. Photographs are honest about a room and say nothing at all about the street, the stairwell or the noise at seven in the morning. Ask an advisor to walk you through the building rather than just the flat.

Then ask what the rent does and does not cover. Electricity, water, management fees and internet are handled differently from one building to the next, so the all-in monthly figure is the number to compare between two homes, not the headline rent. The hidden cost index sets out what those bills actually come to across our homes, by bedroom count and district, and the wider cost of living in Hanoi puts that rent beside the food, transport and schooling it has to sit next to. Our renting guides cover the parts of a Hanoi lease that catch people out most often, and an advisor will answer the rest before anything is signed.