Spanish phrases for a new apartment: a three-line door script.

Three lines, and the door opens.

You do not need a speech on the doorstep. The exchange is short and it repeats: the landlord greets you, checks who you are, then hands over keys or asks you in. Three lines from you cover almost all of it.

Notice what is missing: no apology for your Spanish, no explanation of your flight. At a door, short is polite.

Line one: greet, and let the greeting work.

Buenos días before midday, buenas tardes from midday, buenas noches in the evening. In much of Latin America you will also hear just buenas at any hour; it is short, friendly and normal at a door.

Then comes the question after the greeting. With a landlord you have never met, stay on usted: ¿Cómo está? With a flatmate, use tú: ¿Cómo estás? At a first meeting with someone in an official role, usted is the safe choice.

Line two: ¿Es este el apartamento?

It means is this the apartment? and it does one job: it confirms that the door you knocked on is the right door before you follow a stranger upstairs or hand over money.

In Mexico City you will usually hear departamento. In Spain the everyday word is piso, and apartamento is often used for a holiday flat. Swap the noun and the question still works.

Learners sometimes type éste with an accent. The Real Academia Española’s Diccionario panhispánico de dudas says the demonstratives este, ese and aquel are written without a tilde, with the accent optional only where the sentence would otherwise be ambiguous. So: este, no accent.

Line three: ¿Me da la llave, por favor?

It means could you give me the key, please. Me da is the usted form — literally you give me — and it is the ordinary way to ask for something across a doorway. With a flatmate, switch to tú: ¿Me das la llave, por favor? More than one key, common with a front door and a flat door, takes the plural: ¿Me da las llaves, por favor?

If the answer arrives faster than your ear, you do not need every word. ¿Puede repetir, por favor? and ¿Puede hablar más despacio, por favor? both use puede, the usted form, and both buy you time without switching to English. There is a fuller set in the repeat-and-slow-down guide, and the free Conversation Rescue Card puts those lines on a two-page card, with a cut-out pocket version.

The whole scene, with Ana at the door.

Ana is the tenant; the landlord is el dueño. The three lines in order, with the answers that come back.

An illustrative practice dialogue written for this page, not a recording. In Mexico rent is la renta; in Spain you will hear el alquiler. Deposit amounts, notice periods and what is included vary by building and contract — check your own paperwork, not a phrase list.

Rehearse it out loud, in ten minutes.

Reading the tables is not the practice. The sentence has to leave your mouth before it will be there at the door.

The IES What Works Clearinghouse practice guide Organizing Instruction and Study to Improve Student Learning recommends spacing learning over time and quizzing with active retrieval — answering from memory rather than rereading.

• I can greet the landlord before he finishes his own greeting.
• I can confirm the apartment without switching to English.
• I can ask for the keys, plural included.

Make it a role play script, not a phrase list.

Most Spanish role play scripts fail for the same reason: they are a list of words with brackets where the other person should be. A useful role play Spanish conversation script has two speakers, a fixed order and one clear job. A Spanish speaking role play you do alone still works — you are training the moment when a question arrives and an answer has to come back.

So keep this one small. Two speakers, eight lines, one doorstep. When those eight lines are boring, add the flat: the meter cupboard, the water pressure, the rubbish day. Each new scene is another short script, not another app.

Is this just another app that gives you points?

Honest answer: this is a page, not a product, and no page can make you speak. A streak measures how often you opened an app, not whether a sentence comes out at a door. Here there is nothing to keep alive: no points, no badges, no microphone. The only check is the drill above, and you run it yourself.

About the upselling question. Yes, this site sells things: three phrase packs (Travel, Family and Relocation) at $9 each or $19 for all three, and a self-paced course, Spanish Conversation Foundations, at $49, with a full refund within 30 days — see the pricing page and the refund policy. They are optional and separate; nothing on this page sits behind them. The free 7 Day Spanish Starter Plan is an 18-page PDF, and the whole plan is also on the web page, so you can read Day 1 in the browser first.

What no page can do is speak for you. Reading this will not make the sentence come out at the door; saying it aloud three times this week gives you a chance of it. That is practice, not a fluency test.

One next step.

Tonight, read the dialogue once, then close the page and answer the landlord from memory: ¿Viene por el departamento? — Sí. Soy Ana. ¿Es este el departamento? When those arrive without checking, you have the door. The scene after it is the landlord visit, when something in the flat needs fixing.

Rehearse the landlord visit

Also useful, one link each: Day 1 of the free 7 Day Spanish Starter Plan for saying hello and giving your name, and the renting vocabulary guide for the words on the contract.

Common questions.