Apartment Hunting - Chapter 4

I have a home.

Friday night S and I signed a lease on our fabulous two bedroom apartment in Sanlitun. Well, Stephanie was the one who signed, but my name is on the lease as an occupant. This was important because I want to make sure that there is not a problem with my registering with the police at that address, or coming and going on a regular basis.

The lease was written in both Mandarin and English, with a clause saying that if there was a discrepancy then the Mandarin version is the one that will prevail. In the lease there is a Force Majeure clause protecting the landlord from responsibilities if there are problems due to riots, war or Acts of God. That caught my eye and made me wonder.

Friday morning I went on an expedition to Carrefour, the French supermarket, to buy cleaning supplies and other things to prepare the apartment. I haven't been shopping for anything other than food for awhile but I quickly remembered how much I hate shopping here. The low cost of labor here means that there are numerous employees all over the store. Every time I picked up a broom or a mop to look at features there would be four or five or six people who came forward to show me a different version and yell at me to tell me that I should get the other one. It resulted in my having to sculk at the end of the aisle, trying to visually find an item I wanted and figure out which version of the item I would think best, then dashing up the aisle to pick it up, look at it, and dash back out of the aisle to my shopping cart before anyone started yelling at me. I know how to choose a mop, thank you very much, please stop yelling and shoving things in my face.

Customer service is very different here than in other countries. It was a bit better during the Olympics but they are over now and I want to avoid all stores again. I wasn't able to buy all of the things on my list (I don't have towels or sheets yet) because the selection wasn't very large and I felt like I'd run the gauntlet enough that day.

Yesterday the real estate agent had two ayis (cleaning women) in to clean the apartment, and I made several trips from where I've been staying with my suitcases, books, and other things, including the cleaning supplies I had bought at Carrefour. Today I won't be able to go to the new apartment, but tomorrow I'll take one or two more trips over and buy bedsheets and towels so that I'll be able to move in and start actually living there by the time the weekend arrives.

I have an actual apartment now. After eight months living out of suitcases it feels strange to know that I'll be able to unpack everything soon.

Apartment Hunting - Chapter 3

I think I found a home!

I've looked at several more apartments with my wonderful Chinese broker who speaks almost no English. Yesterday afternoon he took me to view two apartments on the back of his electric bicycle. Neither of them were anywhere near as welcoming to me as the first place he had shown me, which was fabulous but overpriced. I loved it, but don't want to knowingly overpay.

Last night I was on my way to meet my friend S, a Beijing-born Chinese-American woman, when she called and asked if I'd mind looking at an apartment with her. We're both home hunting, both plan to live alone, and have gone to look at some apartments together then shared our opinions of the buildings, apartments, furnishing, and decor - or lack thereof. If she didn't like the apartment last night she was going to renew the lease on her current apartment. I was just along as a prelude to our dinner and to give another opinion.

We met close to where we had previously planned to meet, in the Sanlitun embassy area, a few minutes walk from an English-language bookstore, a good local grocery store, the yoga studio where I like to go, and lots of good restaurants. We met the broker on a street corner opposite from Beijing's Worker Stadium, a central landmark and the location of the Olympic soccor semi-finals and finals. Only a few minutes walk away we turned into the courtyard of a Chinese apartment complex where only three weeks ago S and I had both commented we would love to get in but the rents would probably be insane if any Chinese retirees were willing to sublet.

At the entry to the building we met the landlady, a Chinese woman in her thirties, then walked up four flights of stairs and waited while she opened a heavy metal door right off to the landing. The heavy metal door led to a private outdoor patio and another metal door, behind which was an indoor patio and a hallway into a place we never would have expected in a building that is over thirty years old. Spanish tiles in the entryway. High ceilings. Modern light fixtures. A bathtub. An oven (small, but still large enough for a brownie pan, cookie sheet or lasagna dish). Built-in bookcases. Generous storage space. Crown molding. Front and back patios. Southern and norther exposure. Views of green courtyard areas. Over 120 square meters of floor space. Two large bedrooms. The complex was built by the Soviet Union for senior communist party officials working in China in the late 1960s and it was made to last. Its location in the embassy area means that heat and power are reliable. All at a price well under market, maybe one third less, because the landlord wants someone they trust who won't be a problem.

The rent on the apartment is at the cap of what I was willing to pay, but for this apartment, the location and the space I would be quite happy to pay it. So would S. Such places are almost impossible for outsiders or foreigners to get into (no, we're supposed to want to live in overpriced, modern luxury monstrosities with all the character of an overcooked potato and filled with other foreigners), but S has local origins and guanxi (a network of relationships and connections) that are hard for a newcomer to access, and a friend connected her with this broker. As we looked through the apartment we kept commenting on the same things, or exclaiming for the other to look at some detail (crown molding!). We've decided that we'll share.

We're going back on Friday afternoon to take a look at the apartment during the day, check the water pressure and sign the lease. Last night over dinner in a nearby cafe we started to discuss decor and house rules; today we discussed them further and agreed to have a written agreement that clearly states financial responsibilities and some other information. Our next step will be to get a housekeeper in do a deep clean. If all goes well I'll be living there in under two weeks. I already know the area and have friends nearby, and will have easy access to most of the places where I go regularly.

Wish us luck!

Apartment Hunting - Chapter 2

My apartment hunt has been temporarily put on hold, pending the end of my first intensive week of classes next week. This morning, however, I received a call from the friendly, non-English speaking broker at Wo Ai Wo Jia. He had two apartments to show me. I scheduled an appointment to meet him this afternoon.

After my frustrations while looking at apartments last week I put together a list of things that are important to me to have in an apartment. I wrote it down, then a fabulous translator friend typed it in Chinese. We printed it out and now I can show it to Chinese brokers so that they know what I want:

"I am looking for a 2 bedroom furnished apartment, preferably in a Chinese complex (not an international compound), in Dongzhimen, Dongsishitiao or Yonghegong, with a one-year lease.

The apartment should have:
24 hr hot water
heat included in the rent
a western toilet
an enclosed shower (shower cabinet) or a bathtub
natural light during the daytime
tile, parquet or wood floors (no wall to wall carpets)
elevator if above the third floor (24 hrs)
air conditioner
high speed internet access
An oven (for baking) would be nice but is not a requirement.

I am ready to move in immediately upon identifying an apartment and signing the lease but do not need to move until I find the right place.

I have Chinese and foreigner friends who speak and read both Chinese and English and can help me understand the contract before I sign it."

You may have laughed when you read the list. Some older homes here don't even have running water, so I want to make sure that a realtor knows that it's important to me, and that I want it 24 hours a day. The hot water in some places turns off after a certain hour, so again I decided to specify. Many apartments have bathrooms with 'open' showers, which means the shower head is just a spigot or a handheld showerhead mounted on a wall, with no tub or compartment to separate the 'shower' from the rest of the bathroom. It can be a nightmare to clean, and one that I saw had the showerhead pointed right at the toilet, with not enough room to stand up or turn around. No thank you. Some buildings with elevators turn them off after a certain hour. I don't want to ever have to make a decision to leave somewhere early, or to stay out until five or six in the morning, because of an elevator being turned off.

High speed internet access is necessary because, well, because I want internet access at home and it can take months to have installed if an apartment does not already have it.

This afternoon the broker took me to two apartments. One had two bedrooms, two living rooms, a long enclosed porch and lots of great light. Unfortunately, the shower looked, um, 'nasty,' there were plastic grape vines and bunchs of grapes attached to the ceiling of one of the living rooms - a dusting nightmare, and the apartment required climbing seven flights of stairs. The second place had an elevator, two bedrooms and a view over a small hidden park with a lake from the master bedroom. The pitfalls were that the second bedroom and the living room both faced an unpleasant looking airshaft, there was very little light, the furniture was old and dark, and the layout made the place feel smaller than it was.

I explained to broker, in bad Chinese and with lots of hand gestures and laughter, that I like to have friends over but few would walk up seven flights, and that the other place felt very dark. Now he has my email address so he's going to take photos of places and send them to me. I also pulled out a calendar and explained that I'll be 'studying' all next week, from morning until night. We're going to resume apartment viewing after that.

It's an adventure, but I know I'll find a place I love if I'm patient and keep looking. If not, there's always the luxury foreigner ghettos.

Apartment Hunting - Chapter 1

Now that the Olympics are over it is time for me to find my own apartment.

I started this by reviewing online ads on two popular websites for expats. There were a number of ads listed that looked promising so I sent off emails. Their apartments were in areas close to where I spend most of my time and were in my price range. Most of the ads were placed by English-speaking real estate agents, who then respond and try to steer me into buildings and apartments they think I would like.

As I am a foreign woman, it is obvious to the agents that I want to be in one of the large luxury compounds that are filled with foreigners from around the world. I've looked at some of the apartments there and felt like I was looking at condominiums in Connecticut, right out of a cookie cutter. They are sterile and there is very little sense of community. Agents stress the club house and the gym facilities, but I have no use for a stair machine since I am already active physically. They tell me that the buildings are safe; Beijing is one of the safest places in the world for foreigners, especially foreign women, and the only time I've ever felt unsafe in the slightest was when I was with foreigners. The realtors look shocked when I say that I want to be in a Chinese compound, but I want to be somewhere with a real sense of community, where English is not the lingua franca.

Yesterday afternoon I'd had enough of politely arguing with the English speaking brokers and walked into a Chinese brokerage firm - Wo Ai Wo Jia, or I Love My House. The brokers weren't sure what to make of me at first, and communicating wasn't easy, but I now feel much happier about the whole process. Plus, I'm learning some new vocabulary words.

When I walked in and the agents looked up at me I said I wanted a, um, (darn it, how do I say rental?), then I pointed at the rental ads in the window so that they would know I didn't want to buy a place. That would be a lot more paperwork than I'm willing to do right now and I don't feel I'm ready to do that here yet. They asked how many people, how big, I explained that the apartment is for me and I'd like one or two bedrooms. I told them the areas where I'm looking. One realtors knew a few words of English ('how much' and 'rooms'), so he quickly became my main point of contact. I told him I didn't want to live in the big international complexes, I want a Chinese complex. He had something else to do so he told me to return in an hour. I asked for his business card, then his name. When he gave me his card he pointed to his name, and I had to explain that "Wo bu kan Zhongwen" (I don't read Chinese). As my vocabulary is smaller than that of most three year olds my inability to read didn't come as a complete surprise so he said his name and wrote it out in pinyin on his card.

When I returned to the brokerage after an hour I waited for him for a few minutes and his colleagues gave me warm water while I waited. When he walked in, he had a set of keys and he and a female colleague told me to follow them. We walked about twenty minutes to a Chinese complex and I was happy to see all of the trees and the retirees sitting outside chatting together. The apartment was a two bedroom, with lots of light, view of the courtyard below, an enclosed shower, a renovated kitchen (no oven, but that's normal here) and a piano in the dining area. It was beautiful, but I told the realtor that I would like something closer to the main street (and the subway). He said something that I didn't understand, then he and his colleague made cars sounds to explain that apartments closer to the street would have a lot of traffic noise. I still wanted to see another apartment, so asked him to find me something else that I would like.

As I walked out of the compound I took a different route, down a tree lined street, and saw that the building was only a few minutes from the street, much closer than I had thought. That night I went back with a friend, and a woman stopped her hacky sack game to tell me should would be my neighbor. It was a homey apartment, comfortable and cleanable, in a great location.

The next day I had a friend call the realtor to speak in Chinese and say I'm interested, but the price was several hundred RMB too high. It turns out that the place would be a sublet. The current tenant signed two months ago, at the top of the market, and would only come down 100RMB per month. I queried friends, locals and foreigners alike, to hear their estimates of what the apartment is worth. The tenants reduced price is still several hundred RMB higher than the apartment is worth in the current market. I liked it, but I'm not willing to pay for someone else's lack of knowledge about real estate prices. I'm going to keep looking.