First of all, to find an apartment in Beijing is much easier than in most of countries. There is no control of your financial files, your salary, no guarantee from other people, but you’ll find a difficulty : you’ll need a lot of cash since you have a put a guarantee deposit (usulally one month salary) and thre months rent in advance.
The advantage is that if the cash issue is OK, you’ll be able to find an apartmen at once, let’s say within 3 days. When you arrive in China, you can spend a few days at the hotel and very quickly you’ll move to your real home in Beijing.
The basic idea : to rent an apartment
There is all kind of real estate agencies in China, but communication issues can be difficult. Some expat relocation agencies are used to deal with foreigners but they are more suited for high standard apartments, you’ll have difficulty to find one of them if you have a little budget. If you are looking for a high end apartment, still, it is the best way to do it. Large selection of apartments and apartments suited to your expectations, a better relation with the landlord and a rent at par with market price.
With local agencies, you can succeed but yu risk to lose some time visiting apartments that do not correspond to what you asked and wish. The expectations of Chinese people are not the same than those of foreigners, you risk to visi a lot ODF apartments that have surfaces without consideration to what you asked, weird locations… You really can spend a lot of time visiting strange apartments in Beijing.
You have classifieds sites as well, in Beijing the most famous ones are The Beijinger, City Weekend, and even craiglist. Be aware that you can have some bad surprises as well, with some fake ads, wrong iformation but a large number of appartments that cn be rented atonce with the tenant leaving soon and looking for someone to live in the apartment to get back its deposit from the landlord.
Roommates
You can as well decide to find roommates. It is veryu current in China and very easy to find. This will be less expensive if you are looking for a reasonable rent.
You ll see that if you are looking for roommates, this can be really quick. You ll find dozens of classifieds ans will be able to have a room in less than one week, I swear it.
Then again, you can rent a large apartment with several roommates, and find it via a relocation agency, but hearsay from friends or classifieds can be a good solution. Again, you’ll find these classifieds on the Beijinger and City Week End. You’ll have a large choice, see apartments via an agency, with or without the landlord. You can chose the area, the rent, the size…
If you have a VPN web accesses, you’ll discover ads and groups dedicated to Beijing, sometimes with good opportunities to find roommates.
You’ll have some advetures, but most of the time, the apartmenr will fit with the description, you’ll hace deceiptions with people saying this is OK and change their opinion, not exactly at the same location, you’ll see waiting lists, apartments very far from the subway station
What are your thoughts and experience about finding an apartment in Beijing ?
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