Challenges of House Renting as a Foreigner in Beijing

Call it fate, unfortunate coincidences, or a rite of passage, but most of us have heard or experienced a relocation “horror story” here in China. The unfortunate truth is that renting in China as a foreigner is not easy due to cultural, legal, and linguistic differences that can confuse even the most experienced world travelers.

If you are lucky enough to have friends who have already gone through the minefield of renting in Beijing, you are likely to get some tips. My advice? Heed them! When moving into my very first place, a friend recommended that I change the locks, as it was not unheard of for landlords and agents to show up at a property unannounced. I never got around to it, and sure enough, the landlord let himself into our apartment when my partner and I were both away. As if that weren’t enough of a shock, we were also promptly served with an eviction notice upon the expiry of our rent, which had been paid up three months in advance.

Thankfully, these kinds of “horror stories” are very few and far between, and rather than to scare you, we hope that by sharing them you’ll be able to identify similar situations and sidestep them completely.

Hit The Road, Jack!

Elizabeth Koch, a long term Beijing resident knows about snap evictions all too well. But unlike my partner and me who had a little over two months to find an apartment, she had just nine days to pack up and relocate.After signing a two-year lease on a new apartment, Koch naturally set about renovating and decorating her new home. A few months later, she got a call from her housing agent, asking to check her water boiler but little did she know it was a ruse to bring her landlord into her apartment without her knowledge. “Lo and behold, about six people come to the flat including the landlord, his wife, and a guy with a clipboard and electronic measuring device. I was at home with the three kids and my father who was visiting, I would have liked a heads-up on this army invading this small flat.” They checked everything but the water pipes, piquing Koch’s suspicions, which were soon confirmed when her property management revealed her landlord’s plan to move back into the house soon despite the Koch family only being eight months into a two-year lease.“I checked our contract and saw that they would only need to give us one months’ notice if they were to break the contract,” Koch recounts, after which she tried to impress the gravity of her family’s situation to the management. She and her family would be traveling to the US for two months over the summer and would need ample notice if the landlord indeed intended to break the contract. She wanted enough time to plan a move. “I was just so afraid they’d throw our stuff out after a months’ notice while we were all out of the country,” confesses Koch.Her fears were realized when, nine days before her planned family trip, her agent finally gave her the ol’ heave-ho. “We had nine days to move all our stuff and everything was ours, down to the fridge, washing machine, lights, and even toilet paper holders!” explains Koch. In those nine days she had to find a new apartment, book a moving company, attend all her kids’ school events, and pack up her entire life. Talk about cutting it close! “A good thing about China is that last minute things are okay and you can do things fast!”

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The Neighbor That Cried LaoWai!

And if unscrupulous agents don’t get you, then your neighbors just might. Just ask Lars R, a relative freshman in Beijing, whose altercation with a neighbor escalated to police involvement levels.Soon after moving into a new apartment, Lars and his partner received a note from management informing them that someone had complained about noise from their house. Cut to a few months later, when after receiving a new sideboard, he finally came face to face with the complainant – his downstairs neighbor, who had previously been affable enough to lend him his toolkit to put together the sideboard. But as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.“From that day onwards hell broke loose. Every two to three days he would knock on our door, usually with his wife and often with their little one to complain that we are too loud. Usually around 10.30pm, when we would either be sitting on the couch watching TV or on our way to bed,” recounts Lars. The disgruntled neighbor would never give details of said noise. What was even more confusing was the complaints about noise which would happen when both Lars and his partner were at work. Finally, things came to ahead.

“We were again sitting on our couch, at 10.30 pm when he knocks again and starts to complain. When I try to explain to him that it can’t be us, he stated that he thinks I don’t take him seriously and there will be consequences to follow,” Lars explains, adding that an hour later, the neighbor had returned with police in tow. Trying to find a solution, Lars went to the neighbor’s apartment to assess the alleged noise. “His wife started stomping in our apartment, to the extent that the neighbor from the neighboring building asked me if everything was alright,” says Lars. Thankfully, common sense prevailed in this story, with Lars ending up on the right side of the police. “He dragged the man’s wife out of our apartment telling her he didn’t believe that we could walk like this, even being laowai.”

It All Comes Crashing Down!

And sometimes, if it isn’t the neighbors knocking down your door, it’s the roof almost caving in on your head – quite literally – as Jacopo  Della Ragione, a long time Beijing resident recalls.

Della Ragione is one of the lucky few who has neither a horrible landlord nor nightmare neighbor story. It would appear he has been at the right places at the right time, or at the very least gotten out of the wrong places in the nick of time. After deciding to move to a bigger apartment, Della Ragione amicably parted ways with his landlord and said goodbye to his small, yet cozy apartment. “We did it right before the Spring Festival. Everything went smoothly, but the 5th day of the new lunar year our landlord called us: the apartment was falling apart!” recalls Della Ragione. Turns out, thanks to his former upstairs neighbor’s vigorous spring cleaning, the ceiling in his former apartment had fallen, along with the wall tiles in the kitchen and bathroom. The plaster had also come undone.After reading all of this, you might be thinking, “What now? Should I just give up and never think about living happily in Beijing?” Not so fast. It is very possible to have a happy renting experience in Beijing, provided that you keep your wits about you, and read up on your rights and obligations. To do so, flip to page 12-13 for expert advice on everything you need to know about legal contracts and renting in the city.

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Photos: Unsplash 

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