Apartment Hunting

We stayed in a hotel the first night. The next morning, we woke up early and got a quick start to the apartment hunting. We met with Angel, a girl I had talked with online who helped connect me to the kindergarten I'm currently at. She had a couple places she said was nice and wanted to show us. So we were on our way.

Well, this was a huge disappointment. The apartments were all small and most barely had a bathroom.

Before I continue, let me explain how this works in China because it's different from America. When someone wants to rent or sell a house in China, they hire a real estate agent, normal. However, they don't have something like MLS or fMLS where when an agent gets a house, he lists it on this so other agents can view the house and see if it's right for their client who's looking for a house. This way, no matter who is selling the house, everyone can see it and decide if they want to rent it or buy it.

That's not the case here. Here, you can only view houses that the company has obtained. So we could tell them a building and they can only show us the apartments that are listed with them. There might be 30 available units but they only have one, so we don't get to see or know anything about the others, not efficient and very, very frustrating. Anyways...

Over the next couple of days, we viewed many apartments with at least five different real estate companies, nothing. One we went to was a loft style where there were stairs leading up to the open bedroom. The funny part of this was that the ceiling was so low that I couldn't stand up. The agent said it was made for Chinese people, not foreigners.

We had decided on one the first day but just a couple hours after we had seen it, someone else signed a contract before us. Then, we had decided on another one and when we went to sign the contracts with the agent and the owner, the owner said she had to wait until the next day because there was someone currently living in it and she had to make sure they could be out the next day so we didn't sign contracts and we went back to the hotel. That night we got a call from the agent saying the owner backed out. So we were again, homeless.

This is when I decided I would find what I could online, in English. We came across three listings that looked promising. We went to the first apartment but it wasn't any good. The agent had a couple others to show us and we liked the last one he showed us; it wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. We went to the 2nd agent and he had nothing we liked. We made our way, tired, to the 3rd and final agent and his first place was not good at all. He told us he had a couple others to show us near the subway that were in a new building and well in our price range. We didn't get excited though because we had been let down so many times already.

We made our way to the building and it was great. It's a brand new building. They're going to finish floors 2-10 by the end of February. The building has an indoor pool and a gym on the 9th floor, which is very nice. The apartment's a big 1 bedroom in China but small for American standards. The best part in my opinion is the comfortable couch and the flat screen, high-def tv that came with the apartment. Needless to say, it's a more than suitable apartment and we're in the process of making it a temporary home.

I'll post pictures very soon.