Looking Like MeiLong Cheng

Today's weather: High = 17 Low = 10
Rain

The area where I've been doing some house hunting is actually a large complex, large enough to get its own name: MeiLong City. Last post mentioned all the details about it, and today was another test-commute from work on a motorbike to see how long it would take to get there after a typical school day. 15 minutes. Not bad!

Mind you this was during the lunch hour with sparse traffic. I suppose in rush hour it would take longer, so I'll revise it to 20-25 minutes each way. The distance is exactly 10km from work so this is doable. The subway is also a convenient rainy-day option, as the apartment complex is right beside the Lian Hua Rd subway station for Line #1. Eventually will do a test-commute on that during rush hour to experience the worst case scenario.

For now I'm in a holding pattern until late next month, when I'll then do more detailed house searching and sign a lease for June.

Thank goodness for doing June --- June house leases, as opposed to going from September -- September. I highly suggest any new teacher reading this blog to line up an apartment rental in China before the summer, as opposed to after summer. It would mean actually going to your place of employment first and looking for apartments ahead of time on your own, but the rewards of doing so are worth it. If you don't do this, then the school will set you up on campus (depending on the employer) automatically, or you would start looking in September once the year started and you got settled in. This would mean complications in moving off the campus housing (if your employer does this way) and time spent moving during the busiest part of the year.

Chinese landlords are sticklers for the 12-month rental agreement and it is very difficult to negotiate other terms. I have heard of many stories where a teacher rented in October, and wanted to move out in June because he found a better place and/or a better job for next year. But the landlord says sorry, you signed a 12 month contract and you forfeit your 2-months deposit by leaving early. It's all there written in the contract, plainly spelled out in Chinese characters.

The reason they do it this way is because they are very reluctant to have an apartment go empty for any length of time, when they could instead be making money off the rent by lining up new tenants to move in right away. For this reason, landlords also want their tenants to give them *at least two months notice* if they are not planning to renew the contract, so they can start lining up the next tenant with a minimum of lag time once the 12-month contract has finished.

So if the teacher jumps ship after June and doesn't give notice to the landlord, then the landlord deems it fair to forfeit the deposit because this is how much time it would take (the 2 months) to find someone else while the house remains empty.

In effect, by jumping in June and forfeiting the deposit, the teacher is paying for the summer when he is not there.

Unfortunately I've learned all of this stuff the hard way, by making many mistakes along the way in various cities and districts all over China. Once you've figured the system out, it makes sense, you just have to see it from the landlord's point of view. The housing price to rental return ratio in China is very unbalanced, meaning that the rent does not compensate the landlords very much. Even in my case, I'm bitching over an increase to 6000 RMB a month, but the price of the house is surely 4 - 5 million RMB by now, at an estimated price of 30,000 to 35,000 RMB per square meter. If my landlord was smart, she bought earlier, and could make a windfall by selling. But the fact remains, she's not making much off the rent in percentage terms.

This is exactly the reason why I'm gonna go traipsing on down to Meilong Cheng around May 15 and say, "I want to rent a place within a few weeks, can you find me a unit that will be vacant by the time the housing contract of a current tenant ends, and then slot me in right away so that the lanlord doesn't have to keep the place empty." This would lead into some favor with the landlord, and potential for negotiations.

The downside of the June - June method is that you still need to pay for summer rent when it's not being used, as you would similarly from Sept - Sept, or due to a forfeited deposit (see above). However, if the landlord is favorable, you can negotiate a cheaper rent by doing it this way. That's what I did in Wuhan and got a smokin' deal, would have even extended it another year as they liked me -- but it turns out I moved to Shanghai obviously, so ended the lease in June on very good terms. Another key reason to go from June -- June for changing jobs.

Another friend even managed to pull off a free months worth of rent, but the key was she signed the lease first in June! They made an agreement over that from the start. Chances are the landlord would be less favorable to negotiating deals for the summer if the lease started in Sept, unless the teacher was coming back for next year and renting again. But then, nobody knows if they are coming back next year or not until April, and so that's why everyone plays this one year at a time.