New House Rental Starting June

Today's weather: High = 30 Low = 21
Sunny

One has to wonder how and why we have had such near-perfect weather conditions all spring. Comfortable temperatures, and not a drop of rain since March. This is a totally unusual weather pattern --- but abnormal is the new normal when it comes to weather these days. I'm just wondering when the penny is gonna drop and we'll see a deluge of rain in June with the supposed opening of the monsoon. But any rate, things have just been fabulous to date.

A lot of positive things have been accomplished in recent months, thus ending a flurry of activity. To cap off the list, I'm now scheduled to move into a new apartment in the 'Mei Long' area of Shanghai, which is the midburbs as mentioned in previous posts.

After thinking long and hard about it, I'm no longer bothering to rent large and spacious two-bedroom kings palace type apartments for a single guy. I really don't need all that space, and these kind of houses eat up the rent. The few times I've had guests over this year, they haven't been very appreciative and I'm thinking it's not worth it.

Instead, following the advice of the agent I'm dealing with, I decided to go for the smaller 1-bedroom apartment, 76 square meters, and it's only gonna cost 3600 RMB a month. It is still a very nice place, and I'll comment more in future posts about it (with pictures).

This all compares favorably with the current 130 square meter place that will soon be costing 6500 RMB a month with the rental increase. Combined with the fact that the school is increasing housing allowances to 5000 RMB a month, I'm expecting to make a nice *profit* on my upcoming house rental for a change. That will certainly be a first.

I did all the negotiating and contract signing in Chinese and the whole thing was a positive experience. Even though the initial asking rent for the house was aleady a good deal at 3900 RMB, I still insisted on haggling for the price out of tradition and out of good fun. That is to say, it's what the locals do, and the experience would seem incomplete without negotiations.

There is a downside and that the place is far from work by local standards. I'm OK with the 10km run, but the distance is more psychological than anything else when it comes to locals. Invariably, they will all say it's too far. If we take an objective view, it's 15-25 minutes on a bike, or 35-45 minutes on the subway. Compare that with 5-10 minutes on the bike or 25-30 minutes on the subway right now.

There is also an agency fee involved --- which is what I was expecting anyway, so no big deal. But what *does* make me angry is that an agency fee was involved in my current house rental, even though I never dealt with an agent!! Basically, the secretary at our school did the renting on our behalf. She must have, in fact, dealt with an agent and rented the place in her name. There were no receipts or anything to prove what took place, but she claimed that every month, there was a need do deduct 300 RMB for a 'receipt fee' every month.

The only explanation I can come up with is that there must have been a total of 3000 RMB agency fee which my secretary then amortized over the 10-month allowance periods. Calculating the agency fee tells me it is even more of a proportion of the rent than that from the new house rental --- which has followed procedures by the book.

I'm basically going to fight for reimbursement of all these fees up until now on my current house. This is simply because nothing was told up front about the fact that an agent was involved. I felt it was a very sneaky and dishonest move for her to pull this off, not just wiht me, but the other teachers also.

At the same time, it was my own fault for being so stupid last year in that I failed to catch onto this trick earlier. In other words, it should have raised eyebrows that a local was renting a house on my behalf without so much as a contract or a receipt of any fees paid.

The only thing is, I have to proceed diplomatically, and find a face-saving way to approach my secretary for compensation. While I could walk in there guns blazing with my new paperwork to prove how things should be done, this might cause a loss of face on several fronts and I may not get my money back. Worse yet, the school would see that I'm only paying 3600 RMB a month for the new place, and they may not decide to offer the full compensation as specified in contract. Yes, the contract says (for next year) they pay 5000 RMB per month regardless, but we know this is China and we know that face trumps contracts every time.

So for that matter, I'm going to be diplomatic.

Unfortunatley, things are just too complex to figure out for a new teacher in the first year, even if they were already in China and switched cities. It's all different from one place to the next. And we haven't even started with the language barrier. Combined with all this, schools take advantage and offer house rental situations that are almost always a rip-off or have some serious flaws --- such as on-campus accomodation that Wuhan offers.

It just takes a lont time to figure things out. I suppose, like all things in Asia, the rip-offs are considered as start-up costs. Once you learn the ropes, the costs always go down. I would only hope that new teachers can be reading these blogs.

No matter what the school in China is or what city, my goal is to help new teachers get the best possible deal on housing for their jobs, and to lay out the information straight.