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Q: Do you ever negotiate on your rental contract?
Do you just find a place and ask the price and pay the deposits or is there room to negotiate? I always have before. We need to move into a much larger place to accomodate the kid and all my family that is coming plus her family i guess. Anyways we found a place for 5500 with furniture or 4500 without. If we include what we have, i did some quick math and figured if i could furnish the rest for under 12K then we would save cash over the year and really save next year. Plus if we could negotiate the unfurnished rent down a bit all the better. Since the 2 months deposit is to protect us from leaving and protecting their stuff, i felt that 9K deposit was unreasonable as the only stuff to destroy is mine. I felt that one month was reasonable. Anyways we evantually came to an agreement for 4300 and one month. The wifes family has all kinds of contacts for furntiure as its their business. So we get to pick good stuff and save about 10K+ this year and lots more from here on out seems good to me. Anyways as we were nogotiating the agent and owner kept saying one thing over and over." But this is standard!" 2 months is standard! Is it? Were we being unreasonable? Or is it the norm to Negotiate? What are you experiences?
Why are you renting apartments still? Don't you ride around in a BMW or something? Did you do what all Chinese do, and put your money into the more visual parts of life (clothes, phone, cars) and none into the more private part (ie, home)? I prefer the Western style myself, our home is furnished with real furniture and super cozy even though we have to "put up" with that Buick Regal which I like a lot.
mike695ca:
Move around for work alot. Might buy a place but never in Shenzhen. I dont care how rich you are. 3 million for one of these dumps is scary! And im in a farmer town of Shenzhen. Shunde is always appealing but who knows if ill ever be able to live there again. P.S. its an Audi
mike695ca:
answers.echinacities.com/question/living-guangdong-completely-different-experience-rest-china?&showid=269337#answer269337 Besides it says here you dont "put up" with any car. YOur wife does. So theres that I guess.
mike695ca:
pretty much the exact same price. Depending on the model.
jetfire9000:
Oh dont get me wrong, im just surprised youre renting. But i guess its alright if youre in a crap town. But thats also where the job is , where else can you go?
Why are you renting apartments still? Don't you ride around in a BMW or something? Did you do what all Chinese do, and put your money into the more visual parts of life (clothes, phone, cars) and none into the more private part (ie, home)? I prefer the Western style myself, our home is furnished with real furniture and super cozy even though we have to "put up" with that Buick Regal which I like a lot.
mike695ca:
Move around for work alot. Might buy a place but never in Shenzhen. I dont care how rich you are. 3 million for one of these dumps is scary! And im in a farmer town of Shenzhen. Shunde is always appealing but who knows if ill ever be able to live there again. P.S. its an Audi
mike695ca:
answers.echinacities.com/question/living-guangdong-completely-different-experience-rest-china?&showid=269337#answer269337 Besides it says here you dont "put up" with any car. YOur wife does. So theres that I guess.
mike695ca:
pretty much the exact same price. Depending on the model.
jetfire9000:
Oh dont get me wrong, im just surprised youre renting. But i guess its alright if youre in a crap town. But thats also where the job is , where else can you go?
I always get an apartment from the School I'm working for.
I must just negotiate furnishing in the free apartment, and neighbours noise.
I don't think, my school pays 5000 Rmb per month for my apartment. Chinese always get things cheaper than foreigners in China.
You can negotiate housing contracts, I've done it before. In one case I got a couple of hundreds knocked off the rent. Other people I know have negotiated the furniture in their apartments, so your weren't being unresonable.
Yeah totally you can negotiate. I always play the "I'm an expat so i'll live here by myself and take care of it" card. It's a good way to vet landlords too...cause if they go for that it means they're not a band of scumbag adults living off your rent instead of working. Those guys need every penny and will be grimy as hell with your deposit and just pick fights over dumb crap trying extort cash from you. Screw them.
Somebody who can see that it's worth 6000 RMB over a year not to have to replace everything because a swarm was living there is the kinda landlord you want.
Granted you have a family so chinese or not that'll be a tough sell my friend!
What you gotta think about with the furniture is whether long term you want to be locked into getting unfurnished places. OR be willing to throw it away. I've seen it happen with a couple I'm friends with. They bought a bunch of furniture for an unfurnished place...and then the next year had to move and started making stupid decisions to protect the furniture. You know...like it was cost effective to just junk a lot of it and then get a furnished place the next year but they couldn't take a good deal because they didn't wanna throw their couch away. I personally think that's fudging stupid. Couch doesn't have feelings.
Just something you gotta think about. It's nice to buy stuff and get exactly what you want, but unless you know you (and your wife more importantly) wont get sentimental about protecting your "investment" in a bunch of crap from ikea.
mike695ca:
I see your point. I think we will be fine though. We have always chosen to live in new complexes when we have moved. Never stuck in a certain area. We are as mobile as we wanna be. So im confident itll work out. If we have to junk it. So he it. Like I said it saves money within the first year if we furnish it ourselves. So whatever. Im tired of nice apartments where the owners spend zero dollars on the decorations. So its worth it.
expatlife26:
Yeah yeah i'm not trying to talk you out of it or anything can totally be worthwhile especially cause you'll probably buy yourself way better stuff than the landlord would buy for you.
Just warning you if you or your wife got that kinda pack rat mentality when it comes to household stuff it can immobilize you.
Amazing how places here just age in dog years you know? Back home 10 yrs old i still would think of as a new building. Here 10 yrs means probably already expired. I feel like most buildings here are only gonna be mostly owner occupied for like 5 yrs tops. Then everybody normal moves out and swarms start moving in. Making even more people move on.
Once the swarms move in and you got 8 people piling in an apartment nobody feels any ownership of it or the grounds so it's OK letting it just go to shit. I rent a place by myself, deed aside it's still my home and its still part of how I present myself so its gotta look nice. If i'm splitting it 8 ways no matter how nice it is theres no way I can like bring a girl back and have her be impressed haha or put up my parents for a few days. So why bother?
RandomGuy:
The problem when getting a furnished rental is the landlord might not have the same tastes as you, now this is subjective but some definitely have awful tastes.
Have you ever seen those apartments with a heart shaped pink sofa next to a heavy wooden "old style" wardrobe and some fake luxurious 50RMB chandelier hanging from the ceiling, you know what I'm talking about.
Everything is negotiable in China, even when buying and apartment, so there is no reason that it wouldn't when renting one.
My landlord asked for 3500 here in Foshan (yeah, that's Eorthisio), my girlfriend bargained it to 3200, 29th floor (out of 30), 220sqm, basic furniture (sofa, beds, wardrobes, tables and chairs, the rest is ours) in what is probably the most luxurious residence in the city (lot of greenery, ponds, 24h security, good European design, ...), located next to Qiandenghu lake in the heart of the new Financial Hi-Tech Zone that is due to become Zhujiang New Town 2.0 in a few years, luxurious malls, office skyscrapers, residential highrises popping up everywhere and shit. Anyway, great deal.
Now if I would buy in China, it would be here in Foshan, no way I will spend 3 millions on a concrete box in GZ or SZ when I can have a massive place for the same price here less than 20 min driving from GZ CBD.
There's no reason you shouldn't be able to negotiate, but yeah, the deposit is usually off limits (it's the "law", or whatever that word means), I haven't ever really tried but honestly if you pick your landlord right it should never be a problem.
I once tried to negotiate the agent fee and got it cut by 2 only to see the agency manager go apeshit on her 2 employees. In the end I still paid it in full and avoided them being fired I think... I already got a nice deal on the rent anyway.
On average until now I always could cut 500, sometimes less, rarely more. Then after a few months I start paying 2 or 3 months upfront so I can avoid dealing with that stuff. Never had the shadow of a problem with any of my landlords.
Anyway yeah, always got to keep on the move since most places become shit after the swarms invade. I'm never picking a community ever again. Actually my previous landlord asked me why I wouldn't consider buying. When I left his apartment 3 years after moving in, I told him "that's why".
Anyway, single building, no garden, no giant complex, and only higher class working people.
expatlife26:
Yeah avoiding swarms is something you need to have down pat if you're going to live well here.
But then that's our negotiating leverage as western expats...we don't swarm. I rent a 2 bedroom apartment, one bedroom is going to be the office/workout/guest room and the other is going to be for me and sometimes a girlfriend.
Housekeeper will come twice a week. The house will be returned in the same condition I accepted it in.
That's worth something to a landlord, I kinda think of a 500 rmb rent reduction as my interview for the landlord. Everyone I know that's had a bad housing experience has had a bummy landlord. You dont wanna be supporting 3 working age adult men who think they're too cool to work because their family was given a nice apartment.
Two months is standard? Never heard that before - most I was ever asked for is one month and that was always negotiated down.
mike695ca:
I think different areas have different ideas on this. In some areas its.common to pay rent every month. In other areas they pay 3 months at a time. Here in Guangdong I habe always paid 2. Its just that before it was all their furniture I could potentially destroy. Now its all my stuff, so i felt it was a bit much.
