Length disclaimer: This is going to be long... Give yourself time

The silence is finally broken. For the past 3 weeks I've been twittering several times a day but not a single blog post or photos. If you've been following the "twits" you know that we found the "perfect" place that was incredibly convenient but a bit expensive. You'll also know that the perfect place turned into a ugly nightmare very quickly.

Well this is the full story. Sit back and relax.

Three weeks ago it began. We started slowly by only seeing one or two apartments a day and worked up to a searching frenzy by looking at 5 to 10 apartments a day. There is good reason for our massive searching.

Beijing is a very, very modern city and most of the apartments in Beijing are more modern than those in the U.S. It also a large city of roughly 15 million (yes Million) people with a housing market to match. In this respect it is very similar to the housing market in NYC. A ton of apartments are on the market in a massive range of sizes, types, amenities, and locations. Of course the prices vary widely too.

But, just like in NYC, location matters. We are attending classes in the 五道口 (Wu dao kou) area of Beijing (just outside the Northwest area of the 4th ring). This area is home to what seems like every University in Beijing. I know of 5 Universities within walking distance of each other and, I've been told, that you could hop between 15 Universities with short bus rides. I say all of this to give you an idea of what the area looks like. Students everywhere. Foreigners everywhere. Restaurants, bars, clubs, movie theaters, etc. etc. Its all here and catering to the 20-30 year old crowd. Now I'm pushing the upper limits of that crowd but I still like being in an "active" neighborhood (I'm not old yet!).

We decided that 五道口 is where we want to live. Wonderfully, a twittering friend let us know that 五道口 was both expensive and inexpensive at the same time. We didn't quite understand what this meant until we started searching. This is what it means.

Its cheap: Yes 五道口 can be really cheap. A room can be had for as little as 800-1,200 RMB/mnth, studio apartments as little as 1,500, one bedrooms easily at 2,000 RMB, two bedrooms at 2,500 RMB. In US dollars (currently at 7.40RMB/1USD but this will drop SOON) this is $108, $200, $270, $330 respectively. Its cheap because most of the places in 五道口 are older places built between 50s & 90s. The furniture is going to be older, the appliances older, refrigerators will be outside on the patio if not the entire kitchen (no indoor ventilation). They will ALL have a massive amount of room though. The biggest thing, for us, is that they will have older bathrooms.
Forget about having an enclosed shower. Most "showers" are simply a showerhead attached to a hose and hung on the wall of the bathroom. When you shower the ENTIRE bathroom gets wet. Hey if you're young, want to live cheaply or don't spend a lot of time in the bathroom then its probably fine.

I'm not. I'm old(er). I primp. Yes I admitted it. I primp. I take decent length showers (i.e. long). I like to shave in a steamy bathroom room with my bare feet on a DRY rug in front of the sink. Yes...I'll admit it...I'm western.

Now, now. Don't go saying "but you're in China, not in Western country. Adapt!". Read on.

Its expensive: Modern buildings (>95) almost always have "Western" bathrooms or at the very least bigger bathrooms so that the shower "area" gets wet and not the entire bathroom. Buildings built >2000 generally have decent modern bathrooms. In Beijing these places are generally between 2,500 to 3,500 RMB for a one bedroom. In 五道口, however, you have the NYC effect. There is ONE, only ONE modern building complex that sits next to the subway station. Scarcity breeds high rents. If you want to be conveniently next to the subway and have a nice modern apartment you have to pay up. Average rents are 4,000-5,000 RMB for a one bedroom and 4,500 to 6,000 for a two bedroom.

We looked at many, many inexpensive apartments and really thought about if we could live in one of these apartments. After a while we decided that we're older now. We want to be comfortable in our house and we're judging comfort on a modern standard. Bathrooms must have a separated shower and the kitchen needs to be in the house.

These types of places exist all over Beijing just not close to the subway in the 五道口 area. So now we were looking for the needle in the haystack. A nice modern apartment within walking distance to the subway. As in NYC we spoke to every agent that would speak to us. At one point we had an agent, after showing us several apartments, tell us that our requirements were just too much and gave up on us (of course they called us the next day). The apartment was out there it was just going to take a while.

Bring in the web. We're in China so all the "Craigslists" don't really exist here and if they do they are (a) all in Chinese and (b) full of scams. We've tried them (We both can read enough Chinese to figure things out) its just not the way its done here. I did, however, find something on http://www.thebeijinger.com. The ad made it sound like it was the "perfect place"

This the ad.
"A 2BR apartment locates in HuaQingJiaYuan. A great and convenient place to live in Wudaokou area. There’s a swimming pool and GYM inside the complex area, a supermarket right across the building, stores and restaurants around the apartment complex. 5 minutes walking distance to Wudaokou subway station. Close walking distance to several famous universities and language institute such as BLCU, Tsinghua University and Peking University. The apartment is on the 18th floor with a good view and also has 2 bedrooms, 24 hour hot water, high speed internet, TV, washing machine, refrigerator, a well equipped kitchen, a washroom, couch and other necessarily furniture. Satisfaction Guaranteed ^o^ ~~ The rent is only RMB4000 per month and one year contract is needed. NO Agency fee required as I’m only helping a friend to find a new tenant. You can reach me anytime in either way convenient to you, call or text messages at --------- for English and Chinese speaking and ------- for Korean and Chinese speaking. Hope to hear from you soon ^o^ "

OK so the ad sounded great. HuaQingJiaYuan is the modern building I was referring to earlier. Its right next to the subway line. The advertisement didn't lie. It is a superb location.

So we called and made an appointment to see it. Now the fun begins...

The apartment was truly on the TOP (18th) floor of a building on the outer edges of the complex. The two bedroom were of a decent size, the kitchen big and nice and the architecture, as well as decor, was modern. The master bedroom had a decent sized window to enjoy the view and a sliding glass door to access the *gasp* sunroom patio!! I LOVE views. Windows all around to enjoy the unobstructured view of the outer edges of Beijing. Its was pretty awesome.

Although I should have suspected something was wrong because diagonally across from our building was the brand-new science park of Beijing that houses Google, Sun Microsystems and......Microsoft.

Yes I was in love with an apartment that was within walking distance of Microsoft and one where the giant neon sign saying "Microsoft" was visible from my would-be bedroom.

Right then I should've known that something was up.

The apartment was everything we wanted though. Top floor, modern, two bedrooms and insanely convenient. Our school; across the street. Supermarket; across the street. Restaurants, about 50, on and across the street. Movie theater; one block. Subway; half block. Taxis; out the door. Buses; half block. Bike lanes; all around. Everything! It was all right there.

Trouble in paradise.

The apartment was currently being rented by two Korean students that were six months into a one year lease. The story goes that they had to get back to Korea by the 20th for some reason. The landlord was willing to let them out of their lease if they found replacement tenants. The advertisement was posted by a bilingual English/Chinese friend of theirs. We did the same thing in NYC so this waasn't much of a surprise.

First surprise: The bathroom.

The bathroom was absolutely disgusting. It was a standard shower nozzle on the wall, get-the-whole-bathroom wet type. Sadly the entire bathroom had gotten wet and was NEVER cleaned. Mildew was on every tile, in every crevice and on every surface. Honestly it was amazing to see considering that the two girls whom lived there were pretty, well dressed, clean, and well kempt.
The smell coming out of the bathroom was something horrible. Actually it was worse than horrible it was nauseatingly atrocious. I looked around it and made a quick decision that it wasn't anything that couldn't be cleaned. Some elbow grease, cleaner and a good day's work. It'd be good as new.

 

The next day we got a call. The
landlord was raising the rent from $4,000 to $4,500. This was a sudden bait and switch move. The rent raise was a blow but not out of line with market rents; $4,000 was a bargain but $4,500 was still decent.

 

We continued looking at apartments and although we found better apartments at cheaper rents nothing was as convenient as that place so we decided to up the anty and apply some NYC tactics. The girl's lease wasn't up until the 20th and it was the 1st. We offered to share the house with them from the 1st to the 20th and in return we'd pay the entire rent. So they would live rent free. They could have the Master bedroom and we'd take the smaller guest room.

This tactic was two fold for us. It ensured we'd have the house (free rent is tempting, its like key money). The sudden rental increase hit a sketch factor of 1 for us and some other actions raised the sketch factor up a bit more. So we wanted to make sure things were legit and living with them is a pretty sure way.

After a day of thinking about it they decided that they would do it. I said great lets start the rental process and bring the landlord into it.

The day was Saturday.

On Sunday I received a call that we could meet with the landlord on Monday evening. It seemed like things were set.

Monday. We decided to do one last check of the neighborhood to make sure we we're making the right decision. The rent was high for Beijing but the convenience was extremely hard to pass up. Again we found better places at lower rents but nothing with as much convenience.

That afternoon we got a call that raised the sketch meter to high. The girls had suddenly decided to move out completely. If we signed the contract on Monday we could move in on Tuesday. hhhmm... why would they suddenly move out? They said they were in classes until the 20th. Seems odd.

The sketch meter hit an all-time high and we need some help now. My Chinese is horrible. Diana's is better but we're entering legal things, its big. A good friend, whom has since become a really-really good friend, Ben came to our aid. That night we went out to hot pot and talked about what we could do. We were meeting the landlord at 8:30pm it was 6pm.

At dinner we decided that we had to verify that the landlord was actually the landlord. A really common scam in China is to have someone pretend to be the landlord, have you sign a "contract", pay the deposit + rent and then they take off. At this point we hadn't met the landlord and the girls we're moving out rather suddenly. Sketchy.

At 8:30 we walked over the apartment and upon entering the apartment the sketch meter went up again. The girls had definitely moved out in a hurry. None of their stuff was left in the apartment but it was a mess with papers and various knick-knacks. The bed were stripped clean, shelves emptied, refrigerator empty.....

sketchy.....

At that point we immediately decided against signing any sort of contract and we had to verify that the landlord was indeed the owner. We asked her for the deed to her apartment and/or her tax statements. She couldn't produce either. Although it was claimed that its because we sprang it on her at the last minute. This is true (we did it on purpose). She, apparently not offended by us asking for some legal documentation, offered to go down to the management office to verify ownership. This seemed reasonable to me so at 9 o'clock at night we marched down to the management office (this is large skyscraper complex with 100+ apartment each with individual owners).

The office was closed.

No matter. She marched over to the security office (24 hours) so that they could match her ID card to the register sheet. It took a while but they did verify her ID card as belonging to the complex AND to that apartment but they couldn't verify ownership. Sketch factor + 1.

But our wonderful interpreter, Ben, heard the entire conversation between the officers and her and had reasonable assurance that she did indeed own the place.

So we worked out a deal. We wouldn't sign the contract until ownership could be verified. As we would need to register with the local police department anyhow (all foreigners have to register with the police within 24 hours) we made a plan to sign the contract on Wednesday.

The landlord, obviously, wanted a contract signed now and we didn't want to sign. If the contract wasn't signed she said she wouldn't hold the place and would rent it to the next person inline.

Our sketch factor was pretty high BUT we allowed our brains to be clouded by the fact that it was (a) on the 18th floor (b) awesome view (c) lots of room (d) the ONLY convenient building with our picky criteria.

We worked out paying 1 month rent to the landlord as a "good faith" payment. 4,500RMB

Before giving her the cash, however, we started to point out various things that were wrong in the apartment. The items were minor but there were quite a few of them. To start about 10 or 15 light bulbs were burnt out. The bathroom needed to be cleaned, mailbox door was broken, shoe rack door was broken, a mirror was broken, dirty kitchen, etc. etc. Little things that are quickly fixed.

The rent, however, is high for Beijing so these things should be fixed.

We pointed them out and she seemed to understand and said that she would buy some light bulbs and do some other things. An agreement was reached. We handed over $4,500 RMB and she gave us a receipt and the keys.

Now I'm not joking but within about 45 seconds the two girls walked out the front door with bags in hand. I thought they were just going out to take out the trash or something like that but they actually left.

bad sign.

Within about 10 minutes we all left the apartment and went home to our respective dwellings. Although things were "sketchy". Our, wonderful, translator had a good feeling and thought the landlord was good. We really wanted the place so we decided to overrule our "sketch-dars".

Tuesday morning we packed and moved over to our new apartment. We immediately starting making a list of everything that was wrong with the apartment so that we could put it in the contract to be fixed. After about an hour I think we discovered one of the real reasons why the Korean girls left the apartment. A can of bug spray and bait traps everywhere. The bathroom reeked, even more than before, and the apartment walls were filthy. Again nothing that couldn't be fixed with a little elbow grease. But there was one more MAJOR problem with the apartment.

The dirty bathroom was the most likely cause of a big hole that had been somewhat disguised from us before we moved in. The bottom of the wall outside of the bathroom door was disintegrating. The kind of disintegration that only comes from a moldy/mildewy core. Most likely the uncleaned bathroom had begun seeping behind the tiles and into the wall. Parts of it were soft and hollow while other parts just flaked right off. We invited a relative over to survey the damage and they confirmed that the hole was going to get worse and it needed to be fixed.

At this point we have a dirty apartment, filthy walls, a bathroom that reeks and a hole in the wall. BUT we're on the 18th floor with a view of the mountains surrounding Beijing and a pretty cool patio surrounded by windows. Its cool...

Maybe we can work something out?

The last straw came in a search through the house. We came across an old bag of receipts that apparently belonged to a former tenant back in 2005. In addition to a lot of interesting receipts which painted a pretty good picture of his/her life we also found a copy of their lease. Actually their were TWO leases. The first lease was for one year from late-June to Sept of 2005 at a price of $3,000/mth. The second lease was for the same person, for the same apartment, but it started in Sept of 2005 extending for one year at a price of $3,700/mth. According to the papers rent went up DURING an existing lease.

Sketch factor really high now. It reached super majority and vetoed the good view, ample room and excellent location. You could say that the sketch factor is of Olympic proportions.

We are staying in Beijing for a full year for one reason. The Olympics. The Olympics are coming in August and by July rents in Beijing will be so high that we won't be able to afford to live here. Thus we're renting for the full year so that the landlord gets a good tenant and we have a place to stay during the Olympics. If this landlord raised the rent in the middle of a lease for one tenant what would stop it from happening again?

The feeling of being "took" sinks in.

We asked the relative that helped inspect the house for us to contact the landlord and see what she'll do about the problems in the house. We didn't tell him about the contracts we found.

The old rental price was $4,000. The new rental price was $4,500. She was making an additional $6,000 a year. We came up with a few different price scenarios and presented them to her.

We'll pay $4,500/month if the house is cleaned and a list of about 10 things is fixed. If she doesn't want to do anything then we'll pay $4,000/month and do the work ourselves. We also had various other items along that spectrum. Honestly I think it was fair.

She was contacted. We waited.

Relative calls back. She wants $4,500/mth and she's not doing anything.

Our response. OK we don't sign the contract then.

Relative calls back. She said OK no contract signed then I'll return you the rent you paid minus two days rent.

Our response. OK sounds good.

3 hours pass....

Relative calls. Landlord says "legally I don't have to give back anything. I want them out by morning and I'm keeping everything".

This was 11pm on Tuesday.

Now we made a mistake when we handed over cash without a proper contract in place but we covered ourself by not handing over the full amount (4 months rents). Additionally we have keys to the apartment and the landlord also doesn't have a contract. The stage has been set for a battle of politics, legality and the all important "face".

Wednesday morning we woke up and began strategizing. We were going to lose something in this but how much?

Ben our wonderful friend and translator called. The landlord called him and wanted to setup an appointment. Initially it was 2pm but we pushed it back to 7:30pm.

The internet poster called. "They are problems with the apartment, the landlord wants us to meet"

A flurry of phone calls back n' forth. The landlord started to make some concessions on the apartment but still refused to fix the disintegrating wall. Our response was staunch $4,500 if the place is immaculate or bring down the price. The landlord refused to bring down the price.

Calls stopped. The time was determined, the characters selected and the stage was set.

The showdown: Wednesday night at 7:30
Characters: Landlord, landlord's husband, Diana, I, Ben, the relative, The internet poster, Korean girl A, Korean girl B and Korean girl's friend whom is in law school. 10 people.

The battle: $4,500 to be returned to us

The twist: The girls moved out, paid for and signed into a new housing contract at a new place. Because we didn't sign into the contract the girls can't sign out of their's thus they are responsible for both places. The girls are blaming us for their financial loss.

Now I admitted that we did operate in good faith and that we did want to rent the place. I also noted very strongly that we did not force the girls to leave. In fact we offered to pay the rent on THEIR contract until the 20th in exchange for living in one of the two rooms. Without consulting us they decided to go ahead and move out completely BEFORE we moved in.

I can understand their argument. However, they made the decision to get a new contract before they were signed out of their current contract. This wasn't smart on their part. I'm sorry it may sound mean but its not smart.

The landlord was actually quite nice and pulled a mom tactic. She agreed to refund the entire 4,500 dollar amount IF we could reach an agreement with the two girls on an amount to pay them b/c of their decision to sign into a new contract. Legally we didn't have to pay them anything as they shouldn't have signed a new contract. Especially since we offered to pay their rent in exchanging for being roommates for only 2 weeks. If they wouldn't feel comfortable rooming with us they should have refused the request and stayed in the place.

The landlord was obviously a mom and thought that some compensation should be given b/c they did act upon the presumption of us signing into the lease. I would agree, however I don't agree the number would be very high. They wanted us to pay half. This was way too high for me.

It took about an hour of negotiating and in the end I had to stand up and say very bluntly that if we don't finish this within 5 minutes we're walking out with the keys to the place and you'll have to call the place and take us to court. I was stearn and I was pissed off especially because I was trying to be nice.

Their initial offer:
Pay us 2,250 RMB. My response I'll give you 750.
Their response..... was too slow but...
They finally responded with pay us 1,300.
Actually they wanted 1,320 but I took the 20 off but that's just nit picky.
I agreed just to end things.

So we stayed in the apartment for one night and it ended up costing:
300 RMB to the owner for her "pain and suffering" (and it avoided the loss of "face"; which is highly important)
1,300 to the girls because they rented a place on the presumption that we'd sign into a lease thus releasing them from theirs (I don't fully agree but I also know what its like to be young and broke).

One night in the place cost us 1,600 RMB.

Money, key and receipts were exchanged and everyone left happy. I even received a text message from the Internet poster apologizing for the entire incident.

I believe that most of this was simply due to communication breakdowns. Communicating through translators doesn't get the full message across and emotions can run high really fast. A lot of the "sketch" factor could have easily been coincidence and/or cultural differences on how business is handled. The landlord seemed like a good person that will, most likely, work to fix the problems. The girls learned a good/hard lesson on contracts. We also learned a lesson on contracts.

No contract + No full agreements = No cash

Diana found a nearby hostel with private rooms and rented one for the week. Its decent, albeit small, but only 180RMB/night. Tomorrow we continue our search and, this time, we're taking our time.