It took 12 days of seeing numerous apartments in various states of disrepair, fielding 100 phone calls per day from people I couldn't understand and walking all around northwest Beijing in pursuit of a decent place to live.
Why all the phone calls? I decided to give out my phone number to any and every agent on the west side of Beijing, in addition to text messaging random agents and landlords based on classified ads on the web. It's safe to say that I learned a lot and am pretty jaded about the whole process.
1. If there's an internet posting about an apartment and its an agent, every agency in town probably has the keys to the place and is shopping it around. Proof: I saw an apartment 4 different times with 4 different agents. The place sucked.
Aside: If said place has been on market for more than a week (apartments get re-posted every few days) it's probably a dump. Don't waste your time. Good places don't stay on the market for long.
2. Anytime an agent says that the place is well maintained or good in any way, the place is either way out of your price range (agents don't seem to understand price limits when it comes to foreigners), or it's literally the landlord or previous tenant's landfill. To be more specific, I've seen garbage strewn about in the living room, bathroom and kitchen tiles missing or held together with duct tape and old beer bottles collecting dust in the bedroom.
3. Know the right questions to ask agents when they call you. How big is the place? Where is it? What's the rent? If you don't, the agent will take you on a wild goose chase to places far away that don't come close to fitting your criteria and then when told that you won't rent, ask with a dog eyed face, "What's wrong with it?"
4. Agents are scum. Even the Chinese hate them. Avoid them at all costs if you can (not an easy thing to do).
5. Some Chinese don't like renting out to foreigners. Every agent that called asked me the same questions (as expected), What's the location/number of bedrooms/price you desire, which would always be followed by, "Are you Chinese or foreign?"
Aside: Listening to my Chinese, its obvious I'm foreign. Race as always, plays a big deal. The Chinese are notoriously racist (then again who isn't? I know Indians are, that's like 40% of the world's population right there). I was getting so sick of random agents calling that I even told one agent I was from Africa. She paused, said she'd find a place and then get back to me. She never did. (Note: If you have too many pesky agents bugging you, and this sounds horrible but I'll say it, tell them you're from Africa. It will scare a bunch of them away and it will save you lots of grief).
6. If you're visiting an apartment and there are more than two agents from the same company there, run away faster than you would from a pack of angry bulls. As you walk in, the place will be in great disrepair. The landlord will look at you hopefully as a hound of agents will circle you like bloodthirsty sharks and begin firing questions at you. And when you decide (rightly) that the apartment is a dump or has deficiencies, they'll see their commission fees (you) walking away and they'll get pissed and all of the politeness and smiles will disappear in a flash.
But it ended well. My buddy, Zayd, and I found it in the same complex as our friends, Andrew and Ryan. The apartment's rent was significantly less than that of other places we had seen and even better, the previous tenants had maintained it very well.
Zayd's been going on a decorating kick (painting walls, buying furniture etc), so there's still some work to be done. It's going to be great though and I'll post up photos when I can.
