Unforseen Negotiations
Apartment hunting in Beijing has been an intriguing experience.
For the last month, I’ve split my time between staying with friends who out of the goodness of their hearts can tolerate my presence in their homes. Being something of a prideful individual, this unadulterated exploiting of their generosity has been hard for me to swallow. So much that I’m now embracing my bum-bastic life.
…except that I’ve sorta signed a signed a contract promising to sign a contract for a lease.
Let me back up, two weeks ago the search began in earnest for a place to stay. The stipulations on this were it had to be close to my school and close to where my girlfriend intended to move. Since our lives basically revolve around each other — and spending time with each other — it makes a good deal of sense.
Emails and calls have been made in abundant quantities since. The first time we went to check out apartments, we were escorted by heavy-set Chinese lady.
Escorted on bikes.
We literally left her office on really crappy rusted bikes to get to the two locations she wanted to show us. Not having ridden a bike in about…oh 4+ years…it was a nice refresher course with the added bonus of being in heavy Beijing traffic.
Anyway, the Chinese apartment we saw was too dingy for the price. The Western style apartment was too sterile and too expensive for a studio.
Eventually we settled on a 23 year old real estate agent near the Lufthansa Center and have been pulling our hair out ever since. He’s a nice dude who has shown us some decent places, but the landlords have so far annoyed me to tears with their strong arm negotiation tactics.
Or worse, their SOB story sales tactics.
When I finally settled on a one bedroom (two bedroom technically, but the second bedroom is a joke) apartment, we showed up to do the paperwork only to find that a.) the price I asked for wasn’t accepted even though I told the real estate agent that was my top price and b.) most of the furniture had been removed.
The landlord had made a few overtures by giving us candy bars and fruit while “playfully” insulting the real estate agent for being too young and too stupid. We sat literally for two hours as they spoke about nothing while Faye looked uncomfortable and I wanted some much-deserved directness.
He wanted 3200RMB per month, I had made it clear my highest price was 3000RMB per month.
Naturally, he took my compromise of 3100RMB once he had spent 10 minutes rambling about something. The whole experience rubbed off on me wrong and seeing as I’m going to have to break my contract before the year is up, the thought of losing 6200RMB ($820) doesn’t help bolster the warm fuzzies I want to be feeling.
I’m scheduled to sign the formal contract and deposit 5 months of rent for 3 months of time on Friday. Ever since I’ve been scrambling to look at other options at the inkling of my gut. The alternatives haven’t seemed better yet.
Mostly I’ve decided that the intangible “blehness” that exists in my mind is mostly due to my own mindset of trying to get the best deal for the time I’ll be here while having the most options to have an efficient home office and occasionally entertain friends.
Really unrealistic expectations.
For now, I feel the need to get out of my friend’s hair by vacating his house and establishing my own place. The apartment, landlord issues aside (and they are issues), will be nice with a little work and more money.
We will see, one way or another.
