Home Sweet Home…Sort of (part 2)

Sorry for the late post! We have been extremely busy for this last week as we have made the transition into our actual children’s’ centers. Ben and I have had different schedules and trying to coordinate stuff for our apartment has been difficult since we spend most of the day in the office.

Which brings me to the news that I wanted to share and basically hinted at in my last post — we have our own apartment now!!!

I will preface by saying that we had to search for about three days before we found this place and while we liked it I was not completely sold on it when we first visited it namely because of the plumbing. When we first went to the apartment to look around I flushed the toilet and it immediately sounded like a dying animal for about a minute. The water heater in the kitchen makes rumbly noises when you use the sink and the pipe under the sink was most definitely leaking.  In addition, there was some mold on a few of the walls and quite a bit of cracking paint. The previous tenants must have had a big husky or something because there was long grey dog hairs literally EVERYWHERE. The apartment needed some major tough love before I was ready to sign.

But Ben and I loved the location and we liked the floor plan a lot. The apartment is almost exactly halfway between our two centers and my commute is about 10 minutes and the walk to the metro station is a very pleasant ten minute stroll. Out apartment is in a cosy and very clean compound across the street from Century Park, the largest park in Shanghai. There is virtually no street noise pollution and the air is quite fresh for Shanghai standards because of the multitude of trees on our street. The compound is Chinese and I haven’t seen any other expats at all. In fact, the majority of people who live here seem to be older retired folks who spend their days outside in the common areas playing cards or mahjong, chatting with friends and smoking cigarettes (lots of people here are smokers), or working out on the outdoor public exercise machines.

While living away from other expats might sound a bit intimidating to some it was actually highly desirable for me. The expat areas are basically gentrified similarly to what happens in the United States. The fact is that foreigners tend to make more money in general than quite a lot of the locals. Our salaries tend to be higher and a lot of companies that hire expats will give them benefits like an apartment through the company or discounts through certain stores etc. It’s true that even with our relatively modest salary from our company Ben and I can still afford to live a comfortable middle class life and have our own 70 square meter apartment. That’s a hell of a lot more than we could afford in America. However the ugly side of this is that the rents tend to be higher in the expat conclaves because people like Ben and I can afford to pay more.

The majority of these Expat-heavy neighborhoods tend to be on the other (western) side of the river in Puxi. Puxi is the older part of the city. The Bund, the French Concession, Gubei, and the Jing’An Temple area are some of the notable expat areas in Puxi. These areas are often quite expensive and densely packed. We work in Pudong (the eastern side of the Huangpu river) which is the much newer side of town. It has a financial district, an international airport and a tech park area as well as many different neighborhoods. But I would say that the cultural hub of the city (meaning the majority of museums and old Shanghai cultural stuff) is in Puxi. Therefore that is where the expats can be found.

We wanted an apartment that was big enough for both of us but most importantly was somewhere between our centers and was easily accessible by metro. We liked our neighborhood because it is safe and quiet. It is close enough to the metro and I don’t have to transfer while Ben has one small transfer to get to work. The rent is manageable for our combined salaries and our house is so spacious and it feels very safe.

Like I was saying before, there were some things we weren’t too pleased about when we first saw the place. We learned real quick to trust your agent. I mentioned in my last post how the housing agent is the middleman or woman who helps you get what you want. I told my agent my concerns and she told me that we could try to bargain with the land lords to have them fix the stuff I wanted. At first the landlords were toying with us and they offered to give us 500 RMB to fix the stuff ourselves. Here’s where being direct about what you want and expect helps. I told my agent that we didn’t want to fix the plumbing ourselves and we wanted the cracks in the walls repainted and the couch to be cleaned or replaced. The agent then talked to the landlord and asked us what if they gave us 1000 RMB to fix the problem. I explained that we had been in China for barely over a week and that there was no way that we could find  a handyman to come out and work on the stuff. The landlords could perhaps get away with being lazy with Chinese tenants but not with us. Finally the landlord agreed to having the housing agency fix the plumbing for us. We went over to the house then to view the place for a second time. By the time we got there someone had already solved the toilet issue and replaced the pipe under the sink. I decided I could live with the rumbly water heater. All that was left on my major list of things to be done was to repaint portions of the house.

The landlord’s wife was there this time and she ended up being much more of a tough talker than her husband. At first she didn’t want to pay for repainting, arguing that the house had just been repainted about two years ago and that paint was expensive. Having an agent with street smarts was key here. There was a lot of back and forth in Chinese and finally our agent asked us if we would be willing to pay a slightly higher monthly rent in exchange for having the areas repainted by the landlord. This plan clearly was much more profitable to the landlord. I asked her if instead it was possible for us to pay for the cost of labor and paint upfront (about 500 RMB) and if the landlord or agent could arrange for someone to paint the problem spots. The landlords agreed to this. We paid our Agent via WeChat and then she set up a man to come and paint the place in two days time under the landlord’s supervision. In addition we also paid a slightly lower than one month’s rent deposit. We were having money transfer issues at the time but the landlords agreed to it as long as we would pay the rest if we got the place.

After the house was fixed we came back to see it again, with the idea of paying more money to rent the place and signing our lease.  To rent a Chinese apartment you often will have to pay the landlords a one month deposit and three months rent at once. This was a huge chunk of cash and while we could definitely afford the rent monthly between the two of us we did have to take a cash advance from our company to pay for this. In addition, we had to wire ourselves money from America to pay for some of this and have enough extra to pay the agent her fee and survive until our paycheck. We were still waiting for our wire transfer at the time of signing so we asked the landlord to give us a two day extension to have the last months rent in. We actually had to go back to our hotel and come back because the landlord’s wife was a little nervous about renting to us and wanted to see our work permits and original passports. We spent a lot of time looking over the contract and the landlord made a few additions (stuff like no nails in the walls and no pets) etc. Finally we signed, wired our money to her with our phones and the place was ours!

This is the layout of our compound. As you can see there are a lot of high rises!

Our spacious living room

Our kitchen is actually fairly spacious for Chinese standards

This one is my favorite bedroom

Each bedroom has it’s own aircon unit.

This is just one of our two massive closets! I love how our house has so much storage

We don’t have a dryer so we hang our clothes up on these metal bars using hangers and a funny little grabby wand tool (the blue and white thing on the window sill)

Our first meal in the new home!

 

We’ve lived in our new home for about a week now. We finally got wifi set up and had an ayi (cleaning lady) come to the house to do a really deep cleaning (it REALLY needed it). It still doesn’t quite feel like a functional home yet but it’s a lot better than it was before.

Have any of you ever moved abroad or to a new city? How did it feel when you started completely from scratch? What did you do to settle in? How long did it take before you were comfortable in your house/flat? Shoot us a message. We’d love to hear your tips of how to make an apartment feel like a home.

All the best,

Methi