Renting an Apartment in Beijing

After getting touched to Beijing, you may find yourself moving around the huge city without knowing how to rent an apartment in Beijing. It could be stressful for you to find an apartment while staying in a hotel. 

Whether you move to Beijing as a student or a straggling spouse on a huge expat package, you need to rent an apartment for a few months or years. Here you will face the Beijing rental market. 

There are exactly thousands of rental apartments in Beijing, but rental terms and prices can be different. There are a lot of options, furnished or unfurnished, 2-3 bedrooms apartments, or ultra-modern flats. You may get confused in selecting the right apartment. 

Don’t worry, you will find an apartment of your choice easily. Here we will discuss some important questions about renting a flat in Beijing. How to find an apartment? Can you reserve it in advance from abroad? And what is the cost of an apartment?

When to start looking for an Apartment in Beijing?

When you move to a new region you expect to have a right home to live in. You can find an apartment in Beijing online and with the assistance of estate agents. But I would not recommend you to do so. It could be a big surprise when you renting an unseen apartment, without visiting the building or visiting the neighborhood. 

In Beijing, rental apartments are commonly accessible for instant move-in, so it doesn’t need to look for an apartment in advance. 

How much does a Rental Apartment Cost in Beijing?

In Beijing, rental apartments are very expensive compared to the cost of living here. An apartment with 2-3 bedrooms in an expat-friendly housing complex can easily cost about 20,000 RMB per month.

A flat with 2-bedrooms in an older Chinese housing complex can cost 7,000 RMB per month. If you can live outside the city and willing to expand less, you can find many apartments in this price range. If it is still too expensive, you can rent a room in a shared flat that starts at around 3000 RMB per month. You can also search for low-cost apartments and shared rental rooms online. 

Rent terms and Costs

In Beijing, the rental apartments are usually offered with 6-12 months lease terms, sometimes for longer. You have to pay the rent amount in advance. 

Moreover, the house owner usually wants a refundable deposit of 1-month rent. Sometimes people experience difficulties in getting back their deposit when they departed. But I never experience any such difficulties. 

In Beijing, the apartments are normally leased through the service of a real estate agent. The agent has conducted a payment the same to one month's rent.

How to Find a Rental Apartment in Beijing?

You can hire some agents to find the right apartment for you. You have to decide on the area you want to live or even the compound. Then you can look for the agents in the area. The agents are easy to find, they are usually located in front of a real estate office. 

You may experience some difficulty to communicate with agents because most estate agents don’t speak much English. So you have to call a Chinese-speaking colleague or friend. You can also ask them to recommend an English- speaking agent. 

While searching your apartment keep in mind what you are looking for, agents may show you many flats, crappy ones, and ones that are above your price range. 

If you want to hire a room in a shared apartment, you can avoid agent help. You can search for a shared apartment online. You will find a lot of shared flats on different sites. 

However, when you are searching for an apartment on online ads from agents, be careful that photos posted on ads are often false and show a different place than the original one. In addition, the kitchen and bathroom are not shown in ads. When you communicate with the agent, he may not know which apartment you are discussing and may show you other flats instead. Be aware of this type of agent.

You can communicate with agents via WeChat. It is a Chinese messaging app which is the easiest way to communicate with people. Through this app, you can communicate with agents in English and ask for more photos and details. This app will help you a lot in investing your time and money in the right place.