Are non-smoking apartments available in China?

It would also have been interesting to have dialog asking "is the builder of this building the same builder that built the building that fell over on its side in Shanghai?"

Context is key!

This guy never said he was living alone, though. If living with a few friends, it's not so bad. I once lived in a 三房两厅 place here in Shanghai with two roommates for a similar monthly rent.

There are several words for 'room'.

The normal word for "bedroom" is 卧室 (wòshì).

What is the most basic way to say 'middleman'?

www.nciku.com lists these possibilities:

• 1. 经纪人；掮客；中间商
• 2. 中人；媒介者；调解人

Then you can have the same word, but in different contet, ...you know what I mean. Frustrating, challenging, but no matter how defeating it can be at times, its so interesting, that overrides all of the difficulty!

General advise for anyone who will be dealing with these agents: DIY ASAP! !!!!First of all they show you the crappy houses they want to get rid off. Never tell them your budget or take a few thousand off. Never trust their agent, they are NOT on your side although they want you to believe that. Also try to negotiate everything with your landlord or lady yourself and get rid of the agency as soon as possible. After dealing with a load of crap when just arriving in China, we decided to do everything ourselves (in Chinese yes!). Saves you money and a lot of hassle. We had Fullhome, and after reading an article in Shanghai mag few months later about laobans lifestyle / company we were very pleased that not one more kuai is spend on this @#$%@&* hahaha! :-P.

The role of 'agent' is often mis-understood by people, and agents themselves do not go out of their way to explain things clearly. In fact the agent is legally the agent of the landlord - so they are contracted to act in the landlords interests. (There are rare exceptions in Australia - you can find a few 'agents' who will act for the consumer, but mostly for purchasing a house. I have never heard of a renter's agent.) So you should not expect an agent to act in your interest - it is indeed 'buyer' beware.

I have heard good stories and bad about agents - sometimes it is better to deal with an agent than a nasty landlord!

We negotiated our current place ourselves too - there were a few things we didn't understand properly but fortunately it has not proved to disadvantage us.

Our place was full of STUFF as well as furnishings - we had to spend quite a long time going through room to room saying what we wanted. Then they brought a truck along and took away what we didn't want.

One funny thing - the phone is still in the landlord's name. I go once a month to pay and they usually ask me: 'are you XXX (the land lord's name)? The first time i said 'yes' (thought it would simplify matters). So now I am always XXX. But there was a new guy once and when I said 'yes, I am XXX' - he said 'Wow - you have a real Chinese name!' (I think he may have said this as the family name is uncommon.) It took a lot for me to keep a straight face.

Thank you for sharing you r experience!

Actually our landlady (works for government) is not the most easy going one, but we gained mutual respect for another over time (me speaking Chinese helped a LOT) I rather deal with one difficult person than 2 hahaha! So things work out now in their own funny way. I stopped caring for the mold in the house and basically anything that falls apart. So I do not have to deal with the workers anymore. I do not hassle her, she does not hassle us, and I could care less about property devaluation as it is not mine :-)

Furnishings: sensitive issue, we did not want the horrendous furniture and brought our own. Changing the cold water washing machine to warm nearly ended the contract, but she gave in.

One more funny story and I will shut up: we had satellite tv but did not work properly, (illegal construction I guess) she paid lot of money but the tv guys sort of ripped her off and ran away. She had licence plate of the tv guys and had them pulled over at the highway and somehow made them fix our cable. Only in China I tell you!!! So that was quite nice of her!

You ask a good question about payment - I assume you mean the one-off payment for the agent to find you a flat? You are not paying an agent an ongoing fee of 1500 a month surely? Anyway, I will stick first to how it works in Australia (most Western countries are similar in this respect.) The landlord and agent normally have a written contract and the landlord pays the agent a set % of rent received, monthly. The customer in the West does not normally pay anything directly to the agent for the search, but where this happens in China it is a 'search' fee. An implied contract does exist relating to this search, true, but the agent has few obligations to you. The agent has an incentive to get you to agree to the highest rent possible if they are then going to take an ongoing percentage. The agent's main responsibility (despite this search function) is still to the landlord.

Hi eupnea63355, yes it would be 35% of one month's rent.

Cheers!

But you're right, it seems by default, bathrooms aren't included. Either it's just not that important to the Chinese, or it's just less important than brevity?