Patience Is A Virtue!

For anyone who finds themselves having to find a flat in Hong Kong on a budget, this is a phrase to remember. It is an experience to say the least and although I have not experienced much other flat hunting other than St Andrews (which is an experience of a different kind!) it appears far removed from the customs and the ways of the western style of flat hunting.

A crash course…

• Unless you know a landlord directly, in which case it is much easier, you find a flat through property agents who are based seemingly everywhere in each area. They are the shops with glass fronts plastered floor to ceiling in adverts fro flats, usually in Chinese. In theory it is simple. You wander in, establish if they speak English, tell them you are English teachers working for CHARITY, here for 9 months, and your budget and anything else you are after e.g. furniture and they show you places. Easy, right? Wrong.
• Firstly, the budget. You say a price, and then end up being shown around a flat way above your budget since in Hong Kong, all rent is negotiable. You see the flat, and if you like, the property agent then talks to the landlord and you start to barter…It is important not to look either excited or too happy lest you risk the price being pushed up and have to say this is acceptable or (more usefully) not acceptable and not use good (a buzzword to raise the price!) or bad. For example from our experience, no furniture, - not acceptable, no security gate, not acceptable, no lock on the front door, not acceptable, dirt and mould, not acceptable. If you want to say something, you have to grab the other person at an opportune time behind a wall or in a room to either do a little dance of excitement before you compose yourself for the property agent!
• Don’t get too excited too quickly - Even if you find a flat that you like, that’s almost the easy bit over, the negotiation then begins, in Cantonese of course, maybe at the office, but often on street corners on mobiles where you stand around, and answer questions when probed like, is $9.500 okay and you say no and they go back…
• We found a lovely flat in North Point early on, which was beautiful, just been decorated, and was perfect and just as the landlord had basically agreed and we were negotiating the price down, it was revealed to us that this one flat had 2 landlords, one of which had decided, clearly without the other one knowing, that he no longer wanted to rent it and so was only available to buy! That’s the first time I lost it, and left a very forlorn and apologetic landlord in his shop, in England they would not care less, but I felt awful as I left!
• Other experiences, are, you sign a 12 month lease and we find someone for you to move in after the 9 months…and when you ask what happens if you don’t find someone…silence. Or, the landlords aunt is staying in September so is October okay…or you can just be walking down the road after having seen an apartment and you find out its already been taken!
• We found our flat on Wednesday on our third evening of going straight from training to look for flats, when we completely fed up, felt as if we had been in to and been laughed out of, and informed of the property boom in Hong Kong what felt like a million and one times. A couple of the girls, had already found a flat in Wan Chai and so we called their landlady, who agreed to meet us at Times Square in Causeway Bay, a few mtr stops down. As we came up and she led us around, I remember the lights and the sounds but also the exhaustion. When we saw what became our flat, it was empty of furniture but as I began to say, we need furniture, she assured us that the landlady had just had it renovated and would be buying in the furniture for us. And this is where the Hong Kong negotiable rent system worked to our advantage because Julie managed to get us an extra low price because we were 2 English teachers. Even as we sat and signed the provisional contract, all we felt was exhaustion! But it was over!

Photos to follow!