Buying Property in China, Buying a House in China

[pandaxiongmao]

ms2002sss, do you have a UPS, or does your building have a generator for when the power goes out? Having lived in both Kunming and Haikou, I experienced blackouts on a fairly regular basis. Not sure if your area of Hunan has this same problem. If it does, you may want to consider getting a UPS (if your building doesn't have its own generator) so that you can continue using your computer/TV/etc. when there is a blackout.

Is the Sony TV a Bravia LCD, or some other type? Sony Bravia LCDs that are 1080p do seem to have the best picture, but the quality of the TV itself isn't likely and better or worse than most other brands. If you want a good Chinese TV brand, I'd suggest a Skyworth LCD. In Haikou, they have 32" Skyworth LCD TVs with a full 1920x1080 panel for around 8000RMB.

The bed prices you list seem quite expensive, but I don't know what style you are going for. When I lived in Kunming, I bought a 2m bed (or whatever the next largest size is from 1.8m is) with a metal frame for 2500RMB. This included a good mattress - not the typical Chinese spring mattress with wood edges inside that soon feel like a bed of nails.

Again, the desk cost will depend. In Kunming I bought a huge glass desk with a metal frame for 2000. There were some even larger ones that wrap around for around 4000-4500. For a basic wood/particle board desk, the cost would be much cheaper for most styles.

For furniture, you should definitely bargain. The prices above for furniture indicate what I paid after significant bargaining.

I have had good luck with Midea branded products, though I don't have experience with their air conditioners.

[banjo67xxx]

I lived in Jinan for a bit back in 2004 studying at Shandong University. At that time most of the roads in the city were being widened and the dust/partical pollution was terrible, we could go 1-2 weeks without seeing the sun, it was worse than anything I saw during my 12 months living in Beijing. Also I know the city is ringed with petrochemical plants and there are large quaries just outside the city limits. Are things still bad there? Have they gotten any better?

I would imagine real estate there is still fairly cheap when compared to the coastal cities of Qingdao. Is Jenny's still the only place to get decent food outside of Sofitel?

My wife remembers when the roads were being widened before she came to England, however that's all finished now (except there's a bit of construction around the big decorating dept stores in the N.W.), and way over in the East there's major housing construction in progress. I think all the major industry must be in the north because I see nothing like that when heading out to the countryside South of the city. Where we have purchased in the South the air quality is wonderful, and its not that bad in the city centre nowdays anyway.

For the nicer appartment complexes, the prices seem to be around 5000-6000kuai/sqm and due to the demand for luxary appartments we've seen prices as much as 4000kuai/sqm in the country South of Jinan. Not sure what Qingdao prices are these days?

I've never been to Jenny's nor the hotels. I understand its the "in" place for language students. I've been to countless restaurants and private homes, and can't remember which ones are better than others. The only one that really sticks out in my mind is "Brazil BBQ" which is a carnivore's paradise, although a bit pricey at 55kuai/person regardless of how much you eat. My wife took me to KFC and Pizza Hut recently as a "treat" but the food quality wasn't that good, and it cost over 100kuai just for 2 of us (you can a really nice meal for 12 in a posh restaurant for about 120kuai). Another place for a nice breakfast bowl of soup (5mao) is in the street by Jinan Childen's Hospital.

PS: I forgot to mention the "meat on a skewer street-cooking" type restuarants. My wife and I plus brother-in-law, his mates, and their wives, just had a lovely meal for 3mao/skewer just sat on the pavement (US: sidewalk) eating food BBQ'ed at the edge of the road (US: pavement) and drinking beer and tea.

[banjo67xxx]

Q1 - Are items and goods from these cheaper stores infact the same product, and just as good as identically looking but higher priced goods from the larger stores?

So we are in the big stores and get some estimates on costs, times and guarentees for , in this case, flooring. The cost was fixed with fitting included, times were pretty quick and the guarentee was "lifelong". When doubting this they claimed anytime I could call the store with any problem and they would fix it. Using the stores reputable name as proof of not closeing up shop and running.

Q2 - Can you trust the quotes and guarentees from Chinese shops (cheaper & large)

Q3 - Do you pay all the money upfront or do you hold a % back until the job is complete?

Q4 - Once my floor/kitchen/wardrobes are fitted will I be left with a messy room, or do the workmen clear up after themselves?

Q5 - Is it better to decorate what I can afford to bit by bit, or do the whole place in one hit?

Q1 - For stuff like hot water heaters, flooring, suspended ceilings, etc which you'd want a guarantee for its best to go to the large department stores and chose a reputable supplier.

For stuff like door handles and hinges, which you can try to break and scratch to see the quality for yourself, then go to the cheapest back street place you can find.

Q2 - You have to be very specific to get an acurrate quote. For example, after haggling a great price for your suspended ceiling and you also remember to ask them to include the price of the structure to hold it in place, you've signed the deal, and then they ask do you want any trim around the edge, oh and that doesn't include labour either. And if you want to use exactly the same materials to hide the plumbing going down the wall, that's a different set of prices per sqm too!

Q3 - If you want their surveyor to go out and price up the job accurately, after agreeing prices per sqm upfront, then you generally have to pay 100-200kuai deposit, and then when you're ready for them to start you pay the full estimate price up front, and finally when they've finished you pay for all the extras they didn't tell you about.

Q4 - They leave a mess, and you have to foot the bill for a cleanup company (unless you want to do it yourself, but why bother when labour here is so cheap)

Q5 - Anything which creates a big mess or is likely to cause damage, needs to be done in the correct order and at the same time. i.e. you should get the walls demolished/built, then plastered, then painted, then the ceilings fitted, then the floors done, and finally the curtains and furniture installed. As the painter is going to drop paint everywhere and wont have any thought of insurance, there's no way he'll pay for removing paint from your new floor, and even if the company promised they wont drop paint on it, its just gonna end up in a big argument which isn't worth the hassle. So make sure the floor comes after the painter, and so on.

PS: I'm sure you know this already, but with big expenses like decorating it becomes especially important. Hide the lao wai when negotiating prices. If you can speak fluent Chinese yourself, then you can find out exactly what you want on your own and make a pretence of haggling with the salesman, however let your wife do the real haggling and you'll be amazed at how much cheaper things are without a foreigner in sight!!!

[venture160]

banjo67xxx － I find it interesting that you have settled down in Jinan. I guess things must be much better now that they have finished the work on the roads. I did go back during the summer of 2005 and came in from bus from the north east (heading from yantai.) I drove by nothing but huge chemical plants, and if you look at google earth, you can see a GIANT complex about 10km from the city. Link to google earth picture

I did like Jinan for its almost backwater feel of the city. You sure are in the "real china" and I remember you could find almost anything with a wheel on the streets. I'll be moving to Beijing this summer, but at some point I'm looking to spend 1-2 year in nondescript provincial city.

[banjo67xxx]

Without giving away personal details, here's the Google Earth link to a shopping centre not far from our flat.

As you zoom out from there you can see a lot of green, and the only thing being built nearby is more houses (many of them luxary ones)

[venture160]

O, thats an area of the city I never saw. I've been to the stadium, and that street running paralell behind it that has allot of the antique stores. That area did strike me as fairly green though. Good luck with life in Jinan

[ms2002sss]

Q1 - For stuff like hot water heaters, flooring, suspended ceilings, etc which you'd want a guarantee for its best to go to the large department stores and chose a reputable supplier.

For stuff like door handles and hinges, which you can try to break and scratch to see the quality for yourself, then go to the cheapest back street place you can find.

Q2 - You have to be very specific to get an acurrate quote. For example, after haggling a great price for your suspended ceiling and you also remember to ask them to include the price of the structure to hold it in place, you've signed the deal, and then they ask do you want any trim around the edge, oh and that doesn't include labour either. And if you want to use exactly the same materials to hide the plumbing going down the wall, that's a different set of prices per sqm too!

Q3 - If you want their surveyor to go out and price up the job accurately, after agreeing prices per sqm upfront, then you generally have to pay 100-200kuai deposit, and then when you're ready for them to start you pay the full estimate price up front, and finally when they've finished you pay for all the extras they didn't tell you about.

Q4 - They leave a mess, and you have to foot the bill for a cleanup company (unless you want to do it yourself, but why bother when labour here is so cheap)

Q5 - Anything which creates a big mess or is likely to cause damage, needs to be done in the correct order and at the same time. i.e. you should get the walls demolished/built, then plastered, then painted, then the ceilings fitted, then the floors done, and finally the curtains and furniture installed. As the painter is going to drop paint everywhere and wont have any thought of insurance, there's no way he'll pay for removing paint from your new floor, and even if the company promised they wont drop paint on it, its just gonna end up in a big argument which isn't worth the hassle. So make sure the floor comes after the painter, and so on.

PS: I'm sure you know this already, but with big expenses like decorating it becomes especially important. Hide the lao wai when negotiating prices. If you can speak fluent Chinese yourself, then you can find out exactly what you want on your own and make a pretence of haggling with the salesman, however let your wife do the real haggling and you'll be amazed at how much cheaper things are without a foreigner in sight!!!

1. I would rather pay the extra, but my in-law is always on my back telling me I am wasting money, its the same stuff etc. Plus I have no guarentee the reputable supplier wont just shut up shop and close anyway Hmmm not sure which way I will go on this yet!

2. in my experience the Chinese dont do specific. I think my specfics get diluted at several stages. me/wife/inlaws/shop/inlaw/wife/me is this where the game Chinese whispers came from?

As an example of what I am up against. My inlaw found a place that printed large posters. i wanted some pictures of my kid in a square shape to fit in a frame I had at home. I roughly drew an outline of what I wanted and was very SPECFIC when I explained to my wife what I wanted and why. He came back all happy with a long thin rectangular poster, which I had nowhere to put. When dareing to ask why, I was told he had got a deal and this one was 5RMB cheaper! When showing my displeasure I got told off for not appreciating his efforts. No win situation! That was just a poster. Can you imagine if I left instructions to decorate my house!?!

3. I was hopeing I didnt have to pay all upfront Work speed and quality tends to dip wherever you are in the world once you are fully paid up.

4. Why am i not surprised.

PS I get that all the time. But going back to the Chinese whispers, unless I am there I wont get what I want. Plus I think haggling is the national sport and Chinese people secretly love it. I think at least 2 hours of every day I spend in China is spent with me standing around waiting whilst some fierce haggling is done. Sometimes I tell my haggler its not worth the time for the amount of RMB they are haggling over, but then they bring out the principal card and carry on regardless.

[banjo67xxx]

Hide the lao wai when negotiating prices

I get that all the time. But going back to the Chinese whispers, unless I am there I wont get what I want.

My wife and I have got the technique sorted now (esp. as I can't speak Chinese yet) ...

We go around the stores together BUT, whenever she spots something she wants or thinks I want she gives me the signal to back off. I then wander in the opposite direction and start casually browsing at another stall, whilst she negotiates prices for all the things she thinks I'd like. She then calls me over, and together we discuss exactly what we want, and because the price has already been agreed the seller finds it almost impossible to haggle it back up again. Alternatively, if I spot something I want, I drag her to one side to explain what it is, and send her off to haggle.

The latest saga with the decorating design agency ...

We went to their office today to complain about a 15 day delay in starting work on our cusyom made fitted kitchen, despite having given 40 days notice, and after dragging the owner of the agency into the dispute we then discovered that the price of the kitchen had gone up 60% since signing the pre-agreed price on the contract ???

Upon further investigation, we discovered that the salesman had tried to pull a fast one. Unfortunately for him, it was too fast. He switched the price on the contract just before we signed it, and was so subtle about it that we didn't sign that page of the contract, and the cashier didn't notice the switch either so we paid the lower price and got a receipt to prove the discrepancy.

The owner of the agency is going to ensure our kitchen is no more than 2 days late in starting, and he said he'd reprimand his salesman (although I suspect the reprimand is not for trying to cheat us, but for getting found out).

[venture160]

We go around the stores together BUT, whenever she spots something she wants or thinks I want she gives me the signal to back off. I then wander in the opposite direction and start casually browsing at another stall, whilst she negotiates prices for all the things she thinks I'd like. She then calls me over, and together we discuss exactly what we want, and because the price has already been agreed the seller finds it almost impossible to haggle it back up again. Alternatively, if I spot something I want, I drag her to one side to explain what it is, and send her off to haggle.

I do this same thing with my girlfriend and it works pretty well! I get things so much cheaper this way!

[banjo67xxx]

The latest news is that our kitchen is nowhere near as good as what we expected, so my wife complained again ...

As we'd already paid up front, my wife had to tell the decorating company boss about our relatives at the local TV station (I don't think we have any - but he didn't know that), so he agreed to come and take a look at what crap workmanship he might be seeing on TV next week alongside his company's name.

Interestly, he offerred to refund the full price of the kitchen and rip everything out. As we secretly reckoned it could be fixed by paying someone else just a few hundred more, we were actually angling for a partial refund.

I've no idea whether or not they would leave a mess behind after taking away our kitchen cupboards and worktops, but somehow I doubt they would refill all the holes they drilled in the walls and replace the wall tiles which still have wood glued to them

Luckily, after some more negotiating and more threats of adverse publicity, we finally got them to leave the mess behind as a basis for us to fix up, and give us the 50% refund we wanted

[Stevehem]

This is a very interesting thread. What comes out clearly is that you have to have a good idea of what you want, and have some way of getting a local to get it/specify it, that it is very easy to get ripped off, and that property rights, leasehold title etc. are not as clear-cut as they are in more developed markets.

This is all consistent with my experience. Fortunately a long period of preparation and cultivating a team on the ground in Zhuhai, using long-term PRC contacts in the UK resulted in my avoiding any major blunders ('so far, so good', I should say).

I don't really accept the argument that the fact that foreign banks won't lend on China property is evidence that Chinese leasehold properties do not constitute proper collateral. I'd be surprised if you could persuade a French bank manager to lend you money secured on a UK property. It's just too hard for the foreign bank to evaluate the security. I have heard that some HK banks will lend on PRC property (OK, it's one country...). It is certainly possible for a foreigner who is not resident (in any normal sense) to get financing in China. I know that because I know someone who has done it.

[roddy]

2. What 70-year lease? Chinese property laws are a bit imprecise, and it would not be correct to try to enforce Chinese property laws into Western categories. Chinese property is not "leasehold"; it is not as clearly defined as that, and there is no ground rent. The land underneath the building belongs to the government, and you get the right to use stateowned land, which costs 1% of the sale price of the apartment. After that, there is no ground rent, and as the PRC has not existed for 70 years, it is totally unclear what will happen eventually.

Obviously not an immediate issue yet, but it looks like the government is going to make it at least possible for future administrations to charge when the 70 years is up. The Chinese story is here, but to sum up there's a revised draft of regulations circulating which changes 'automatically and at no cost extend' to 'automatically extend in accordance with regulations'.

Has anyone done any house buying / selling lately then?

[jimarass]

Hi, I am married to a Chinese girl and I am thinking to buy a flat at around 100m2 in the area of Chendgu, Leshan city.

It is quite nice but I am not going to stay in China, I just want it for investment reasons.

Currently good flats in Leshan worth about 3000/m2 . I don't know the building quality of the house but it seems to be good. I was bothered about the 70 or so years of leasing but on the other hand, in 70 years i will be ded to find out!!

I have seen local prosperous chinese to sell properties and make good profit cause 3 years ago the prices where about 2000/m2.

I think for 30.000 euros it is a good investment in a country where the population is double the combined population of European Union and USA, which means that prices WILL go up eventually. Another fact is the upcoming upgrade of chinese currency , under western pressure, in order for chinese to be able to import western products...

The only thing I don't know, is weather you can bargain for house prices......

Also, I would like to know if my wife can have more than one house in her name. If yes, this house also belong righfully to me (as being her hasband) ??