Laowai joins Chinese 合租？

Throughout the last couple of days, I've been looking at a number of places to live. I finally found a 合租 where both the two 同屋 as well as the room were nice enough to ignore sanitary equipment dating back further than the Summer Palace.

So today, I went to the 中介, together with the girl currently living there. As soon as he saw me, the agent had no more interest in the deal and left. After some searching, we found him and I asked him what the problem was. He said, foreigners were not allowed to live in 民宅 flats, to which I retorted that I currently happened to live in one. That may be as it is, he said, but would not be possible for a 合租 (how do you say that in English, anyway?)

Does anybody have any experience regarding that? And maybe some insight into the laws on this issue?

合租 (how do you say that in English, anyway?)

flat share, right?

Strange rules. Can your roommates just rent your share and then sub-let it to you unofficially?

Flat share, yeah, that makes sense. Thanks, skylee!

Well, my roommates I saw for the first time today, so I wouldn't want to be troubling them starting from day one . I did think about letting a Chinese friend sign the contract in my place, but I'm hesitant: might it have consequences for them in case anybody should find out?

Some time ago foreigners were not allowed to live in 民宅, but those restrictions are either long gone or almost entirely ignored. In some cases there may be rules on subletting - ie, if it's still 单位 housing in one form or another, but if it's already being sublet that shouldn't be the case - although they are perhaps worried a foreigner is a more obvious form of subletting.

It's hard to know what to do in this case. If you go head to head with the agent you might persuade him, but do you really want to be dealing with the guy who thinks you are an argumentative pain in the neck for the period of your lease? But if you give up, you might miss a great opportunity.

I would probably take my lead from the other tenants in this - are they all up for arguing the point with the agent, or are they in 没办法 mode?

Roddy

I've had two such experiences.

In the first, I answered an ad for a room, and ended up essentially subletting from the original renter. The landlord in that case was decent about doing all the PSB stuff that foreign tenants need to do, even though in the end I think it ended up costing her in taxes.

The place I live now I went in with some Chinese classmates. There were a few times when places that seemed like good prospects fell through when the landlord had second thoughts, probably about the tax issue (though once again, there's not supposed to be a connection between the PSB and the tax bureau).

When it came time to sign the lease, the agent wouldn't let me sign. Not a big deal, really, but where my headaches lie now is that the agency has dragged its feet on getting the necessary info together to register with the PSB. Regulations are that the landlord go with the title to the property (although I've since learned that some foreign residents get away with merely bringing their landlord's phone number and going to the PSB alone). The agency's been fine other than that - they listen when I call about problems - and it was suggested to me that if I have to register with all the required paperwork that I sign a sublease with my flatmates.

So it's doable, but if someone doesn't want to rent to you, there's really not much you can do about it - you're certainly not going to get anywhere arguing points of law with the agency. If the other tenants go to bat for you, things may work out differently.

Oh, and I'm currently living in police apartments next to a PSB training station, so if they let foreigners live there, probably anything short of military units and subsidised housing is okay.

just a thought:

seeing as foreigners pay more for rent as a rule, maybe he means that you are not permitted to live there at the current price

huh? which city are you talking about? my roommate is a german and it hasn't been a problem at all. check out this site. it looks like a lot of ppl are doing the same in Beijing.

http://www.thatsbj.com/index.php?a=5&b=16&c=

Yeah, I was quite convinced that this was a problem from the side of the agent, not Chinese law. So I had a friend rent the room under her name and have been living there since about a month now (so, once again no trip to the PSB...)

Might be a rather short-lived experience, though, as the agent just found out about it