Needed: Good Home
This week I've started looking for a new apartment. There are many reasons for wanting to move out of this one, including, of course, the neighborhood. I've heard rumors, though nothing directly from the building management, that the chickens will have to roost elsewhere as they will soon be evicted. A move is afoot to gentrify the area, or so I've heard. Even nice, established tenants, like the French restaurant, are being evicted.
When I meet people here, even nannies, and they ask where I live, I initially give a vague answer. As they tick off the more upscale expat neighborhoods (Jing Shan? No. Mont Orchid? No. Coastal Rose? Uh, No. Where?), I finally describe the location as near the hotels and near Ma Tou (ferry terminal), I get an, "OOOOHHHHH." I mean it is pretty bad when the nannies give you funny looks and walk away. It is sometimes fun when I am in a mess-with-people's-heads mood, but when Myles wants to invite someone over to play.......
The apartment itself is nice. Everything in it is new, or at least new last year. The walls are white and the furnishings all match and are in wood and neutral tones. Neutral color schemes have driven me nuts in the US as I have moved so many times, from rental to rental, wishing we could live somewhere, anywhere, long enough to have walls with color. However, in this country, they are a blessing (oh wait until you see).
Other than the neighborhood, my other complaint with the building is that it lacks any place for Myles to play outside. Anytime we want to do anything, like ride his bike, climb on a playground, kick around a soccer ball...you name it, it is a big production number for us. I have to make sure he's gone to the bathroom (sometimes twice), and that we have our sunscreen, and our bugspray, and anything else we need to be away from the house for a few hours, and then trek to someplace else. Sometimes that is one of the other expat residence areas that will let us in. Sometimes it is a city park, all of which are a bus ride away (some 15 minutes, some an hour). I would like just to be able to walk out our door on a whim, play for as short or as long as we like, and be able to be in our own home again in minutes, if we need to be. One of the reasons we stop at the Starbucks almost daily is because by the time we've made it that far out of the house, a certain three-year-old needs to go potty again.
So I've had a realtor show us around one specific development. It has a decent "garden" with two playgrounds and winding sidewalks perfect for bike-riding. However, the apartments I've seen leave a lot to be desired. They are all owned by Chinese people who have very, uh, interesting ideas about what a furnished apartment looks like. All of the apartments I looked at were furnished and painted in the most ridiculous color schemes that I longed for beige or plain white.
Pepto pink with a glass-green leather head board (and matching bedstands!)
This one I considered renting on the spot, despite it being such a small apartment, just because of the tan sectional sofa.
The most expensive one I looked at was recently re-done in some strange French-inspired motif. Lots of gold paint on random moldings. I can easily say no to this, too, because it is at the top end of our range.
We are going to keep looking. There's no pressure on us to get out of our own apartment. The timing is ours to determine. If we can't find something suitable within our budgeted amount, we can just stay where we are.
When I meet people here, even nannies, and they ask where I live, I initially give a vague answer. As they tick off the more upscale expat neighborhoods (Jing Shan? No. Mont Orchid? No. Coastal Rose? Uh, No. Where?), I finally describe the location as near the hotels and near Ma Tou (ferry terminal), I get an, "OOOOHHHHH." I mean it is pretty bad when the nannies give you funny looks and walk away. It is sometimes fun when I am in a mess-with-people's-heads mood, but when Myles wants to invite someone over to play.......
The apartment itself is nice. Everything in it is new, or at least new last year. The walls are white and the furnishings all match and are in wood and neutral tones. Neutral color schemes have driven me nuts in the US as I have moved so many times, from rental to rental, wishing we could live somewhere, anywhere, long enough to have walls with color. However, in this country, they are a blessing (oh wait until you see).
Other than the neighborhood, my other complaint with the building is that it lacks any place for Myles to play outside. Anytime we want to do anything, like ride his bike, climb on a playground, kick around a soccer ball...you name it, it is a big production number for us. I have to make sure he's gone to the bathroom (sometimes twice), and that we have our sunscreen, and our bugspray, and anything else we need to be away from the house for a few hours, and then trek to someplace else. Sometimes that is one of the other expat residence areas that will let us in. Sometimes it is a city park, all of which are a bus ride away (some 15 minutes, some an hour). I would like just to be able to walk out our door on a whim, play for as short or as long as we like, and be able to be in our own home again in minutes, if we need to be. One of the reasons we stop at the Starbucks almost daily is because by the time we've made it that far out of the house, a certain three-year-old needs to go potty again.
So I've had a realtor show us around one specific development. It has a decent "garden" with two playgrounds and winding sidewalks perfect for bike-riding. However, the apartments I've seen leave a lot to be desired. They are all owned by Chinese people who have very, uh, interesting ideas about what a furnished apartment looks like. All of the apartments I looked at were furnished and painted in the most ridiculous color schemes that I longed for beige or plain white.
Pepto pink with a glass-green leather head board (and matching bedstands!)
This one I considered renting on the spot, despite it being such a small apartment, just because of the tan sectional sofa.
The most expensive one I looked at was recently re-done in some strange French-inspired motif. Lots of gold paint on random moldings. I can easily say no to this, too, because it is at the top end of our range.
We are going to keep looking. There's no pressure on us to get out of our own apartment. The timing is ours to determine. If we can't find something suitable within our budgeted amount, we can just stay where we are.
Comments
that sectional looks almost like the one i have, except the chaise is square, not rounded like the one pictured.
good thing I'm not looking. I thought those colors were kinda cool.
But, hey, as long as there's a fridge for the beer and a wings place close by I'm happy.
What are the price ranges of the apts you looked at? And without trying to pry or get personal, what is your "top end" if you don't mind sharing?
Are the apts mostly air conditioned? How does that work?
The wings places might just serve pigeon. Would that do?(JOKING)
The units I have been seeing do have A/C, but not central. For instance, in our apartment we have a wall-mounted unit in the living room, and then one in each of the bedrooms. Larger apartments might have a floor-unit in the living room. I'll have to get pictures up to show you.
Right now I think the rent on our apartment is somewhere around 4000 or 5000 RMB a month, so around $500. I haven't seen anything in writing, but I believe that we will be allowed somewhere near 10,000 RMB to cover the living expenses here. That is not bad, more than some, less than others. I know some people that get upwards of 20,000 RMB and have houses. One family I know has a five bedroom villa that costs 35,000 RMB, or rather, costs her husband's company that much.
With it likely we will have 10,000, I am trying to look for 3 bedrooms with a garden for under 8,000, so I still have money for utilities, cable, and, if there is still something left over after that, cleaning service (for what we would like, just 4 or 5 hours a week, will probably run a few hundred RMB). The apartment with the pepto bedroom and the chandelier is 9000 per month.