A Few Notes on Renting in Beijing · A Handful of Sunset

As far as I can remember, ever since I started renting after graduation, I’ve always thought finding a landlord directly was really, really hard, so I’ve always gone straight to an agent for help finding a place. Graduation season is here again, which also means the lease on our current place is about to run out, and it’s time to start looking for our next place to land. This time, we’re planning to skip the agents and walk around some nearby residential complexes to see if we can find something suitable.

Early in the morning, we took a taxi to a residential complex we’d scoped out the day before. Once inside, we started out wandering around like headless chickens, searching aimlessly and looking here and there for rental notices. After making a lap, we realized this was way too inefficient, so we decided to try a different approach: asking the residents directly. Maybe we got a little lucky, because the very first person we asked led us to a place for rent, and the landlord was even from the same area as us. That felt pretty great—off to a flying start! Little by little, we found a few more places this way. We also learned from the older folks in the complex that landlords rarely put up rental notices, apparently because of various property management issues. But if you walk around and ask, you can pretty much always pick up some leads. It’s actually a pretty reliable approach.

Later, we walked around a few more complexes and found a few more landlords. Honestly, looking on our own felt no less efficient than going through an agent, and sometimes it was even quite a bit more efficient. A lot of that was thanks to the helpful older folks in Beijing. At least among the ones we met, everyone was warm and genuine. They were awesome 👍.

Finally, based on our little experiment, here are a few tips for fellow working folks looking to rent:

If you have enough time, you can absolutely go straight to the residential complexes you’re interested in and look for a place yourself;
If you’re dealing with the actual landlord, moving in a few days later is usually fine—don’t be afraid to ask;
Do more exploring in person. Sometimes you’ll even come across some pretty interesting things;

To wrap up, here are a few photos I’ve taken recently.