Between 2010 and 2016, I used to live in five different apartments in Beijing, China. In this article, I am writing about my various personal experiences from renting apartments in the capital city of China.
Every time when my wife and I moved into a new apartment, it was because we wanted to increase quality of life for our family by having more comfortable living conditions. With changing apartments, I improved quality of life. In fact, we have been renting apartments continuously since 2010 until now while building our wealth on the side.
Here are short random descriptions of all of the places that we used to rent in Beijing, China. And, a few honest reasons why we had decided to move out from each of them after just one or two years.
Apartment 1. In 2010, when I was a graduate student at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, I lived in the school’s dormitory on campus. My room was really small around 15 m2 with shared bathroom and kitchen. In 2011, my wife came to join me in Beijing after she graduated from college in Europe. Therefore, as we needed privacy, we started looking for a new place to rent.
Apartment 2. Our first apartment that we rented together in China was really affordable in terms of the price, but it was located really far away from the downtown Beijing. It took us hours to get to work every day. Even though there were lots of public amenities around intended to make our life more comfortable, e.g. shopping malls, supermarkets, local fruit-and-vegetable markets, we decided to move out from that apartment because we wanted to shorten that exhausting commuting time. Spending a big part of your free time inside the crowded bus or the subway train was not the most pleasurable way to relax.
Apartment 3. The next apartment that we rented was near a subway construction site. Thus, the surroundings, with things constantly under construction, were always dusty and always. Also, the traffic in that area was really bad. Almost all of the roads leading to our community were packed with cars every day for the whole day. Sometimes being late to work a couple of days each week was inevitable. We made the decision that we prefer to have easier access to subway and peace of mind when it comes to daily transportation.
Apartment 4. This time, our fourth place was in a great location! It took me only 20 minutes by bus to get to work while my wife was able to arrive at her office after around 45 minutes. Unfortunately, the greedy landlord asked for a big rent increase after the expiration of our one-year lease making that apartment not value-for-money anymore. Because we did not like constant city noise, which are a part of living-in-the-big-city experience unfortunately, we decided to look for something else. We wanted to live on the suburbs again cheaper fairly close to the subway station.
Apartment 5. Our last apartment that we rented in Beijing was close to perfect – low rent, brand new furniture, a 10-minute walk to the subway station, many facilities nearby and quiet surroundings. If you live in a big city like Beijing, Tokyo, London or New York, do not be afraid of changing apartments. There are always lots of apartments for rent in every district.
In the end, after living in Beijing for six years, we had decided to move out from the Chinese capital and relocate to Shanghai. We spent for years in Shanghai between 2016 and 2020. We currently live in Changsha where I work at one of the international schools teaching business management.
After having so much random experiences from renting apartments in different places, I must admit that every time when we changed the apartment, we managed to improve our quality of life. If you do not have enough capital to purchase your own apartment in the city, no worries, renting is way cheaper in the short-term and provides lots of flexibility to move around. Instead, you can use that money to invest instead of freezing it in an unproductive asset.
In my personal opinion, the only precondition to be happy in a new rented apartment is that you must be fully aware what your needs are before you even start looking for a new place. You should also consider what exactly you want your new place to look like.
Good luck with apartment hunting!
