I got a general question about renting an apartment in Kunming. Me and my friends are trying to get a flat with the help of a real estate agent, but it turned out, that in all cases we are obliged to pay the whole rent in advance; some landlords even refused to let us rent their place since we want to stay for 10 months only.

Can somebody tell me if this is a common practice in Kunming?

Many thanks in advance!

Welcome to Kunming. Having to often pay six months to a year of rent up front is the first of many areas in which you will discover that Kunming has yet to catch up to many other parts of China and the developed world.

It's still a great place to live, though, if you can get back all of the backwards bits.

Depends, most nicer places want at least 6 months rent in advance, especially if you use a real estate agent. The lease is normally 6 months to 1 year.

With the housing bubble, and high rent there are a lot of greedy landlords out there now... They even have a name for them in Chinese, but I forget what it is now.

Some landlords will let you pay monthly, but most often times this is when you rent directly from the landlord.

Yes it is a common practice in Kunming. Occasionally you can meet some landlords are willing to accept flexible payment term. But the most practiced one is: 6 months' rent and 1 month's deposit in advance. If the apartment is well furnished, some landlords even require a deposit of 2 or 3 months' rent. Normally they will return you all the deposit when the leasing contract is terminated. And also, if the landlord accept short-term payment, normally the monthly rent is higher than the one for long-term payment. Otherwise the landlord will think it's very troublesome for collecting the rental of one year by several times.

For renting an apartment directly from the landlord, you can have a try if your Chinese is good enough. But it's really difficult or like impossible even for local Chinese to rent an apartment directly from the landlord. Because all the apartments resources on the internet are occupied by agents already, you need do screen the information again and again.

it is possible to find an apartment for 10 months, you just need to find an agreeable landlord. I know several friends who have done it. Your best bet is to find a friendly agent who will work on your behalf to negotiate your terms, and not one who just argues with you about what you want or tells you it is not possible. Anything is possible even if it is not the norm.

As Ich said yes it's hard to get less than 6 months. Many landlords have 3 or 4 apartments and can't be bothered to chase people down every month to collect. Also if they get 12 months up front they are certain to have a tenant who isn't gonna run away first chance he gets. One should think that with all the empty apartments around it would be a tenant's market but for some reason it just isn't. Remember to negotiate the rent. Most of the time you should be able to knock off around 10 percent of the money the landlord wants or more.

Thank you very much for your replies! We rented one apartment today but had to pay one year in advance to avoid that the landlord raises the rent if we only pay 6 months/6 months.

So I did a search for renting, and found this... almost a year old.

Is this still the case? Paying 6 months up front... seems a bit crazy! Do you get a reduced rate if you pay up front?

Speaking of which, how much is the rent, for

a) a one bed in good location
b) a room in shared apt, in good location

Hi! Also interested in this subject. :))
But I need 2 bedrooms apartment in a good area.

Still must pay up front. The rental market even more difficult than it was a year ago. Lots of old housing has been torn down; lots of units in newly built high rise buildings are being held empty and unfurnished by real estate speculators.