Nothing beats Hong Kong's highly motivated agents. It pains them to show you 2 places and they expect you to take one up. When you ask for more viewings, they simply don't care and proceed to sit in their stained chairs waiting for the next sucker to come on in.
And let's not forget the soul destroying conditions that the regular apartments are in, the prevalence of IKEA furniture from a decade ago, low ceilings and federation-era like lighting. It boggles the mind that landlords can get away with the rent fees they are looking for.
Only in Hong Kong are people willing to pay a lot for a lot less than a human needs.
Sounds like lots of people have had a bad experience with agents. Happy to say I seem to have had an OK experience comparatively. Had a few agents recommended to me by friends, but also randomly bumped into agents on the road. All of them were very nice people, helpful and didn't really waste my time. Ironically, the only agent that wasted my time a bit was the one that came recommended by my work. To the contrary in fact - I thought the agents here work extremely hard. The girl I bumped into at one of the landings on the ML escalator ended up showing me flats at 8 pm - on a Sunday. She even showed me flats on the recent public holiday.
All that said - I haven't moved into my apartment yet, so maybe I am yet to find out the true perils of HK apartment living...
By the way - off thread - but just wanted to thank the admins / owners of Geoexpat. This was a very useful resource when I was considering moving to HK. 1.5 weeks in and I'm loving it!
I feel fortunate. I found a reasonably priced place in an interesting neighbourhood on the first go round with a realtor. Landlord seems solid and everyone is amazed at what I pay for rent, in the neighborhood I am in. The place is smaller. A studio with a separate bath and shower. A single hob kitchen. It is narrow, 6’6 wide x 22’ long with lots and lots of light. Very important!!!!
I had no issues with realtor.., they took me into a few dodgy places initially., but kept within my price range and showed me two more. One was even bigger than this.,, but only had one tiny window looking into an alley.
Coming from NYC, the experience here was absolutely painless.
A few reasons... The existence of housing allowances would be reasonable one, the other, and let's be honest, would be because, Hong Kongers,(land lords) tend not to be that house proud, pretty bog standard, or tackily grandeous. The humidity also doesn't help either, it's pretty destructive toward the local cheap and cheerful interior materials and the typical furniture used.
Last edited by Skyhook; 22-10-2018 at 12:02 PM.
The worst part of flat hunting - Never quite being willing to accept that that housing is heavily taxed allowing lower income tax.