Tips for foreign students studying in Beijing: Finding a private flat







Foreign students coming to Beijing to study or work and who don't have the possibility to get student residences might find it difficult to arrange a private flat before they get to China. 
Here are few tips from my personal experience that will help you in this process. Hope you you’ll find it useful

1st Step: Find a temporary residence

Most of the time you will have to already be in Beijing to find the flat since you need to do the viewings. The best and cheapest way to do so is to take a one week booking in a hostel who provide dorms at a low price so you have time to do your flat hunting. The Beijing Sunrise Hostel is a good option with a nice English speaking staff, safe lockers, a good location and air conditioning: http://www.hostelsunrise.com

They will let you rent a bed in a 10 people dorm for about 300 RMB per week. Sometimes in order to get your visa, you might be asked to get a one month booking, in this case you can do so and cancel when you have found something else. The hostel will refund you as long as you give a 3 day notice

2nd Step: Find a flat in Beijing

The best way to find accommodation as a foreigner is to go on the Housing ads part of the Beijinger.com: https://www.thebeijinger.com/classifieds/housing

You will find here many advertisement for private flat, often someone looking for a flatmate. The best way to communicate with the landlords is to get the application WeChat, widely used here, so you can directly contact them. There are a lot of offers, especially during summer, so it is usually quick to find something and most of the time one week will be enough

3rd Other information

The landlord will typically ask you to pay him two months in advance and a one month deposit. Don’t hesitate to ask to spend few nights in the flat before signing the contract and paying him in order to check that everything works correctly and ask him to fix whatever is not functional. Also agree on advance on what is included in the price you pay such as Wi-Fi, electricity, water bills or and agent fees


Good luck!

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  1. It is known that it is very hard to find flat in Beijing as foreigners, hopefully through this article you could get some useful information if you want to study in China.

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  2. It is known that it is very hard to find flat in Beijing as foreigners, hopefully through this article you could get some useful information if you want to study in China.

    回复删除

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