Hello!
Cerise Bai here, and welcome to BeijingAbode.com.
It's my mission with this site to both educate you on the Beijing apartment market, and to help you get familiar with me and make my services available to you once you're ready to start looking for your own room or apartment in Beijing.
If you haven't already, check out the Beijing Apartment Blog, and browse our available apartments online.
Otherwise, read on below to learn more
about me and how Beijing Abode came into being.
How I Went from Finance to Real Estate
I launched Beijing Abode in 2012 to help solve a need for quality, hassle-free housing in Beijing, serving expatriates and upmarket Chinese. Because of the way the real estate market is structured in Beijing, there are LOTS of people who want to help you find accommodations... but not so many of them speak English, and of those, very few of them are offering anything approximating high quality service.
I was appalled when first exposed to the Beijing real estate market – I came from a professional background, with a Master's degree from Beijing's top economics university, and a history working with large, established banks and lending institutions – places where structure, order, and clarity were a way of life.
And then I had to help a friend of mine from overseas look for a decent apartment, and it was... chaos.
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There was no one good place to find apartments
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What places there were were mostly in Mandarin
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Most landlords couldn't speak English
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Most real estate agents couldn't speak English either
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And most real estate agents were unqualified and undereducated... simple Chinese country bumpkins trying to make it in the big city on a whopping ¥1200 ($192) a month salary... they had no real idea what most people are looking for in an apartment
And in the face of all this, I had to ask myself:
How on Earth is anyone
supposed to find a decent apartment in a market like this?
I helped my friend find a place, and
then thought myself fortunate to no longer have to sort through the
sprawling mess that is the Beijing apartment market anymore.
Then, in late 2011, I took a break from the investment world to welcome my first child into the world – a beautiful baby daughter. And I decided to raise her myself – no full time nanny as is customary in China – at least for the first couple of years. That meant I wouldn't be able to return to finance as soon as I'd originally planned.
I couldn't stand the thought of not working, though... and I fell into helping my expatriate friends from other countries to get settled into their own apartments. I knew the market now, and my time in finance had made me a tough negotiator, so I knew what I was doing. I'd put my friends in touch with the right agents, help them negotiate their leases, and took over routine chores like securing them a cleaning lady to come keep their apartments tidy, and making sure their power and water and gas meters stayed full (these can be a real pain to deal with in China).
Pretty soon my friends began to refer their friends to me... and before you know it, Beijing Abode was born.
This website is my online business card, you might say, and it's also a place for you to get familiar with me and to learn a little more about the Beijing apartment market.
So come on in, take a look around... and when you're ready to have me help you find a great apartment in Beijing just for you, give me a call at (+86) 180-1006-9863 or send me a message via the contact page.
I can't wait to help you find your new
place to live!
Cerise Bai
