I just successfully finished apartment hunting in Hong Kong. I arrived in town on 6 December. My company paid for 30 days at a serviced apartment in Wan Chai. Jonaca and I are taking a short trip through Thailand and Laos on 2 January. That left me with just a few weeks to find a place and move into it.
Things were a bit challenging. To explain the avoidable pressures I was under, I have to start with some characteristics of the local real estate market.
There is no multiple listing service in Hong Kong. There is no single database that contains the available units. Each realtor maintains their own DBs.
The realtors receive information about units when landlords/owners come to them. Landlords go to the realtors in their neighborhood. When prospective tenants look for new places they go to the neighborhood they want to live in and talk to the realtors with offices there. The result is that small neighborhood realtors and realtors with offices everywhere are the ones that best know the neighborhoods.
Before I moved here I investigated the island and decided I wanted to live in Wan Chai or Causeway Bay. My company connected me with a realtor in central near the midlevels, where most expats stay. I did not want to live there. In my first conversation with this realtor they cautioned me away from Causeway Bay. They told me that I should live in midlevels. What did I know? I thought I was getting honest advice.
After day one I had seen about three places in midlevels, two in Wan Chai, one in Causeway Bay. I disliked all the places. I told my smiling and friendly realtor to show me places in Wan Chai on our next day together. He agreed, of course.
A couple days later we did a tour of Wan Chai. I disliked the places we looked at. They were dirty, in disrepair, and not meeting my criteria. One place had a nice view and had a kitchen (not common!). I told my realtor I would consider it. But the unit was terrible condition: the bathroom mirror wall was cracked, the bathroom ceiling was sagging, the wall was taped together behind the toilet, the bathroom vanity’s façade had fallen off, the vanity mirror was corroded, the bar stools were rusted, the blinds were broken, and everything was covered with a shitload of dust. My guy told me there were no other places in Wan Chai. He said the owner would patch up the issues I raised. He said Hong Kong landlords always left units in disrepair and I just needed to understand that this is how the local market worked. I assumed he was doing his best to represent me and, because of the aforementioned time pressure, decided I needed to put in an offer.
I need to point out that at that time that I did not know about the lack of a multi-listing service. I did not know that my assigned realtor had no coverage in Wan Chai. Because they had no Wan Chai coverage they had few units to show me there. And that is why I was being toured through their poor, meagre options in my target neighborhood. I started bemoaning my situation to my colleagues who enlightened me. The next day I walked into a neighborhood realtor. Within three hours I had seen multiple beautiful places right in my neighborhood!
The recommended realtor may be qualified in central, but they are not qualified near the EMC office. Naturally they push people towards their area of strength. In fact, just before I arrived another new hire in my company was similarly referred to this realtor by our relocation assistants. They also guided him to their home turf and now that poor guy hates how far he is from work.