“It’s too difficult to rent a suitable house in a big city.” The
cost of renting a house is high. There are few available houses and the rental relationship is not stable.
● Renting a house in big cities is faced with problems such as high renting costs, few available houses, unstable leasing relations, etc., and the pressure on renting is great
● Behind the problem, it reflects the contradiction between supply and demand of rental housing in China. Whether it is market-oriented rental housing or affordable rental housing, it is generally difficult to meet the needs of social development.
There are currently structural problems in the leasing market. From the perspective of rights and obligations, tenants are in a relatively weak position in terms of information knowledge, transaction status, and transaction forms. The country needs to further protect the rights and interests of renters in law.
● In the housing rental market, only when the supply-demand relationship reaches a basic balance, can we formulate a complete, fair and standardized system, and provide a complete system guarantee for the housing rental market with special legislation
□ Our reporter Chen Lei
□ Our newspaper trainee reporter Sun Tianjiao
“It’s too difficult to rent a suitable house in a big city!” On the afternoon of October 17, 29-year-old Liu Yuan (pseudonym) stood in front of a unit building in Huajiadi Community, Chaoyang District, Beijing. At the same time, while counting his luggage, he told a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily.
Liu Yuan has moved home four times since he graduated with a master's degree and worked for more than two years.
"The rent is too expensive." He exclaimed.
At present, there are not a few people who just need renting houses like Liu Yuan.
According to the seventh national census, China’s migrant population will be 376 million in 2020, and a considerable number of them will need to rent houses.
Many interviewees said that renting a house in big cities faces problems such as high renting costs, few available housing options, and unstable leasing relationships, and the pressure on renting houses is high.
Experts interviewed by reporters believe that these problems reflect the nature of the rental housing market in short supply.
To solve this problem, special legislation is needed to provide a complete system guarantee for the housing rental market, and more importantly, the supply of rental housing must be increased.
Rent accounts for more than half of income
Frequent moving and unstable life
After graduating, Liu Yuan joined a company and rented a partitioned house through a well-known intermediary platform. Although the house has convenient transportation and is close to the unit, the rent is too expensive.
In order to save money, he later found a small intermediary to rent a relatively cheap room.
However, this experience of renting a house made him exhausted: after moving in, he found that the sanitary condition of the house was poor and the noise was loud, and the management fee and sanitation fee were paid but no one provided services. When negotiating with the intermediary, the other party's attitude was arrogant.
In the end, Liu Yuan recovered the remaining rent by calling the Beijing Government Service Convenience Hotline.
After renting a house many times, the most difficult thing for Liu Yuan to accept is the rent-a set of "old and broken small", two bedrooms and a small living room without windows. Renting one of the small bedrooms actually costs 3,000 yuan to 3500 yuan. It accounts for more than half of his monthly income. "Living closer to the company, the rent is ridiculously high; the low rent is usually in the suburbs, and commuting is a problem."
He also found that no matter which agency rents the house, the longest rental period is one year.
"After the contract expires, it is reasonable to say that the intermediary fee should be waived for the second year of renewal, but in fact, not only an intermediary fee has to be paid, but the rent often rises to a certain extent. I can only go before the expiration of the contract. Find a house with a favorable price."
For Liu Yuan, every house change is a challenge.
“It’s not easy to find a relatively satisfactory house within a limited budget. Looking at the house, bargaining, avoiding pits, and many other links cannot tolerate the slightest sloppy.” Once, he was exhausted after seeing 7 apartments in 4 communities a day. .
During the interview, the truck on the Internet moving platform reserved by Liu Yuan rushed to the front of the unit building.
Liu Yuan and the driver put all his belongings in Beijing into the car and set off for the new rental apartment.
This time, he and his colleagues rented a two-bedroom apartment for 6,200 yuan a month. In accordance with the contract's "pay for three" payment method and other miscellaneous expenses, the two paid the intermediary 15,000 yuan each.
For Liu Yuan and his colleagues, who had almost no deposits, "the pressure was great, and we all borrowed money."
The 33-year-old Lin Xiao (pseudonym) empathizes with Liu Yuan’s rental experience.
Ten years ago, she went to Beijing from her hometown in Henan Province to find a job and started the history of renting a house.
Due to her low income, she rented a three-bedroom second bedroom near China World Trade Center at a monthly rent of 1,500 yuan.
"The living environment in my hometown is pretty good. I suddenly shared a bathroom with so many strangers. I was very uncomfortable." Lin Xiao moved out soon and rented a two-bedroom apartment alone. The monthly rent rose to 4000. Yuan.
Soon, she realized that such renting was "expensive and wasteful", so she posted a post on the online forum for renting, and she quickly found a female co-renter.
A peaceful life is always difficult to last.
In 2016, the landlord temporarily notified her to take back the house. In desperation, Lin Xiao and her roommate rented a two-bedroom apartment in a hurry through an intermediary platform.
But soon after the contract was signed, the owner of the house sold the house, and they were restricted to move out within two weeks.
"After all, it's another family's house, and we are not too honest. Fortunately, the landlord compensated us a little bit." Looking back on his 10-year rental experience, Lin Xiao told reporters frankly, "I feel very uneasy when I rent a house and move frequently."
Apply for affordable rental housing
Location is far from comfortable commuting
There are many inconveniences to living in a house that is cheap and does not need to move frequently.
This is the deep feeling of Guo Bangbang, a post-90s returnee master and a short video platform blogger.
On the afternoon of October 16, the reporter saw her wearing a beige coat and long hair in a coffee shop near the China International Exhibition Center.
"One is uncomfortable, the second is the long commute, and the third is the service can't keep up." Guo Bangbang said. After living in a public rental house near Beijing's West Fifth Ring Road for half a year, she and her husband resolutely moved out of there.
29-year-old Guo Bangbang graduated with a master's degree from Birmingham City University in the United Kingdom. He met his current husband at school and came to Beijing to work hard after graduation.
At the beginning, the couple rented a house in Beijing, with a monthly rent of about 7,000 yuan.
At the beginning of 2020, her husband’s unit notified that they could apply for public rental housing for talents as affordable rental housing. The couple who did not have a Beijing hukou tried to apply for a public rental housing with a zero-bedroom (full open-plan room).
"When we applied, we looked at the fierce competition in the two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments that others applied for, so we chose the small apartment in the opposite direction. This way, the chances of applying for it would be greater." Guo Bangbang said that in September of that year, they moved into public rental housing. The monthly rent is more than 2,000 yuan, and the rent has dropped a lot. It feels good.
But Guo Bangbang soon discovered the "bad" of the house: the area of the room is too small, put a big bed in, there is not much space left, once cooking is full of the smell of the house, you will touch it when you turn around in the toilet. Head.
Guo Bangbang's husband often goes to meetings on the cloud. In order not to disturb her husband's work, she either goes for a walk or stays in the toilet.
"During that time, both of us felt that the quality of life plummeted, and we were very uncomfortable and even a little depressed." She said, in addition, commuting too far was also a big problem. She went to work in the CBD and needed public transportation every time. One and a half hours, especially when I walked back against the wind from Babaoshan subway station, the north wind was blowing in the winter, there were few people on the road, and the cemetery next to it was "tired and scared".
The surrounding living facilities are also insufficient.
Grocery markets and supermarkets are far away and shopping is particularly inconvenient; once, when she went back from work at night, she found that the fingerprint lock could not open the door, and contacted the administrator by phone to find no one, and she could not find the unlocker, so she had to squat at the door. Waited for a long time.
She sometimes thinks: "Why do you have to work so hard for this little house?"
At the end of 2020, her husband resigned from the original unit. The company applied for the talent public rental housing. Resignation means giving up the talent public rental housing.
In January this year, the couple moved out of the public rental housing and rented an apartment near Sanyuan Bridge in Beijing. The troubles of renting a house continue.
Shortcomings in the leasing market to be filled
The contradiction between housing supply and demand must be resolved
There are many people like Guo Bangbang and Liu Yuan who need to rent a house and worry about renting a house.
With the acceleration of China's urbanization process and the expansion of the floating population, the housing difficulties of young people have become increasingly prominent.
The "2020 Blue Book of Chinese Youth Rental Life" released in September last year stated that urban rental life has become the choice of more than 200 million people.
Zhao Xiuchi, a professor at Capital University of Economics and Business, and vice president and secretary-general of the Beijing Real Estate Law Society, has been concerned about housing issues for a long time.
She told reporters that the housing rental market is an important part of the entire real estate market. Since the reform of the housing system, the housing shortage in various cities in China has been basically resolved. The majority of new citizens and young people who do not have housing are mainly new citizens and young people. To solve the housing problem, the focus of the future real estate market is to develop and standardize the rental market.
"To solve the housing problem of these people, we should simultaneously rent and sell to solve the housing difficulties of new citizens as much as possible." said Bi Wenqiang, vice president and secretary-general of the Beijing Property Law Research Association.
Experts also gave their opinions on how to solve the problems encountered by renters, such as high cost of renting a house, few available houses, unstable leasing relations, and poor dispute resolution channels.
Bi Wenqiang believes that the current housing leasing market has certain chaos, which reflects some shortcomings in the housing leasing market, such as the lack of market order and norms, some real estate brokerage agencies publish false housing information, non-refundable deposit rents, malicious evictions of tenants, and influence The society is harmonious and stable.
"The supervision system and mechanism are in a state of lack to a certain extent. The information of each department is not smooth enough, and each department has its own governance, and has not established a related joint supervision mechanism. Multiple law enforcement and blind law enforcement coexist." Bi Wenqiang pointed out.
In Zhao Xiuchi's view, the current housing leasing market has some shortcomings, mainly because since the reform of the housing system, all localities and departments have been focusing on property housing sales, and the leasing market has paid less attention.
Lou Jianbo, director of the Real Estate Law Research Center of Peking University Law School, analyzed that behind the problem is the contradiction between supply and demand in rental housing in China. Whether it is market-oriented rental housing or affordable rental housing, it is generally difficult to meet social development. need.
"There are currently structural problems in the leasing market. From the perspective of rights and obligations, tenants are in a relatively weak position in terms of information knowledge, transaction status, and transaction forms. The country needs to further protect the rights and interests of renters from the law." Bi Wenqiang Say.
Increase supply to balance supply and demand
Special legislation to promote system improvement
Lin Xiao has always "longed to live in her own house". During the renting period, she applied for the purchase of a shared property house and obtained the qualification to buy a house this year. Although it is a bit far from the city, she can officially bid farewell to the rental life after all.
"After one or two years, when I live in my own house, I will truly feel a sense of belonging in this city." Lin Xiao said frankly.
Guo Bangbang is also on the road to buying a house. She and her husband are working hard to save money and plan to buy a second-hand house in Beijing's Fourth Ring Road in the past two years to avoid commuting.
For some time to come, Liu Yuan will still live by renting a house. His hope is: "This move will allow me to live longer and less worry about renting a house. Thank God."
Liu Yuan's expectation represents the aspirations of many renters.
So, how can renters have a stable expectation that they can live in the city affordable and well?
In Zhao Xiuchi's view, local governments, especially large cities, should implement policies in accordance with the city to provide different rental housing for different income groups. It is the government's responsibility to provide affordable housing for low-income earners. Middle-to-high income earners can rent commercial housing.
"Issuing housing leasing regulations to ensure the stable leasing relationship between the leasing parties is a long-term strategy for the development of the leasing market. The leasing market is more of market behavior, allowing the market to play a greater role, and the government is responsible for low-end protection." Zhao Xiuchi said Individual leasing is still the main force in the leasing market. Individual leasing can also enable tenants to "afford and live well", and reduce the transaction cost of rented housing and the burden on tenants, which is of great significance to increasing supply and stabilizing the rental market.
Bi Wenqiang's suggestion is to increase the effective supply.
"The housing for new citizens and young people to live in for a long time. It is a small-sized rental housing with convenient transportation and a low-end price; it is a rental housing with stable rental relationships and easy dispute resolution; it can meet basic housing needs. Affordable rental housing."
Lou Jianbo also suggested increasing the supply of rental housing. Not only should the government increase the supply of security and policy-based rental housing resources, but also design related systems to encourage housing property owners to invest idle resources into the housing rental market, so as to ensure the relationship between supply and demand in the market. Basically balanced.
In Lou Jianbo's view, this system must be able to protect the interests of the lessor and the lessee in a fair and just manner.
For example, a system that encourages the establishment of medium and long-term lease relationships should allow the lessor to reasonably increase rents every year to stabilize the lease relationship.
"In the housing leasing market, only when the supply and demand relationship reaches a basic balance, can we formulate a complete, fair and standardized system, and provide a complete system guarantee for the housing leasing market with special legislation." Lou Jianbo said.