The “position” is lost. For this 17-square-meter space, Li Xiaofeng took four days off in the past week, called the police five times, and went to court once. But in the end, it was lost.
In March of this year, Li Xiaofeng rented this room from Eggshells Apartments. For her, who has been struggling in Hangzhou for four years, it’s a suitable place to stay. In addition to carpets, bookshelves, removable closets and shoe cabinets, and various pots and pans, she also bought two large pots of flowers and many succulent plants.
But seven months after moving in, this “position” began to crumble. On November 6, the media exposed the “deep liquidity crisis of Eggshells Apartments,” and she and her husband were forced to leave. The roommates realized that something might be wrong with the eggshell apartments.
Recently, Li Xiaofeng joined a WeChat group of 500 people, mostly young tenants who have prepaid half a year or a full year’s rent and have rent loans, to defend the rights of tenants in the eggshell. One of the unluckiest young people recently paid 60,000 yuan in annual rent.
The problems caused by Eggshells Apartments continue, and related disputes have emerged in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chengdu and other places. At the headquarters of Eggshells Apartments in Beijing, a staff member revealed that in Beijing alone, there are more than 110,000 tenants and 40,000 landlords of Eggshells.
Originally, Eggshells rents the apartment from the landlord, renovates it and then sublets it to the tenant. It usually collected half a year or a year’s rent in advance from the tenant, and then paid the landlord monthly or quarterly. Now, the landlord whose eggshells have stopped paying rent wants the apartment back. Tenants returning from business trips have found the locks changed by the landlord, water and electricity disconnected from the property, and doors removed from the house. In rented housing, young people have tried to argue their case with the Civil Code, but this has not helped.
In January 2020, Eggshell Apartments rang the bell and went public. It took a real-life model home for young tenants and moved it to the doorstep of the New York Stock Exchange. “I hope to provide a warm shell for everyone who is in a foreign country to hatch their dreams. “Gao Jing, the founder and former CEO of EggShells “The name once explained it.
But in the winter of this year, when the “shell” crumbled, many young people felt the chill.
After a 10-day standoff with their landlord, Li Xiaofeng and her roommate finally had to leave the 17-square-meter house late on the night of November 23rd-the landlord had changed the locks on the door while they were at work, and they couldn’t get into the house. The police officers who were called to the apartment said they could do nothing about it, and advised them to sue the apartment in court. From 7:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. the next morning, Li Xiaofeng packed bags and boxes of different sizes in the hallway, the voice-activated lights going off and on. In the rain, the moving van pulled three times, the last car out of the neighborhood, Li Xiaofeng looked at the time, it was 4 am.
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Li Xiaofeng’s peaceful life was shattered half a month ago when her “housekeeper” was completely disconnected. At that time, her “housekeeper” was completely disconnected, the cleaning service had stopped for a long time, and utility bills appeared on the security door.
She first tried to negotiate with Eggshells Apartments. But the communication and complaint channels on the Eggshells App were not working, and the service calls were not answered. She and her roommate turned to negotiate with the landlord again to rent the apartment from him. However, after paying a full year’s rent for Eggshells, Li and her roommate didn’t have much money left, and they wanted the landlord to waive one month’s rent as a discount.
The landlord didn’t budge. First, he pulled the electric circuit breaker on the rental house two nights in a row, cut the power cord on the third night, and on the fourth day, seeing that the cord was hooked up, the landlord simply removed the house’s circuit breaker, plunging her and her two other roommates into darkness once again.
They called the police and put a notice to the landlord and the locksmith company on the door, which was also transcribed with the relevant articles of the General Principles of Civil Law and Criminal Law, and wrote to their friends to cheer themselves up, “The landlord took the circuit breaker today and we caught him on camera. “
On the night of the 23rd, she hastily packed her personal belongings into plastic bags and small and large cardboard boxes and temporarily moved into a friend’s rental house.
Li Xiaofeng “hated and was angry and frustrated,” but also What can be done? “
A user replied, “can not afford to spend, the landlord does not budge, eggshell no money, deadlock. “There are also suggestions, “print a few copies of the rental contract to carry with you, as well as ID cards, if you come back from work and find that the locks have been changed, and then find a locksmith company to pry open. “
The farce of frequent lock changes is played out between landlords and tenants, and “whoever has the lock has the initiative. -A landlord learns from experience. For the past half-dozen months, locksmiths have been doing so much business that a locksmith in Beijing’s Chaoyang district had to register another micro signal in order to fit in the constant influx of friend requests.
He took both the landlord’s and tenant’s business. He explained in his advertisement in the circle of friends that the landlord did not receive the rent paid by the eggshells, and according to their contract, the landlord has the right to change the locks. The tenant signed a formal contract with Eggshells, and if the rent is not in arrears, the tenant has the right to ask for the lock.
The lock on the door of the house was also broken directly. In a video posted on Weibo, the landlord stands outside the door with a hammer, leaving traces of a smashed combination lock. After the tenant opens the door, the landlord immediately removes the electric meter and pipes, smashes the sink with a hammer, and breaks the rain shower.
“I just want to tell you that I’ll see you outside if you don’t move your stuff in two days! ” the landlord bellowed. “Now (the tenant) has more right to use than (the landlord) has to own,” sobbed the young female tenant. “How am I supposed to rent an apartment when I’m giving money to eggshells? “
There was also a middle-aged man who jumped from the balcony into the bedroom and then ran to the front door to change the locks, which the young tenant was unable to stop; a female tenant, dressed in housecoat, clutched a knife and stood in the corner, hissing against the people who had come to collect the room, but the knife was never raised.
The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to its customers. They don’t really know when they will be able to use these, “but it’s better than nothing. “
Shi Yunge, a tenant in Beijing, also negotiated with her landlord. She and her roommate called the 12368 legal aid hotline for advice, called the Beijing 12345 hotline and 110, collected contact information for young people affected by rental loans in Beijing, approached the property, housing, court and banking regulators, and added rights advocacy groups around the country at ……. But her knowledge and information became available when her landlord’s family of four arrived. It’s not worth mentioning”.
When Shiyunge’s landlord took over the room, he chose a “civilized way. The older male landlord moved into an empty room in the rental and “just used everyone’s stuff. They were afraid to put things in common areas such as the bathroom and kitchen. What was once a quiet and private space became noisy.
Some landlords have also sent their elderly mothers to talk to tenants. “When we reasoned with her a little, she started shaking her hands and gasping for air. We were afraid of what might happen to her in the house and wanted to contact the landlord, but we didn’t have contact information. The young tenant was at a loss.
The WeChat language of a Beijing tenant with her landlord was made into a long audio file and sent to the WeChat group as an example of communication with the landlord. The girl restrains her trembling tone and says to the landlord, “Auntie, do you really not know the law or do you know that you are breaking the law, the agreement you signed with the eggshell is a property trust, not a lease. “
“We know they don’t have the power to do anything, but when you actually want to confront them, you find that they’re older or more experienced,” said Schyunger, who is usually articulate and has more experience. The person who analyzed the problem with clarity was dumbfounded when confronted with the landlord. “You can’t fight back against that kind of anger. “
2.
On November 19, the Beijing Municipal Housing and Construction Commission said that a task force had been set up to deal with the issue of eggshell apartments, hoping that the matter could be resolved smoothly, and the follow-up plan would be announced in a timely manner.
On Nov. 24, the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Housing and Construction issued an Emergency Notice on Stabilizing the Tenants of Eggshells Apartments, which required that properties should not evict the tenants through water and electricity outages. The notice subsequently became a microblogging sensation. As of this writing, it is considered “the only written notice that actually protects tenants’ rights” by tenants.
In contrast, in recent years, there have been a number of “lightning strikes” in long-stay apartments. According to Xinhua News Agency, since 2018, more than a hundred long-leased apartments have “exploded,” leaving behind Landlords and tenants often have to pay for the “hole” themselves. The “tenant” is the “tenant”. Experts suggest that the regulatory authorities should be heavy-handed to prevent tenants from paying for the bursting of the capital bubble.
Some scholars believe that 2015 is an important node for the development of long term rental apartments. The 2015 China Long Term Rental Apartment Development Report shows that by the end of that year, there were more than 500 long term rental apartment operators with more than 1 million rooms – one of the many long term rental apartments established in that year was Eggshell.
The capital once had “firm confidence” in the long term rental market. It’s impossible for young people to afford a house once they graduate. There must be hundreds of millions of people in China,” the capital said. They can live better, more decent, and safer, so that their families will no longer worry about them or fret over a bed, which is a matter of national importance. Liu Erhai, founding and managing partner of Joy Capital, one of the earliest and largest institutional shareholders of Eggshells Apartments, said in an interview.
Long-term rental apartments are accommodating more and more young foreigners. The tenants of Eggshells are concentrated between the ages of 22 and 30, highly educated, and have a stable income. Another long-stay apartment, with a tenant base of more than a million in 2017, has 77 percent of tenants with bachelor’s degrees or higher, 70 percent under 30, and 86 percent unmarried. 58 percent of the tenants live alone. 58 percent live alone.
Han Dong, a tenant in Beijing, walked into a long-stay apartment in 2015 – with wooden floors, painted walls, and a Scandinavian-style bed and desk, the room looked bright enough for him to feel comfortable. The apartment has a regular housekeeping service, and items that break can be reported directly in the app ……, providing a quality one-stop service. “This saves time and “emotional cost” of communicating with the landlord. The co-tenant is also young – the contract even requires the tenant to be between the ages of 18 and 40.
He did have a comfortable 5 years in a long term apartment. Last December, he changed rentals due to a change in his work address. He switched from another long-stay apartment to an eggshell because of housing issues.
Along with the young people who have put down roots, there is a wild expansion of long term rental apartments. According to the prospectus submitted at the end of October 2019, Eggshells Apartments has entered 13 city markets across China, operating a total of 432,600 rooms by the end of 2019, a 176-fold increase in the number of rooms compared to the end of 2015. In the same year, Eggshells Apartments was the second largest long term rental apartment operator in China and had the fastest growth in the number of rooms, the fastest growth rate in the industry.
“I chose Eggshells on my second rental. The tenant Zhang Lu recalled that she met a “black agent” when she first rented an apartment. “She did not know that she was renting a cubicle. Shortly after the city cleaned up the cubicle, her room was demolished and “inside was rubble, with no water or electricity”. She also had problems getting her deposit back – they made excuses that she couldn’t get her deposit back because she broke something, and finally called the police to resolve the problem.
She used to think of eggshells as a solution to her rental troubles, but now that hope has been dashed.
The number of QQ groups and WeChat groups spontaneously set up by young tenants is increasing. A landlord found a new agent to sign the contract, entrusting the agent to “solve the problem”. The new agent told the tenant that disconnecting the water and electricity and changing the locks, which had already been implemented in many landlord groups, was the most effective way for them. The police and law enforcement agencies will only negotiate and prosecute the problem.
The first thing that you need to do is to make sure that you have a good understanding of what you are doing and how you are doing it. “
But this time she felt a greater difficulty, “black intermediaries at any rate, there are police or something to help, like eggshells this fall, we do not know who to look for to protect their rights. “
On November 28, Eggshells Apartments pushed a text message to both owners and tenants, in addition to the way to handle the termination of the contract with Eggshells, the text message also mentioned that tenants can negotiate amicably with owners to establish a new lease relationship. The renovations, furniture and appliances, and deposits paid to the landlord invested by Eggshells Apartments can be negotiated between the landlord and the tenant to be used to offset the rent paid to the landlord. “If there is no consensus, the tenant may apply to the relevant authorities for mediation or file a lawsuit with the people’s court in accordance with the law. “
3.
The WeChat and QQ groups for defending rights in eggshell apartments are divided into “landlords” and “landlords”. There are two types of “tenants”. Either way, the quota of 500 people is quickly filled, and new groups are created in succession. Those who joined the group changed their notes according to the “payment method – term” format, and more subdivided groups immediately appeared.
Li Xiaofeng and her roommate went to the Hangzhou branch of Eggshell Apartments for advice. On November 16, the company had taken down its brand, and only three staff members remained.
A staff member from the headquarters in Beijing told reporters that he had been sent to resolve the dispute since November 12. Most of the workstations at the headquarters were empty because of unpaid wages. He roughly estimated that in the first few days, more than 1,500 tenants came every day to solve the problem. Now, even more landlords are coming, and “the problems are more complicated and more difficult to solve. Both landlords and tenants need to get their numbers in line, and on November 30, tenants were already in line until the 16th of the following month.
Some tenants said they were sick of the eggshells staff’s rhetoric. “Saying one thing to the landlord and another to the tenant, leaving the two victims to ‘strangle’ each other,” they said. “.
Tenants can terminate their lease with Eggshells, but “no one knows when the rent balance will be refunded.” Li Xiaofeng is a tenant who used a rental loan – she applied for a credit loan from Wezhong Bank, and the bank lent her one year’s worth of rent money to Eggshells, and she paid her rent monthly and repaid the loan to the bank every month. Some group members told her that she could apply for personal credit protection in the WeChat public number of “Wezhong Bank Consumer Loans for Rent” and that the protection period would expire on March 31, during which she should move out. You can avoid paying the rent loan without affecting your credit.
“But what about after the protection period? “Li Xiaofeng asked.
The tenant next door to Li Xiaofeng, Yuan Lei, has also experienced a “thunderstorm” in the long term rental apartments. The company has been in the process of developing the newest and most popular of its products. In October of this year, the agent ran away, and she and the landlord entered into a “tug-of-war” session. I understand that it’s not easy for the landlord to receive the money, but the tenants are mostly foreigners, so I feel helpless in this situation,” she said. She was worried about the landlord forcing her to change the locks or clean out her belongings while she was at work, and Yuan Lei brought her mother over to see the house.
The last face-to-face negotiation with the landlord went through arguments, confrontations and even pushing and shoving, with no sense of decency left. She reluctantly signed a new rental agreement with her landlord, requiring her to pay him an additional rent of slightly below market rate. “I didn’t want to sign, but I had no other choice. “At night, she heard her mother lying in bed, tossing and turning and sighing. She thought about filing a lawsuit, but “the cost of the time alone would be too much to spend.”
Trust in eggshell apartments among users has fallen to a freezing point. “The job assignment I received was two words, ‘appease’. ” said one eggshell staff member, but in reality, fewer and fewer people are calm and more and more agitated.
“Why doesn’t anyone care? “A landlord with a flowery cotton bag said she was coming to the Eggshells headquarters for the third time with gray hair. She didn’t want to embarrass the children in the house, and wanted to ask Eggshell to pay the rent she owed herself, arrange the tenants well, and then terminate the lease.
Ba Shusong, chief economist of the China Banking Association, mentioned in a 2018 research article that “housing, not speculation” With the successive introduction of policies such as “rent and purchase”, housing rental enterprises have once become a hotspot for capital. There have been a number of “finance + long term rental apartments” model long term rental apartment enterprises have been frequently “Explosion”. Once a long term rental enterprise runs away or the capital chain breaks, the landlord will not be able to continue to get the rent and then evict the tenant, while the tenant will have to continue to pay the monthly loan and face the predicament of having no home to live in. He believes that the risks inherent in the rental loan business have had an impact on the financial market and social stability.
Some scholars also said that, in response to the problems of rental management services, at this stage in the field of long-term rental apartments, there are no clear norms and standards to define the above-mentioned problems, and has not yet issued an effective management of long-term rental enterprises to solve the above-mentioned problems.
In December 2019, the Ministry of Housing and Construction, together with the National Development and Reform Commission and six other departments, issued the Opinions on Rectifying and Regulating the Housing Leasing Market Order, which requires that by the end of 2022, long-term rental apartments should ensure that the rental income from installment payments such as “rental loans” does not account for more than 30% of the total rental income.
In September this year, the Ministry of Housing and Construction issued the “Regulations on Housing Leasing (Draft for Public Comments),” which clearly regulates the qualifications, behavior, supervision mechanisms and legal responsibilities of housing leasing enterprises, and will stop the leasing chaos and guide the healthy development of the industry. There are also some places that have implemented new regulatory policies such as “risk prevention and control funds” on a trial basis.
What tenants are most concerned about is still the immediate problem – how long can they live in their prepaid apartment, will they be evicted by the landlord and will they have to continue to pay their rent? Tenants who have moved out are paying double rent, while those who haven’t are anxiously waiting for their landlord to come to them.
A company “not affiliated with Eggshells” sent out an internal notice on Nov. 15, counting the number of employees who had rented Eggshells. In addition to arranging for the legal department to help employees deal with such problems, “if it is true that the dispute has caused difficulties in renting an apartment, the company will subsidize one month’s rent. The company will subsidize one month’s rent.” There were 77 people who requested the subsidy. Among them, in addition to the tenants of Eggshells Apartments, there are also employees who encountered nine other “runaway” agents.
There are also netizens on Weibo who are willing to open their doors and provide short-term transition or luggage storage assistance to tenants in Beijing who have been affected by the thunderstorm at Eggshells Apartments.
A young tenant nicknamed “Chen Yiyi” lamented on the social media platform that she hadn’t found an answer to her question, but had received many replies from strangers. “I don’t know how to help you, it’s not easy being a floater in the north. If you don’t mind, you can share a room with me.” “If you don’t have a place to stay after December or want to leave your luggage, contact me. There are also landlords who are trying to “unleash the goodwill”.
Some landlords are also trying to “release goodwill. One landlord said on Weibo that it was the first time he met tenants who were “young, came to Shanghai to work, looking for stability and peace of mind to find an eggshell. He negotiated with the tenants and waited until the end of December to decide whether to terminate the lease with the eggshells, with both sides sharing the losses on a 50-50 basis. He was willing to extend the lease to the tenants at a lower price. On the day of the meeting, they were accompanied by the property to find information on how to pay for utilities – “not to disconnect utilities, of course, but so that the tenants could continue to pay for them themselves or with our help after the lease was terminated. “
After moving out of the Eggshells, Xiaofeng Li and Yunge Shi rented a new apartment from another renter. They are used to and like this rental model. The lesson they learned from their previous experience is to put down three payments and never use rental loans or annual payments again. When they see an announcement that seems to be from the headquarters of Eggshells or Wenzhong Bank, they have to read it word for word and ask, “And then what? Who will guarantee it? “
Along with the eggshells, there is a sense of security for the young tenants. “We want to find an apartment sooner, so we don’t have to be evicted by the landlord,” wrote an eggshell Suzhou tenant. One tenant from Suzhou wrote: “We want to find an apartment sooner, so we don’t have to be evicted by the landlord. Others lamented, “Living in someone else’s house, one never knows if there will be a sudden problem tomorrow. ”
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