How hard can it be to rent an apartment for the first time

On July 6, the topic of “How hard can it be to rent an apartment for the first time” was on the Weibo hot search list. As the annual graduation season approaches, renting an apartment is still the first hurdle that most young people in China have to overcome when they first enter society.

Zhao Min, who has just graduated and become a drifter in the north, found that when she entered the following criteria on various rental apps: third ring in the northeast, near Sanyuanqiao, two-family share, commuting time within half an hour, and monthly rent less than 3,000 yuan, there were almost no properties of more than 10 square meters, and the monthly rent of 3,000 yuan accounted for one third of his salary.

Not only are rents in first-tier cities too high, but they also rise every year, forcing tenants to change rooms frequently to lower their cost of living.

“Three moves are like one fire” is a British proverb that describes the loss of life caused by frequent moves.

According to Shell Research Institute, the average rental period of Chinese renters is about 8 months, while the average rental cycles in Germany, Japan and the UK are 11 years, 5.2 years and 2.5 years respectively.

This means that young people drifting around China’s first- and second-tier cities face a “fire” in their homes almost every two years after they get out of school.

Even so, millions of college students choose to stay in first-tier cities every year in order to get a more level playing field and more opportunities for job development.

Is it true that you can’t have both the fish and the bear’s paw? In fact, with the balanced development of China’s regions today, young people no longer need to make exclusions in terms of quality of life and career prospects.

This reporter has calculated the ratio of rent to income in major first- and second-tier cities so far in 2019, and the results show that

the old first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen are still dynamic, but for young people, the 30% rent-to-income ratio is really stressful

North, Shanghai and Shenzhen: opportunities and hardships coexist

In 2019-2021, the first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen have steadily ranked among the top three in rent-to-income ratio for consecutive years, and are the three cities with the greatest rental pressure. Among them, Beijing and Shenzhen data are almost equal, alternately occupying the top of the list for three years. According to the per capita rental area of 20 square meters, tenants in Beijing and Shenzhen spend about 30% of their annual income on renting, and the pressure should not be underestimated.

According to a report released by Shell Research Institute in 2021, 89.1% of the current graduates said that the acceptable rent-to-income ratio is 30% and below, of which 10%-20% is the main range, accounting for about 40.9%, followed by 20%-30%, accounting for about 26.7%.

Despite the high cost of renting, Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai are still the cities with the most job opportunities in the country. These cities are home to the largest number of Fortune 500 companies in the world, with diversified industries such as finance, technology, real estate, energy, etc. Whether you want to knock the code in the office building or want to go to the construction site to move bricks, the North, Shanghai and Shenzhen can accommodate you, providing you with a relatively fair workplace environment, as well as the quality resources of an international metropolis.

But the cost of staying in these first-tier cities is also directly proportional to the opportunity.

Since entering the graduation season, rents in Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai have been rising under the pull of demand. According to Zhuge Finder Data Research Center, the average rental prices in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing rose by 2.85%, 2.56% and 2.92% respectively in June compared to the previous month.

Li Lin, a recent graduate of Beijing Normal University, started to look at houses centrally on June 20, when she found that the rent of the house she had previously looked at had increased by nearly 300 yuan compared to 10 days earlier.

Li Lin wanted to find a shared room with a monthly rent of less than one-third of her salary, but there were only a limited number of suitable rooms within her budget, and the market was so hot that sometimes a room was rented at noon after she had made an appointment to see it in the morning. In the end, she had to rent a partitioned room for 2,500 yuan. She was always worried that her room would be demolished and she would have to sleep on the street if her neighbors reported her.

One of Lilin’s classmates works at a school and the cost of renting an apartment is even higher than hers. Because all the apartments available for rent near her workplace are expensive school districts, she doesn’t want to be too far from her workplace, so she has to rent a single room of 20 square meters for half her salary of about 3,600 yuan a month.

Li Lin’s classmate saw a room with a monthly rent of 2,800 yuan and an area of about 10 square meters; the interviewee provided a picture

In Beijing and Shenzhen, where rental costs are high, some graduates even move into urban villages where rents are relatively low in order to save costs, but in the urbanization and transformation process of recent years, urban villages also face the risk of demolition at any time.

Often, once the demolition notice is posted, these young tenants, have to move out of the village in a hurry, and the deposit is nowhere to be found.