Hi,

I am looking for an apartment.
Does anyone know if a real estate agent here has exclusivity?

If I work with two different agents is that a problem?

Thanks

Sam

no agents has exclusivity in China. you are free to work with any number of agents you want. In fact, the big G here is still wondering how to regulate the housing agent industry and license requirements did not exist until a couple of years ago! hahhaha... this is China, work with the best and do anything to get the task at hand done. There is no loyalty owing to any of these service providers.

Hi Sam,

Not only is there no problem with doing this, it is HIGHLY recommended. I recently changes apartments and used about 5 different agents when looking for my new place. Some of the agants have the same listings (I think it is just one big database they use) and you may go to see the same apartment more than once, however the listing price may not be the same with all of the agents. Remember that the higher the final price the higher their commission is. It is quite difficult to find an agent that you can trust. Some of ours were just in it to make a high comission and were not really interested i helping us negotiate and some were just really bad at negotiating so shop around.

I finally found a good agent that I really liked, she showed us places that really fit into what we were looking for and not just stuff that she needed to offload, she was agressive in negotiations and her company policy is that the landlord (and not you) pays the commission. If you want let me know and I will PM you her info.

Good luck,

a good agent is a must and no shame shopping around with more than one agent! may the better one win (which of course does exclusively refer to the final price/package of the place to rent). after all, you are the customer and it is your money.

i had one and the same apartment offered to me by two different agents at a mere 20% difference in rent price. both said "last offer price from landlord". strange...