I will soon be relocating from the U.S. to Shanghai with my wife and 3 children. We are pretty sure that we want to live in the Jinqiao area because of the schools/facilities/ex-pat communitites. Can someone (many people hopefully) gave me guidance on what kind of villa I can expect to get for $7000-9000/mo. We have been looking online at Green Hills, Green Hills Willowbrook, Green Villas, Vizcaya, Regency Park, Seasons Villas, and Dong Jiao Garden Villas (all the usually suspects it sounds like). I have seen some older prices but it seems that they are changing (going up!) all the time.

Please help, I will visit sometime in August and want to start preparing my family for what to expect. We have it pretty good in the the U.S. in a 3500 sq.ft. 5 bedroom 4 bath home. Not really expecting to find the same in Shanghai but I would like to know what $8000/mo gets you in Jinqiao.

There is no going rate it all comes down to how good you are at negotiating. PM me if you need help in finding a place!

Suggest you temporary settle for a serviced apartment when you arrive.
It will be convenient while you work out the best house you want to move in. If you will have the time to look around, you can choose the best location and house you want. $8,000 for a villa is about what you will pay in that area.

Juan has it right. If you take a couple weeks in a serviced apartment, it could improve your circumstances significantly. You should be able find something nice and suitable for your family in your budget - really should not be a problem. Jingqiao is nice if you also work in Pudong, but if you work in Puxi - you are going to spend a lot of time commuting - even if you have a car and driver.

Horsemandk is right, there is no going rate and the prices are actually going down because expats are looking for cheaper villas and competition is harder now with many new compounds.

Many of the compounds you mention should be less than 7.000,- USD for a 350 sqm villa with good service and access to all kinds of extras. What is most important is like horse says, if you're good at negotiating, you can easily cut off 1.000,- US a month.

Good luck!

Tom-
You need to work this backwards.
Will you have a car and driver? If so, your housing options are open; if not, you need to live in a place that either is close to public transportation (which has its own challenges) or live in a community that provides a variety of free transportation services. Or take taxi everywhere.
Can you speak Mandarin? No, then you need a place where the managment company speaks English and can offer you translation assistance. (Would recommend you sign up for the 'China Help' line phone tranlation service).
How far is your office from where you want to live? Commute time?
Where will your kids go to school? You don't want them sitting on a bus for 60+ minutes?
What about social acitivities for kids?
And don't forget about your wife's needs.

I just moved here last month and all those points need to be considered.
BTW- The banking situation is complex and frustrating. See if you can set it up before you arrive.
Good luck,
Scojay-

Just a bit of background for you about property compounds in Shanghai. There are two kinds of compounds, developer and local housing. You have mentioned both in your posting. Developer’s properties are built by one company and fitted out/furnished in similar décor throughout. All tenants are expats, management speak English and are service orientated (most of the time) and facitities are of good standard. Local housing developments are built by developers and sold as either owner/occupier or leased out. The property is sometimes sold as an empty shell and the owner does the whole fit outs or the villa is sold finished and the owner just buys furniture, lights and curtains so you can get vast variations of style and finish. There is a mixture of expats and local owners there.

The Government is encouraging more local housing developments than developer owned compounds such as Seasons and Green Villas. In the future they will see more competition but at present it’s not really an even playing field. The developer compounds remain popular and high priced because of their quality, facilities and standard of service. Until their vacancy rates drop considerably they’ll remain like this.

Unfortunately, in the local housing compounds some private landlords don’t employ interior designers who understand the decor and furnishings that foreigners like and these properties remain empty. So, whilst there are a large number of local housing villas, not all of these are tenantable. If they were, we wouldn’t be paying the high rentals at the developer compounds.

Hope this background helps a bit.

Good luck with your move!

Adrienne
http://www.shanghaiprops.com

Lots of people recommending services apts as temporary option. Can someome recommend a serviced apt in Jin Qiao area that would sign short term 2-4 month lease?

In reply to Scojay-
I expect the children to attend Concordia school. We will have a car/driver. My work will be in Puxi, but I am not so concerned with my commute as I would like to make it as convenient as possible for mywife and children, and Jin Qiao seems like the place they will be the happiest. None of us speak ANY Mandarin.

tomtrffc, I think you will probably only need a month or so in a serviced apartment so just take it for one month and see how your go. You can extend as you wish. I think the best palce would be Phoenix Mansions in Jinqiao. You can get a feel for the area and explore around.

Cheers,
Adrienne
http://www.shanghaiprops.com

Hi Tom,

Adrienne is right, you'll probably only need 1-2 months at most. It took us about 2 weeks to find a place we liked, and a little over 1 month total for the complete move-in process.

Your price range should give you lots of good options, and even more depending on the negotiation skills of the agent. You will have a relo-agent assigned by your company I assume? If you do, they can be a good bridge between you and the landlord/management over rental issues. We used Santafe Relo and they did a great job negotiating not just the price, but also amenities. They also provide ongoing help with any issues we may encounter as an expat adjusting to the relocation- including interfacing on our behalf with the landlord/non-English speaking management.

I'd go with what other posts read, which is go with some form of temporary accommodation which will allow for you and the family to get a feel for where exactly best suits you. something harder to do from far away, especially if you all have never been here before.

no matter what though, just read as much as you can so that you can be forewarned and therefore forearmed about how things are negotiated and what you are likely to get for your money. be careful and a little watchful over who is doing the translating and dealing for you on your behalf, even if the person is not a real estate agent, its highly likely that the person will take some financial incentive one way or another. since you have no Chinese language ability you can and will be taken advantage of. sounds cynical, but its the reality here in PRC. even the person helps you is a professional or not, it helps to know all the links and connections, and be mindful that even a person can or may sound as though they have a great grasp of the English language, there will be many things that they will most likely not understand at all, but will never tell you. therefore it is very easy for miscommunication and misunderstanding to eventuate. always try to have the person paraphrase back to you, and visa versa. keep in mind some of the everyday, informal street lingo that you use on a daily basis, will most often not be understood. take the difference in US English vs British English which have very different nouns for a large variety of items.

IMO with your budget you can do really well. Incidentally, it might be worth considering taking a serviced apartment for a slightly longer period, and actually buy a property rather than just renting, which is really a waste of capital. sure if its not coming out of your pocket, but in reality many expats used to do this on their overseas postings, using their accommodation allowance to help pay of a mortgage... sensible idea. there are some limitations though that you will need to work through, such as being resident in the country for 12mths before an expat can purchase residential property, and another is that must be bought to be lived in by you. note though that there are creative workarounds to these rules. these and many other requirements are the countries attempt to cool an overheated and speculative property market

Don't know wny you think you must live in this area, especially if you are working in Puxi. We speak no Chinese and only set foot in Pudong when absolutely necessary. I would be recommend keeping an open mind.

tomtrffc wrote:I will visit sometime in August and want to start preparing my family for what to expect.

It'd be best if your wife can come along with you to visit in August. Even if you are very close to your children, she may know the needs of the children and the hosuehold better.

JinQiao is a good area to live!
Concordia is a wonderful school, my son goes there for 3 years, will start the 4th now!
It's convenient to live close to the school, cause we need to go there a lot, participate in our kids school life.
Also, you will have 2 Carrefour, Metro, Decathlon, a lot of restaurants to choose, and a nice envyroment.
If you were single or didn't have kids, I would tell you go to Puxi, but with kids, Pudong is better!

Tom-
My kid also goes to concordia and we leave in Seasons.
PM me if you need more help or advice.
S-

Just remember that there are more than 400 compounds in Shanghai, so you need to build a list of things you need, things you want and things that might be nice to have, then you can locate the right compound.

peytonmanning wrote:Don't know wny you think you must live in this area, especially if you are working in Puxi. We speak no Chinese and only set foot in Pudong when absolutely necessary. I would be recommend keeping an open mind.

Actually he gave a really good reason.

I expect the children to attend Concordia school. We will have a car/driver. My work will be in Puxi, but I am not so concerned with my commute as I would like to make it as convenient as possible for mywife and children, and Jin Qiao seems like the place they will be the happiest.

That's true.. I never thought I could be happy in Shanghai untill we move to this area....So thats a very good reason....