Honestly, Adrienne at Shanghai Properties is someone you want to talk to and work with if you're a western foreigner moving to Shanghai.
I just moved into our house in Shanghai, Jin Qiao. I want to thank Adrienne and her cohort Dru Jones for doing an outstanding job understanding our needs, leveraging strong negotiations skills and providing candid advice that helped keep us out of trouble. I first started looking at ShanghaiExpat.com back in November and began chatting with Adrienne. I couldn’t tell if she was real. Then I actually got to meet Dru Jones, a co-worker of Adrienne’s. Then, finally, I got to meet Adrienne herself in the lobby of the JW Marriott to sign the contract to our permanent/temporary home in Shanghai. I can’t say enough about her. She helped our family work through this complicated and stressful home search odyssey. All of the rationale I had used to come up with grandiose plans for school, home and work were totally thrown out the window. As my wife said, “What’s the point of planning? You don’t know crap until you get there.” She’s always right. No matter how much research you do, in the end you have to simply find someone who you can trust. Otherwise you have to hire multiple real estate agents and pit one against the other – which has it’s own hazards. In fact, that’s how I started out. But it became apparent that Adrienne knew what an American family with two small girls needed and she saved us a lot of time and grief.
I’ve noticed on this web site that whenever anyone provides their observations or gives advice, someone “smarter” always jumps in and throws out an exception or a better way. I’m not here to impress those who are “smarter” than me, I’m just here to offer my point of view to the others who come to Shanghai totally lost and clueless like I was. For those who are interested, I’ll go through what I would do if I had to do it all over again. No replies or comments requested.
First, let me tell you a bit about my situation so you can gauge whether you can use me as a comparison to your family. My family and I are from the Southern US. We have two daughters, ages 6 and 9. My daughters only speak English and have only visited US states or territories. We are moving to Shanghai for a 2-3 year assignment. My office is in People’s Square, which is fairly central in Shanghai on the Puxi side (west of the River). Our plan is to send our kids to a private international school with an American curriculum. Our intent was to limit the kids’ bus ride to 25 minutes and my commute to 45 minutes. Our housing budget is a little north of RMB50k. We plan on having a van/car and a driver. Based on this, here’s what I would have done or did:
1. Finding a real estate agent – [Tip #1] Contact Adrienne early and let her know as much about you and your family as possible. How old are your kids? What are their interests (sports, piano, swimming, ballet, rugby, art, etc)? What does your wife like to do? Budget and desired move in date? How brave or squeamish are you? How often are you going to be flying (domestic or international)? The more she knows, the better she can think about how to match you up with the houses (and more importantly) the neighborhoods you will best fit into. Speak to her before you come to Shanghai for your “look & see” tour.
2. Research the schools as best you can by looking at the web. [Tip #2] Ask the school for the bus routes with the names of the housing compounds, commuting times and number of families in each complex. I didn’t know such a route list existed until my first school visit. This is the single most important information you will need to pick your house. They can send you this through email. This will help you figure out the exact commute time and how likely you will be able to have play dates with children from your school. Keep in mind, the school will be the primary link to social activity and sanity for the non-working spouses. Also, you can’t use distance as an accurate gauge of school commute times since it will depend whether your compound is an early or late stop. Also, some of the bigger compounds will fill a bus at a single stop so your route only has one stop. But if your route is along a string of smaller compounds, your kids may have to hit 5 stops before they reach school.
3. Schools – [Tip #3] Visit every school you think may be a reasonable option and talk to the principal. Visit the school when school is in session, otherwise they all look like minimum security prisons. Visit the schools before you look at any of the houses. You’ll get more done this way. Put down deposits to at least two of the schools. Don’t think you will find some magic objective ranking of the schools - it doesn’t exist since every school and parent thinks their school is the best. You could see which schools are IB accredited or which schools pay their teachers the most or which school has the highest percentage of foreign teachers or which school charges the highest tuition or which school has the best library or which school has the most Asian students – all anecdotal at best. In our case, we are not using the next 2-3 years as spring boards to Stanford so we just wanted to make sure the school was friendly and not intimidating. We also wanted the right location so there was minimal commute time. This is much more complex and difficult to optimize than a UPS truck route on Christmas Eve. We looked at SAS, SCIS and Yew Cheung (in my opinion this is in order of “most” American to “most” Chinese). We chose SCIS in Pudong (middle ground) , a tiny elementary campus of 256 about a 20 minute bus ride from our house.
4. House – quickly realize that if you are from the states, you will not find your “perfect” house. You would never buy any of these homes since the quality is shoddy at best, shoddy and gaudy at worst. But just face the fact that you are not buying this home, you’re just renting it. The main attitude for us was “compromise” – the best combination of location, neighborhood, size, layout, finish out, etc that suited our needs. If you or your spouse are here against their will and just want to pretend you’re still back in Milwaukee, Adrienne can tell you exactly which compounds to hide in. [Tip #4] After looking at 2-3 homes, try to set some simple guidelines on what you are looking for or cannot do without. Don’t be vague like we were and tell the real estate agents things like “looking for something airy and open”. That could mean a chicken coop near a garbage dump – be more specific. Our simple rule became “3 bedrooms on a single floor and a yard”. That immediately eliminated the apartments, small footprint townhomes and palatial villas with 4 living rooms. This is important since it’s all about compromise, which means you need to look at many, many homes in a short period of time. So you don’t want to look at something that you know you won’t live in. Adrienne will help to minimize looking at homes (and wasting valuable time) that are not suitable for you.
5. Neighborhood – this is going to get very, very subjective, so please forgive me. I can only tell you about our thought process. I am only saying this was right for us, I’m not looking for nor require validation from anyone. Don’t underestimate how difficult it’s going to be to get around. English is not commonly spoken here. People stay at the Sheraton or the Ritz-Carleton for a week and assume everyone in China speaks English as well as the staff in the hotel. I’ve caught myself trying to order something at a restaurant. If the waiter doesn’t understand, I try to say it slower or louder. It’s pointless. You need to learn some Mandarin. But some of the “foreigner friendly” compounds will be near shopping areas and restaurants which are more foreigner/English friendly. I’m sure some people on this site will tell you they picked up Mandarin on their first subway ride from the airport to their hutong. By the time they arrived, they had already become engaged with the local mayor’s daughter and now he is running a small import/export business. People are full of crap. It’s tough and it will take time. I would play it safe and ease into it. Yes, I'm going to take Mandarin lessons. Think twice before you jump into a compound with mostly Chinese families. Remember, this is a country of very smart, studious, competitive only children. Don’t think your kids are going to walk down to the cul-de-sac after school and play kickball with the local kids until supper is ready. The Chinese kids will more likely be studying calculus or practicing on the piano. [Tip #5] Bring the kids on your “look and see” trip. My wife and I had originally thought it would be cool and romantic if we lived in the French Concession. And I’m sure many families with kids do live in the French Concession and I’m sure it’s perfect for them and I’m happy for them. But we could tell from our kids that they wanted some place to run around and ride their bikes without worrying about traffic. But if we had not brought our kids, I’m sure my wife and I would have rationalized a more romantic and picturesque location based on our needs rather than the kids. If they are old enough to talk, they are probably old enough to have an opinion.
6. Puxi vs Pudong – I’ve seen this Hatfields vs. McCoys argument go back and forth on this website. I have to admit that this is a religious argument that has no right answer. But here’s what happened to us. Initially I wanted to assimilate into China as much as possible and not “hide in a compound”. It seemed from all of the postings that Puxi was where the real China was and Pudong was a far suburb for the scared foreigners who still refused to live in “china”. In fact, when I talked with my first real estate agent (not Adrienne), I refused to see anything in Pudong since it was too “westernized” for me and my sophisticated appreciation of China. We only decided to view Pudong because my wife said “hey, what have we got to lose”. I’m glad we did. [Tip #6] Visit both Puxi and Pudong – you don’t know until you see both sides. I would visit Hongqiao and Jinqiao at a minimum then make up your mind for yourself.
7. car - we decided on getting car and driver. I can already tell that it's Houston-hot here and I don't want to be walking around like a putz in a suit trying to catch a non-airconditioned cab to work. Adrienne also got us a great deal on a new van and a driver - it won't start until mid June.
That’s all I have. Good luck settling down in Shanghai and say “hi” to Adrienne for me when you meet her. Feel free to send me a PM is you have detailed questions.
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