My family and I will be moving to Shanghai in March. We will be looking for a realtor. Any suggestions? We really do not have to budget to get hoodwinked because we are expats! People to avoid would also be helpful.

We are house hunting right now, too, looking to buy. Are you planning to buy or rent? Are you paying on your own, or is the company covering some/all of it? If you are with a company, they usually have an agent or two they work with, which is a good place to start. As best I can tell, most sellers/landlords set a price, and then the realtors mark it up...more for foreigners, less for locals. (I assume the realtors get a big cut of the markup) Then you get to guess the "real" price. Also, if you get a realtor to represent you, like as not they'll cut a side deal (without telling you) to get their percentage. In any event, prices seems to be going down, and asking prices are all over the place. Is there anyone with more experience than me who can confirm/deny my suspicions?

Try Phoenix, the do not charge any fee and they are very helpful. I just moved to Shanghai and used them. Ask for Adward Zou.

we will be renting and the company is small so i do not think that they will have any one lined up. we will be paying some of it out of pocket as we are keeping our home in baltimore while in Shanghai and using some of the allowance to pay for that. Thanks for the tip on phoenix!

Everything depends on the agent you wind up with. Phoenix doesn't make money up front, but they will make sure they get their cut, and they won't necessarily tell you the best price. You have to figure that out yourself. From what I've seen, the typical agents here make the ones on the states look like saints. Also, I haven't been able to find a local equivalent of the MLS, so it's hard to determine what the real asking price is.

When we rented in July of last year, we used Benny, cell phone 1381-733-0354. He's from a local agency, but his English is OK. He did help us get about 15% off the asking price. If we had listened to him , we might have gotten 20% off (the landlord raised the agreed-upon price at the last minute, and we blinked). He was also pretty good at figuring out what we really wanted and finding it.