Tag: taipei

Ramblings

Apartment Hunting in Taipei: Landlords

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Landlords posed a different problem in our search for an apartment. Apparently, some landlords in Taiwan do not report their rental income to the government and transactions are completed under the table.

This creates an issue for us because we need to use the apartment’s address on our Alien Resident Cards (ARCs). Public schools need to verify that the address on your child’s ARC falls within their service area, so this was a critical step.

But if an address is used on an ARC, this informs the government that the property is being rented out or has been sold. To avoid taxes, some landlords are unwilling to let you use their address for ARCs and school registration. You can avoid this issue if you agree to pay more (usually 10% extra) to cover the landlord’s taxes, but we wanted to avoid paying more if possible.

What surprised us though, was that landlords in Taiwan didn’t request paystubs or credit checks. This is common in the US and we were concerned this would be the case in Taiwan. Landlords do ask what our careers are, what we’re doing in Taiwan, and to see our “business cards” (we told them we don’t have any) but that was it. Rental contracts here require a 2-month security deposit which is pretty hefty, but as long as you can fork over the money you are qualified to rent.

Next up in our apartment hunting adventures: interesting apartment features!

Ramblings

Apartment Hunting in Taipei: Schools

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Note: This is referring to public schools in Taipei only. The process for private schools will be different.

Every parent knows that the location of your home is important because that usually determines the school your kids can attend.

Last time, I shared that our strategy was to first decide the schools we wanted and then try to find an apartment close by. There were two issues:

  1. The PDF I had of school openings was only for 1st grade. We (stupidly) assumed that if a school had openings for 1st grade, they’d also have it for 3rd grade. Usually, there are more open spaces in the upper grades because families move or switch schools.

    But that’s not the case in Taipei. So I had to wake up at the crack of dawn while in Rome, brush off my rusty Mandarin Chinese, and call the schools to confirm whether they have space for my 1st and 3rd grader. Thankfully, 2 out of 3 schools we were interested in had space for both.

    An interesting tidbit about the public school system in Taipei is that there isn’t a centralized organization that governs the schools (like SFUSD in San Francisco for example). There is a Ministry of Education in Taiwan, but any school inquiries and enrollment is done with the individual school. This made things a bit more challenging for us because we had to communicate with multiple schools at once rather than work with one entity.

  2. Once we had a couple of schools to choose from, we started to look for apartments. Again, we (stupidly) assumed that as long as we could find an apartment within 15-20 minute walking distance to the school, we would be set.

    But soon, we learned that it doesn’t matter even if your apartment is 1 minute away from the school. If the address isn’t within the school’s service area, you cannot get in. I don’t know why we didn’t think of this because SF works similarly. Ugh, we wasted so much time looking at apartments that wouldn’t work for us in the first place. 😣

    This is the website where you can check which school is assigned to your address: https://schooldistrict.tp.edu.tw/html/search.jsp

    If the school your address is assigned to is full, you can request a transfer to the next closest school. From what I gather, you still have to officially register with your designated school but then you’d fill out a one page form requesting a transfer.

So lesson learned: never assume anything when you’re living in a foreign country. 😅

Now that we’ve figured out the schools (sort of?), we have to face our next challenge: landlords. Stay tuned for the next post!

Ramblings

Apartment Hunting in Taipei: Real Estate Agents

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I want to interrupt our Europe blogs to share our experience apartment hunting in Taipei. We’ve actually been in Taipei for over 2 weeks now, so I’m obviously very behind in blogging 😅. But there’s just too much that has happened, and I want to document it all before I forget.

If I had to sum up our experience apartment hunting in Taipei, I’d say the overarching theme would be “expectations vs. reality.”

Let’s start with real estate agents.

In the last post about Taiwan, I shared that we’re using a real estate agent to help us look for an apartment. Normally in the US, this would be a DIY effort. We scour the internet to look for listings and work directly with the landlord to rent. Case closed.

Taiwan is different. Not only can we not speak the language, but we’re unfamiliar with the rules, laws and conventions of apartment renting. So, about a week before we left the US, I reached out to an English speaking real estate agency to get on their radar.

There is a cost to working with an agent. If you rent an apartment from the agent, you pay half a month’s rent as a service fee. The service includes negotiating the rental contract, assistance with utilities setup, acting as a liaison between you and landlord for the entire duration of your lease, and some agents can even help with purchasing furniture or appliances.

We told Kathy, our agent, what we were looking for in an apartment:

  • Ideally, the apartment is in Da’an district
  • It has 2 bedrooms
  • Near MRT (Taipei’s metro) or bus stop
  • At least semi-furnished
  • At least 30+ pings. Taiwan uses pings 坪 as a measurement of floor space. One 坪 is equivalent to about 35.6 square feet.

About a week before we landed in Taipei and while we were still in Rome, Kathy sent us a list of properties to look at. We were interested in a few of them, but we noticed the listings were all from her agency. We had seen a number of apartments that fit our criteria on rent.591.com.tw (which is equivalent to Craigslist in the US). Why weren’t any of those included?

This is where our expectations did not align with the reality. In the US, your agent can show you any property available. They collaborate with the buyer’s or seller’s agents and split the commission.

In Taipei, agents do not work with each other. If you wanted to view an apartment that isn’t listed under your agent’s realty company, you’d have to contact the representing agent yourself by phone or Line. (Line is the communications app commonly used in Taiwan.) Many times, the agent doesn’t speak English very well so Google Translate quickly became our best friend.

It’s possible for your agent to try and call the landlord and arrange something, but more often than not, the landlord doesn’t want to engage with another agent.

We had expected our agent to be a one-stop solution. She tracks down all apartments that fit our criteria, works with the landlord, negotiates the contract, and voila! We move in. The reality was Baba and I had to do a lot more work ourselves. Almost every night for 2 weeks, we’d scour rent.591.com.tw, create a spreadsheet of potential apartments, contact the different agents and schedule viewings with them. We were on a timeline (we rented an Airbnb for 2 weeks) so we had to act quickly.

On top of all this, we had to consider how the apartment would affect school registration for the boys. I’ll share more about that next.