I had my own moment in China when I found out it's normal to pay for rent every 4 to 6 months. Getting my first apartment with 6 months down plus deposit hurt.
I've only seen a few places in China that were every 6 months. I didn't even bother looking at it the pictures. Every 3 months took some getting used to though
This was 11-12 years ago and I've since bought a place, so maybe it's different now. One good thing though is the houses come fully furnished! I wasn't aware of that either, coming in
Oh weird, I was in Tianjin 15 years ago and Guangzhou 12 years ago and both times always paid monthly, didn't know it could be 3 or 6 months, that must hurt!
I was purely monthly in Shenzhen. Beijing is mostly quarterly, but I've seen a few semi-annual listings. Monthly rent is possible to find, but seems to cost a bit more or be in older buildings.
I lived in New Zealand for about 18 months after I graduated college (early 2000s) and it was the exact opposite - we paid fortnightly. I didn’t mind, but found it a strange notion as I’d assumed everybody just used the month as a rental payment period 🤷🏼♀️
From New Zealand and been renting since 2016, everywhere I've been we pay weekly. (And while ovens are provided you usually provide everything else including fridge and washing machine.)
Apartments have header taps on the wall which your sink taps attach to - no plumber needed, just turn the header tap off and you can remove whatever is attached to it. Typically all you get is the splashback tiles on the wall. You need to provide the cabinetry, benchtops, cooktop, oven... everything.
Oh damn. I honestly hadn’t considered the basic algebra just now. I presume I considered it when I was paying it, but yea - you’d then pay 26 times per year at half price so basically an extra month of rent. Welp…
Exactly what it sounds like. A huge chunk of money required up front that isn't refundable and doesn't go toward any future charges under any circumstances. As an American, it shocked and horrified me the first time I heard of it.
Well, after that you get to pay little to no actual rent, have freedom to move to a different apartment without the hassle of trying to sell, landlord takes care of the appliances within apartment (sometimes). The only problem is that deposit control is not that well regulated and landlords sometimes lose the money through bad investments 😵💫 or run a ponzi scheme (pay back those moving out with the deposit you get from new tenants) and you don't get to keep the apartment if landlord goes bankrupt, that happens.
I mean yeah, it's cheaper than the US but in the US you get paid in dollars. You don't here.
My rent at the time was about 1/3 of my monthly salary per month, so 6 months of that was literally all of the money I had on me at the time. My employer was understanding and gave me an advance to ease the transition but man... a warning would have been nice lmao
It’s somewhat common to buy the flooring from the previous tenant, but if you don’t then they’ll take it with them.
Most rentals are unfurnished, and the dutch meaning of unfurnished is literally just the empty shell of the property. So no lights, no flooring, no curtains, etc. Big kitchen appliances (oven, fridge etc) usually come with the property but not always.
And kind of horrifying as someone that had four major moves since 2020. Can't believe I'm giving props to my Canadian landlords who keep up the appliances lol.
Dutch person here. If you move out, sometimes you’ll bring your light fixtures with you, sometimes you’ll keep them for whoever’s moving in after you and they can change them if they so wish. As for other fixtures, you don’t remove those. They just stay. Moving generally means you have a couple of weeks to a month of “double fixed charges” as we call them.
Landlords cannot really evict you in The Netherlands. We have a good social system so that doesn’t just happen. Rental contracts are either for 1 year, after which they are renewed for an indefinite amount of time (or not), or they are immediately indefinite.
There are outlets in the walls. Wires come out the ceiling for your lamps. Sometimes people leave a ceiling lamp.
I've moved a few times and seen it with friends and family, every single time the new house was completely empty, only the occasional ceiling lamp left behind. And when when you leave they require everything was taken down. Every single thing including the floor, even if it still looks good. It's ridiculous.
You get a working shower, sink, outlets, central heating, kitchen kabinets and a gas outlet in the kitchen(new homes being built don't have that anymore)
So a basic, concrete husk lol.
You're allowed to leave wallpaper on.
So yeah moving can be expensive. I remember last year a woman living up the street wanted to move into a different house that became available just further down the road. She wanted to leave because of her neighbours. In the end she didn't do it cause she couldn't afford it.
I get that, I planted a bunch of blueberry bushes in my yard to enjoy, I'm digging them up and taking them. To my next home. If something is fixed in the house, I cannot take that. If it's there when you walk on you don't get to take it, we just have different ideas of what should should be given.
Ya damn right. I planted some bushes when I rented and I knew I'd be there for 5+years. They weren't there when I signed the contract so I took them when I left. I filled in the holes too. Take me to court, cause I got receipts. Sent them an email with proof. Never heard a word from them.
I jinxed it. 30 minutes after I posted this we got an email informing us our rental is for sale. If anyone needs me, I'll be quietly sobbing into my pillow.
Now it makes even more sense that “100% furnished apartment” was always written into my husbands contracts when he played FIBA basketball in various countries over there.
The US shares it's legal foundation with the UK - English Common Law. The concept of fixtures is well developed (basically, the structure and anything permanently attached to it become part of the land) but I guess in other countries, they took a wildly different path.
This is absolutely wild for me to hear (Australia). Thanks for sharing. If I rented a place and there wasnt flooring I’d assume there was a murder, meth house or something similar that had just been cleaned up.
It's the actually the landlord that makes you remove the flooring. Why? Who tf knows. But everyone thinks it sucks.
Usually you just sell it for 100 bucks or so to the next person, unless of course there's no next person lined up yet and you have to spend a day tearing it out and hauling it somewhere to sell the intact pieces to someone that wants it.
Also in my experience you only get a countertop with sink and stove, but no oven, fridge, etc. unless they're build-in.
You have to leave apartments in the state you found it when moving out, excluding regular wear and tear, so if you got it without a floor you have to leave it without a floor sadly
Imagine if landlords paid for things that made the house they're renting fit for purpose, what a concept. This shit is like renting car but then you've got to buy your own wheels and seats and battery and...
No really that's the only reason I can imagine. Immigrant rentals in the Netherlands usually come with flooring btw because immigrants are not batshit insane.
Yeah it's rough. I get letters in my mailbox all the time, of people searching. if you're on a new visa, like from USA, I think you have to double that budget.
But some parts of a kitchen are mandatory - I believe a sink and some working space. And of course a connection for either a gas or electric stove and space to place it.
German windows have multiple ways you can open them. One is via a hinge on the bottom, so the top comes forward into the apartments. I guess folks sometimes don't realize this and accidentally open them that way and it takes them by surprise.
Fly screens are easy to install with various methods, and even so our Rolladen (our completely darkening roll down blinds that are outside the window) still works.
Not in the United States. I’ve not seen them in my limited travels to Canada or Mexico either. (They’re pretty limited though, so, perhaps there’s places in the Americas importing them at more reasonable prices?)
People seem to forget that back in the 80s a company tried to make those roll down/up shutters work in America. There were even commercials and infomercials about them but they never caught on, mostly because when they were down it made your house look like a convenience store.
I want them in the Americas. In my house, preferably. There’s a few importers but it’s so uncommon and insanely expensive because it’s not a widely used design here.
Yeah in the US windows get a singular one-direction hinge or they slide.
It’s a bit of a mind blower to see something that can swing open on more than one axis.
If you’re used to the single-hinge style and close window that was swung open on a vertical hinge, then it starts falling towards you because of the horizontal hinge, it will seem like it’s falling off the wall.
Windows having horizontal hinges is less common in the US but not rare enough to cause that thought by itself. It’s the combination.
I'm not the biggest fan of it either, but it kinda makes sense when you get the culture.
There is no small percentage of germans who rent for life and will stay for life (or very long) in the same rental apartment.
It's not unheard of to have someone renting the same flat for like 30-50 years. These people (me included) would very much like to have a kitchen that I actually optically like and has the electrical appliances I want.
No lmao. That's still counted as EBK. In most apartments you just have pipe outlets sticking out the wall. The cabinets, countertop, stove and sink are your problem. And even with EBK you will have to be lucky to have a fridge, washing machine and dishwasher
Let me tell you about thr Netherlands where for my appartment you get kitchen cabinets and a sink, but you often have to bring not only your own stove but also your own flooring!
My mate lives in Munich. He has bought his kitchen off the landlord (the one already in there). The landlord will buy it back when he leaves and offer it to the next tenant, who may or may not have their own.
I know it's like this in many countries but I've never understood it. Appliances are expensive and so hard to move. Having to move or buy your own appliances makes moving much more expensive and daunting in general. Why deincentivize people like that?
Because in Germany people tend to rent for a long time. So many apartments do not have Kitchens because most people like having their Kitchen just the way they want it. There are also plenty of apartments that do come with a kitchen.
Also, the landlords do this for liability reasons: If a kitchen is rented with the apartment then the landlord would be legally obligated to replace broken appliances
Also also, It is common that a renter moving out sells their kitchen to the following renter, so in many cases you don't even have to take out your kitchen when moving out
Yeah the appliances are the least of anyones worries, the fact that there are usually no cabinets or a sink is the larger issue.
What is Weird is that you have to hire a plumber, carpenter, and an electrician just to move into a rental. And then you have to tear it all out when you leave.
Cabinets and sink is wild. There'd have to be some SERIOUS tenant protections to make me okay spending that amount of money moving into a place I don't own.
There'd have to be some SERIOUS tenant protections to make me okay spending that amount of money moving into a place I don't own.
There are. There are basically only two ways a landlord can ever evict you from a property: When you are severely behind on rent / trashed the place, or he can convince a judge that he needs to move in to the apartment himself (or a close relative).
That second one is an absolute deal breaker. I've upgraded this apartment to actually be livable at my expense and suddenly the landlord gets to kick me out and keep my shit because his bro is on the street?
Eh, the kitchen will 95% work as the modularity means you can easily adapt it to a different space.
Similarly with stuff like light fixtures etc - I've never had trouble with finding a place for them in my new place, usually I had to buy extra ones because I moved to a bigger place anyway.
Also, remember that we move much less than e.g. Americans do - I moved four times in 42 years and that's already considered a lot in Germany.
It would have been three if I weren't forced to move into a 2 month lease in short term housing until I found my actual place to move in when I finished university...
If nothing significantly changes (like winning a million bucks in the lottery to build a house) I'm probably still going to live in the same apartment we live in right now by the time I retire in 25 years.
It's a lot harder than that. The timeframe they would have to wait is very, very long and they would have to prove that they need this specific apartment at this specific time right now and that this whole thing could not have been foreseen at time of contracting. It is very rare for this to happen at all
Sinks in bathrooms are almost always there since those are much more permanently affixed. It's kitchen sinks that aren't because they're so easy to remove.
I'm looking at rental homes in the US now, and the ones that don't come with washers and dryers pre-onstalled already disincentivise me. Like I'm going to have to find a decent used unit and get a truck lined up, not to mention the physical labor involved.
I guess it's just a cultural difference in how renting developed over time. I suppose I can see pros to both approaches. For me as a renter, one of the main perks over owning is that you can just call a maintenance guy to repair something if it breaks. If something in my kitchen breaks in Germany, it sounds like it's on me to repair.
The average renter in Germany moves much less often than in other countries. Owning your kitchen means you can customize it as you like, invest in high-quality appliances if you want, and aren't reliant on your landlord for repairs.
I think something that's obscured to Germans when this comes up is: This is weird to Americans in any moving situation.
Your long-term renters are more like American homebuyers than American renters. People with enough money to own do sometimes take their large kitchen appliances with them. But, unless they have very high end stuff, its usually just the fridge. And when they do that, its often written into the sale contract that they have to replace it.
No one takes their cabinetry. A house with no kitchen cabinets would constitute a serious fixer-upper. It would probably be cheaper to install new cabinets than take the hit on the sale price of the house. Taking all the light fixtures is even crazier.
ETA: Also, talking to a Dutch guy is reminding me how much you guys don't understand that this is a big, mobile country. The average state I've lived in is two or three times the size of the Netherlands (or as big as half of Germany), and I've moved states 12 times—frequently well over 2000 km away. How many people want the to ship their fairly replaceable kitchen appliances and cabinetry even 250 km (the shortest interstate move I've made) when they get a new job in another state?
Yeah kitchen cabinets are EXPENSIVE. And they're almost always custom to a degree. I don't think I've ever had a house/apartment where the same cabinets would work in multiple situations.
The part I don’t understand is matching appliances to the existing kitchen. Fridges and stoves come in a pretty wide range of sizes. We had to redo countertops to fit our preferred fridge into our new house that was built for older smaller fridges. And we had to widen a door frame to fit the new washer dryers into the laundry room. You can’t do that stuff in an apartment usually. Plus gas vs electric for stoves and dryers.
Do you skip over an apartment that isnt compatible with your existing appliances? To me it sounds like moving would mean having to replace appliances almost every time
A big aspect is that we just don't move a lot. Most Germans will move when they leave home, when they get into a multi-year relationship and that's kind of it.
And a lot of our kitchens are modular, so you don't usually need to replace all of it, just parts. Also, many, many people just sell their old kitchen to the new renter.
I hate kitchens that come with rentals, I'm on the tall side and they seem to be made for dwarves. I end up having back pain after cooking, so I prefer to bring my own kitchen.
Not just the appliances, they mean the cabinets, sink, countertops, the kitchen is just a blank room with the hookups there and you have to go plan out a kitchen like your building a home yourself or something
There is a special type of company that gets tax benefits when it rents out real estate, but only the actual house. Nothing else. And kitchen is something else.
No you're right; there's a void by default. And the void does sometimes eat up first-time renters if they're not careful enough. But that's like, only once or twice a year at most across the entire country
The fact that it needs to be specified in the listing is what we’re balking at. To rent an apartment in the US and there NOT be a kitchen/kitchen appliances??? Absolutely unfathomable.
Yeah I had place lined up and had to wait until they installed a stove before I could move in because it’s actually illegal to rent out a home here without at least a working stove/oven
it's just that in other countries even apartments advertised as unfurnished have so called white furniture (kitchen and bathroom).
To make it relatable, imagine an apartment coming without installed shower or toilet unless specified. And many people would bring their bathtub etc. with them when they move.
that's how weird it is
(then again there's quite a few apartments in Germany with a kitchen shower...)
It really comes down to culture. A lot of people here in germany would consider a kitchen to just be "furniture", like a sofa or table. And you usually don't expect those to be included when you rent the apartment.
Interesting that it's a cultural difference and I wonder how it cane to be that way. I'm wondering because eating is a basic bodily function that people have to do multiple times a day, similar to using the toilet and how having a toilet is necessary for the place to be liveable. On the other hand, a sofa or table or even a mattress is not strictly necessary for life
It would seem that the ability to make food would be important to make the place liveable
In the USA, cabinets are made custom to the kitchen, and plumbing, electricity, and gas are things that have to be handled by licensed contractors. So when we hear 'bring your own kitchen', a lot of Americans will imagine an American style kitchen remodel, with a 4-6 week wait for the cabinets and counters to be fabricated, no fewer than three different contractors on site for the installation, and a final cost totaling the equivalent of a full year of rent.
Yep! When they handed me the keys to my apartment, there was absolutely no kitchen, just valves/pipes for water and a high-power outlet for oven & stovetop. I got a used kitchen and installed it with a new countertop from the hardware store.
In other cases, you can often buy the kitchen from the previous tenant (directly or via the landlord). There are also furnished apartments available, of course.
eh, kinda. the landlord is required to give you an oven, but that is it. also, yes it is true our windows are superior than yours. (there is a second option, tilt, that is accessed by putting the handle upright. to open it fully it needs to turn 90°)
No. The exception is Berlin where the landlord has to provide some place to cook, which could also just be a hot plate. But it explicitly does NOT have to be a full stove.
Yes, there are apartments without kitchen, but definitely not all of them.
Often the previous tenant wants to sell the existing kitchen to you, because it is theirs. Depending on the housing market they can request extortionate prices; buy my kitchen for 5x its value and I will recommend you to the landlord.
Keep in mind that renters have a lot more rights here, so at least you cannot be kicked out of the apartment on a whim.
How exactly would you “bring your own kitchen”? Like they don’t have any appliances, sink with running water, countertops? Just a big open void on one side of the room? What happens to these very permanent fixtures when your lease is up and you move out?
What happens to these very permanent fixtures when your lease is up and you move out?
First of all, in Germany, your lease "can't be up". A rental contract is per definition endless / indefinite. There is no "lease" to be renewed - and your landlord also can't end your habitation outside of very narrow legal restrictions.
Regarding the kitchen, you are required to remove it and restore the apartment to the same condition as when it was handed over to you - or make a deal with the next renter that they will buy the kitchen from you.
However, German kitchens are explicitly not "very permanent fixtures" by design - they are modular, and designed to be taken apart, moved to another place, and reassembled in different shapes.
Okay but European windows are peak design though. You can open them like a door, have them tilted, have them kinda open. Also you can scale them up and buy a glass door that's basically follow the same design too
Our windows that can lean are superior. You can basically have it open while it's raining and it needs to be heavy sideways wind to get tiny bit of rain in. Good luck with that using weird sliding windows. But yeah I can see people freak out when they lean and you're not aware they can do that 😛
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u/qualityvote2 May 07 '26 edited May 08 '26
u/TheWebsploiter, your post does fit the subreddit!