I signed the lease for our new apartment (a.k.a. our new flat)!

It felt great to finally sign the lease to our "flat" as they like to call it here in Hong Kong. We spent the first 2 weekends here looking at apartments and the entire process was definitely very stressful especially since I had started work.

The way apartment hunting works in Hong Kong is that you need to work with an agent. Property owners can sign up with several property agents to list their property. There's no multiple listing service, so you can only see apartments that the agent's company has listings for. In order to find the right place for you, you need to work with as many agents as possible.

I thought I was ahead of the game back in LA by finding a few that I wanted to see on craigslist and lining up two agents to see places on our first weekend in Hong Kong. I was also trying to find direct owner listings to avoid paying the 1/2 month of agent fee but no such luck. We did end up seeing a dozen apartments on the first weekend and finding one we liked. However, by the time we decided to put a down payment to hold the place, it was rented out.

We stumbled on another agent on one of our walks and we met with him the following weekend. He showed us several places none of which fit our needs. However, after those visits, he got to understand what we liked and finally offered to show us a flat that belongs to a friend of his. It was listed for more than I had budgeted but it had everything we were looking for! A large master bedroom, good size open kitchen, decent size second bedroom and two bathrooms. On top of that, it actually has a full size refrigerator and a dishwasher (very rare in Hong Kong!) Given his relationship, he thought he could help us negotiate. Due to the economic downturn, rental prices have become very negotiable. We were able to get the apartment a little bit over our budget.

From there, we signed a preliminary agreement along with putting down a month's rent to hold the place. At this point, if we backed out, we'd loose the deposit and if the owner backed out, he's have to pay us twice the deposit. It's an interesting process... And today, I finally signed the contract, paid for 2 more months rent (deposit) and got the keys!


Here's a peak at our place:

We can't wait to fill it with furniture and our 24 boxes of stuff from LA!

New Year's Eve in Hong Kong

So this is how small the world is and how soon we got to see a couple of friends from the US...

Over the New Year's break, we had Tina and James stop by for a couple of days to celebrate the New Year in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong has only been celebrating New Year's with fireworks for the past two years. Previously, they largely celebrated Chinese New Year. Below is a little clip of the fireworks. I heard that the Chinese New Year one is 10 times more grand... which wouldn't be hard to do. It is pretty cool how they shot the fireworks sideways off of the IFC building though...

We got to enjoy the fireworks with several of us crambed into one of Tina's friend's hotel room at the Conrad Hotel (one of the top hotels in Hong Kong).

We hit up two popular party areas in the city - Wanchai and Lan Kwai Fong. Below is a picture of Lan Kwai Fong at 3AM. See how many people were still around hours later. I heard earlier that it was impossible to walk in that area right around midnight. This is what we call in Chinese "people mountain people sea" (aka. full of people for as far as the eye could see).

It was definitely an eye opening and fun NYE!

Happy 2009 Everyone!!!