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Forums > Living in Kunming > Where would you live?

We also looked at a nice house on the mountain to the north of the city. Mostly villas (30k/m rent), and town houses (15K+/m) up there.
This is about 5km past the Garden Expo site.

Some nice local places to dine out, and local farmers at the market. Nearest supermarket is Carrefour on Beijing Lu.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Housing

Danmairen

I can't give you a link. Try Kunming Govt. Website.

We got the information from China Merchants Bank, when we enquired about selling property A (mortgaged) to buy property B (with a mortgage). If we had bought in December, we could have done it.

This is not a case of some bank counter bunny not knowing what to do. My wife is in the industry, and was using contacts.

Reason for most people not renting, it isn't worth it.

As a side note for those who do not know, when you get the keys for a new property in China it is undecorated. This means there is a bare screed floor, maybe no proper staircase, one electric socket in each room, one light fitting, skim coat on the walls of most rooms (except bathrooms and kitchen), no sinks, no toilet, no kitchen, no internal doors. All you get is walls, roof, external doors, windows, and one set of services coming into the house.
You need to decorate.

We have an empty property, because of its location we would need to decorate nicely. This would cost us at least 600k and easily 1m rmb. It would take us 4-10 years to get the decoration costs back, depending on how the rental market for town houses is fairing. By that time we would want to redecorate to some degree anyway.
We could spend only 200k, but where we live we would not find a tenant, and rent would have to be so low, it would still take years to get the money back.

Decorating does not add greatly to the value of a property, as most new owners will want to re-decorate.

Additionally, the house purchase can be done on a mortgage, the decoration will be for cash.

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You probably couldn't get a mandate to redevelop an area and build an underground shopping mall. Especially if it causes major disruption.

There is an existing mandate to build bomb shelters, and there are added benefits to both the infrastructure and opportunities for business that can be captured too :-)

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My university and tertiary students only had lectures between 8am and noon, Many didn't even turn up for lectures, but would turn up for exams. There is an old joke in China, that university is hard to get in (Gaokao), but easy to get out (very hard to fail). I was told by my Dean, in one provincial level uni., that if SS failed and exam they would resit up to twice and would be given an automatic pass after the second resit.

At a tertiary college in Kunming, I had about 30 regular SS out of 60 on the register, but 110 turned in exam papers. Half of them scored less than 30% (and I had pretty much told them the answers and where to find them (in the PPTs I gave them). Lo and behold, I was told by management that the SS all had to pass, including the guy who got 9%.

The problems of students staying in the dormitories, not working and playing computer games has been in the Chinese news several times in recent years. Unless the authorities have got a grip of this recently, I doubt it will have changed.

Reviews

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A reasonable choice of lumber that has improved over time. Fancy hardwoods like walnut, and mahogany are in abundance. There are some plywood and rubber-wood boards available. There are also some kiln dried imported softwoods and merbao available. Some of the lumber is very green, so look for the kiln dried if you need stable timbers.

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Echo everything said by others.
Breakfast great and the serve from 8am. Most other places say 9am and they still are not ready.
Sandwiches are cheap 22-32, and really packed full of filling. We got some sandwiches for a day out, the only mistake I made was ordering two, as this was too much. These are seriously good sangars, and they are wrapped in alu foil.

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In fairness to Metro, they are a wholesalers, and not really a supermarket. Hence the need for a card, which can be got around.

They have improved in the year I have been away. They now carry a more consistent range of imported foodstuffs and they also seem to have sorted out the mported milk supply.

They have a wider range of electrical appliances now, there is a coice of more than one toast. There is also a better range of seasonal non foods, like clothes, shoes, garden furniture and camping gear.