In the Last article, we talked about
the advantages of living in a lane house, today we would like to discuss the pros and cons of living in a modern apartment. I will mainly focus on the area of Former French concession, Xintiandi and Jingan. Compared to the lane house, one of the biggest advantage of living in a modern apartment is the Amenity. Usually those expat high standard compounds provide following amenity:
1.Clubhouse: there are gym, spa, reading room, badminton room, etc in the clubhouse which allow you to relax after busy work without leaving the compound. Those clubhouses provide membership card to the residence at a reasonable price. There are two types of membership cards: family card or single card. Some membership fee are included in the monthly rental, some are not..
2.Outdoor swimming pool, indoor swimming pool, basketball court, tennis court… famous compounds like Ambassy Court in the French concession, Lakeville in the Xintiandi have very nice on- site facilities like this.
3. On-site management, if you have a broken light or something needs to be fixed, an on-site management can be very handy.
4. Security guard: well, Shanghai is the safest city in China, but it might be better to have security guard checking the strangers waking into the compound.
5. Parking-space: well, for some expats, a parking space is necessary, for others, not much.
6. Clean entrance: this is something absolutely a modern compound is better than a lane house.
7. Relatively no water pressure issue, better insulation ,
8. Elevator: this is good for someone who travels a lot
.
Well, above are the main strength of a modern compound, however, there are some weakness I would like to point out opposite to a lane house.
First; you can barely see an apartment has tasteful interior design like a lane house has, Apartments in compound ( even in those fancy complex) are decorated by the developer with same style which can be boring. If you prefer cooler decoration, like those you can see in a magazine, then you’d better look at a lane house.Also I have met a lot of people who just dont like high rise building
Secondly: In the French Concession, Xintiandi and Jingan, there are few modern compounds available, and usually only big sized units are for rent, like three bedroom , four bedroom....You can barely find a one bedroom unit, a two bedroom around 100sqm is very popular and hard to find. So sometimes you have to turn to other option like lane house.
Thirdly, lane house has a higher ceiling than an apartment.
I believe this will give you an understanding of what you can expect in Shanghai , right? For more info and lane houses/ apartments availabilities, you can always check our
website:www.lanehouseshanghai.com
