No one expected that the first word to explode in 2024 would be "lantern damage assessment".
At first glance, it is an ancient idiom.
It's actually a coined word.
Ms. Chen from Jiangxi Province shared a suite with others in Yushan County, Shangrao City, because the sound of the child going up and down the stairs was too loud, and the two quarreled with the landlord several times, and the problem could not be resolved, so they planned to quit the rent.
The landlord, Guo, said: It's okay to quit the rent, but you have to lose money.
Ms. Chen didn't take it seriously at the time, thinking about deducting a deposit or something at most, but when the compensation slip was handed to them, she was dumbfounded.
10884.95 yuan.
Landlord's claim form
They have only lived for 22 days, and the monthly rent is a total of 1,200 yuan, and the compensation of 10,000 yuan is not for the two of them to help the landlord buy a new suite.
Is this a claim?
This is money.
How is "10884.95 yuan" calculated?
Things have to go back to the day of the rent, the landlord Guo and his wife carried a searchlight and a yellow tape and began to check out.
Start with the façade of the doorway, then the load-bearing wall, the balcony sliding door, the bed boards, the wardrobe, the squat pit, the water heater, the shower, the floor tiles......
Every time they inspect a place, they will put the searchlight up and carefully inspect it, but if there is a scratch or a little bit of wear, the landlord Guo will put yellow tape on it to show damage.
Even the red plastic stool has to be turned upside down, turned over, and touched inside and out several times to check for wear or chips.
After watching the whole process, you will only feel two words - professional.
The autopsy officer was impressed by the meticulousness of the landlord and his wife's damage assessment, and the criminal investigation team was willing to bow down.
I even suspect that the reason why the "sky-high claim" is sky-high is because of the high cost of the couple's working hours.
It can also be seen that the amount of compensation in the claim form is not determined according to the degree of damage to the items, but as long as there are scratches, wear and tear, even if it is natural wear and tear, Ms. Chen and her husband need to be compensated according to the original price.
Solid wood door 1800 yuan, shower shower 880 yuan, squatting pit 670 yuan......
Including the cost of painting the exterior wall, the cost of painting tools, and the labor cost of workers are all counted on their heads.
This is a goose plucking, this is a pot with feathers and birds.
Of course, Ms. Chen and the others would not agree, so they took the matter to the neighborhood committee and other officials, and under their coordination, they each paid 2,000 yuan in compensation.
I thought it was over.
Unexpectedly, Guo, who got cheap, was not reconciled, and found Ms. Chen on the evening of March 22 this year, and smashed the pregnant other party with a brick.
Fortunately, Ms. Chen was not injured, but she was afraid that the landlord would do something out of the ordinary again, so she decided to post the whole process of "lantern damage assessment" on the Internet, so that the matter could be known to the public.
One stone stirs up a thousand waves.
Many people who were originally scheduled to travel to Jiangxi hurriedly canceled their trips, and the B&B in Sanqingshan, a scenic spot in Shangrao, was also refunded a large number of orders.
Public opinion rose suddenly, and the official immediately appeared, and finally Guo was administratively detained for the crime of intentional injury, and the compensation of 4,000 yuan was returned.
Source: Weibo @CCTV News
Netizens said that Guo ruined Jiangxi's image by himself.
If you want me to say, he also single-handedly exposed the chaos of China's rental market.
Is "Lantern Damage Assessment" really finale?
In fact, Guo in Yushan County is just the tip of the iceberg of China's black landlords, they are ubiquitous and pervasive, and they use housing as bait to attract groups of tenants into the cage.
There is a saying: renting a house is the first severe beating that college graduates encounter after stepping into society.
If you've never stepped on a pit, you either have your own house or you're a chosen one.
It can be seen that the pit of renting is unavoidable.
At the same time and in different places, there was also a black landlord incident in Jinan recently.
Because his wife was in labor, Mr. Zheng negotiated with the landlord two months in advance to quit the rent.
On the day of the lease withdrawal, there was no arrears of water, electricity and gas, the room was cleaned, and the items were not damaged, and even the last month's rent Mr. Zheng did not plan to ask for it, and only the landlord needed to return the deposit.
As a result, the other party replied confidently: "No matter when you check out, the deposit will not be refunded, this is the industry rule." ”
Source: Douyin @ Guo+ Community
In his mouth, the so-called "deposit" is used to make up for the vacant period of the house after the tenant quits the rent, and there is no possibility of returning it at all.
Coincidentally, "1818 GoldenEye" reported in January this year that when the tenant Xiaoxu quit the lease on time, the landlord withheld a deposit of 6,800 yuan on the grounds that the floor was scratched.
Source: Station B @1818 Goldeneye
At first, Xiao Xu decided to give in and specially asked the maintenance master to come over for maintenance, but the landlord changed his words: "I don't approve of the floor if I don't give it a new one." ”
Source: Station B @1818 Goldeneye
The meaning is obvious, want to get the deposit back?
It's simple, just replace everything with new ones and restore them to the way they just moved in.
Source: Station B @1818 Goldeneye
We all know that the natural wear and tear of goods and the aging of electrical appliances when renting a house are normal, and Article 710 of the Civil Code also stipulates:
If the lessee uses the leased property in accordance with the agreed method or according to the nature of the leased thing, resulting in the loss of the leased thing, it shall not be liable for damages.
The black landlord doesn't care about this, he is bent on picking a bone in the egg, and tries to confiscate the deposit for various reasons.
Not only that, but many people have also experienced being temporarily kicked out by their landlords.
Xiao Li in Beijing signed a two-year lease for a house, but before the time was up, the landlord asked her to move out quickly.
Why?
Because the landlord suddenly sold the house, if Xiao Li didn't move out, the new owner would not recognize it.
Source: "When the Rule of Law is in Progress"
In the eyes of these black landlords, the tenant is just a plasticine kneaded by themselves, who can let you live if they want to live in it, and drive you away if they don't want you to live.
But in fact, according to Article 725 of the Civil Code:
If the ownership of the leased property changes during the period of possession of the lessee in accordance with the lease contract, the validity of the lease contract shall not be affected.
This means that even if the landlord sells the house while the lease is in force, the contract is still in force and the landlord has no right to unilaterally cancel it.
Legally, a rental contract is more effective than a purchase contract, but in reality, the tenant is always the weakest party.
Compared with black landlords, black agents and black platforms are more rampant.
False listings, partition houses, temporary price increases, and withholding deposits are not uncommon, and black intermediaries have even become one of the targets of Beijing's anti-crime campaign.
In 2018, four agents at Beijing Daohe Real Estate Brokerage Co., Ltd. regularly lured tenants with low-rent properties, and then forced tenants to drop their rents and deposits and move out by kicking doors, picking locks, and verbally threatening them.
This is an intermediary, it is clearly an underworld.
And such things have happened more than once in Beijing alone.
Source: "When the Rule of Law is in Progress"
As a result, some people want to find a long-term rental platform with better service and more reliable credit.
Long-term rental platforms often give tenants three payment methods: monthly, quarterly and annual, the more you pay at once, the cheaper the monthly rent, even if you can't afford to pay the rent for a year or two at a time, it doesn't matter, they will induce you to sign a rental loan.
People who choose to rent often mean that they do not have enough money, especially graduates who have just worked, and are naturally willing to choose long-term rentals with more favorable rents in the spirit of saving what they can save.
Who would have thought that long-term leasing would be like a stock trap, and the stock market would collapse and there would be no return.
What's even more unexpected is that the long-term rental platform also has ups and downs like the stock market.
In 2020, the well-known long-term rental platform "Danke" thundered, and hundreds of thousands of tenants not only did not return their rent and deposits, but also faced the dilemma of being evicted by their landlords and homeless.
More than eggshells.
That year, in Chengdu alone, there were three companies: "Chengdu Chaoke Meets Home", "Chengdu United Home", and "Sichuan Pig Rental Gang".
Source: Weibo @Sichuan Observation
The house is no longer a safe haven for workers, it is as fragile as a mast in a hurricane.
Seeking money is small, but killing is big.
Do you remember the formaldehyde house of a certain rental brand?
An Ali P7 employee died of leukemia due to living in a formaldehyde house, and a fresh life left because he rented the wrong house.
Source: Weibo @Sina Technology
The reason for the emergence of formaldehyde houses begins with the quick success of long-term rental platforms, they buy cheap decoration materials, and in order to stop loss, they are unwilling to leave the new house vacant for too long, and often rent out about a month after the decoration, so that tenants can use their bodies to help them purify formaldehyde.
Life has passed, but the deadly formaldehyde room and string room still exist.
There are many lightning protection stickers on Xiaohongshu
We had to ask: "Is it so difficult to rent a room normally?"
Let's start with a set of data:
In 2022, the rent-to-sale ratio of China's 50 large and medium-sized cities is 1:620, while the internationally recognized good standard is 1:200~1:300 (rent-to-sale ratio = monthly rent/house price).
When the rent-to-sale ratio is higher than 1:300, it means that the value of the property investment is smaller and the rental return time is longer.
From this, a fact can be drawn:
"In the rental market, both the landlord and the tenant feel that they are losing money. 」
Source: Stills "My True Friend"
Especially landlords in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, who buy houses for millions or even tens of millions, but based on the tenant's salary level, they can only give the monthly rent to the agent or tenant at what they think is lower.
Under the influence of interests, landlords, intermediaries, and platforms began to engage in a series of intrigues with tenants, which led to the gradual collapse of the credit system and mutual suspicion, so landlords were reluctant to rent out their houses to others for a long time, and tenants often had to move out after a year or two.
Take my friends as an example, there are many people who move four or five times in five years, and even move twice a year on average.
China Youth Daily conducted a survey in 2019:
63.2% of the young people surveyed have moved more than once in a year, of which 31.6% have moved three or more times in a year, and only 22.1% have moved more than one year.
Source: China Youth Daily
With such a current situation, how can we talk about normal renting.
Now we have to face up to a problem, "renting for a living" has become a global trend.
In 2018, according to a survey by the German Federal Statistical Office, the proportion of renters in Germany reached 57.9%;
In 2019, 34% of American households rented for a living, and the rate in Manhattan, New York, even reached 77%;
In 2021, according to Canadian polls, 35% of the country's population belonged to renters;
In 2021, 45% of people aged 30-40 in Japan were renters.
The same is true for China.
In 2022, the number of renters in China reached 240 million, and there were more than 40 million renters in the four cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen alone.
With the change of people's attitudes, many people are no longer obsessed with "people must have a house in this life", and it is not impossible to rent a house for a living.
But the cruel reality is that people can hardly find a stable place to stay, either the platform is thunderous, or black intermediaries and black landlords are rampant.
It's not easy to rent a stable rent for a year, let alone rent a house for a living.
Source: China Youth Daily
Let's take a look at how Hong Kong protects tenants, Hong Kong is notoriously expensive rents, but its rental market is also relatively mature.
Intermediaries in Hong Kong are required to take the license examination and must be licensed to work.
When renting a lease, the tenant and the landlord need to sign a "one-year life contract", during which both parties cannot unilaterally terminate the contract before the end of the lease period, and compensation for breach of contract is required, while the "birth contract" means that the tenant has the right to continue to renew the lease, and both parties have the right to terminate the contract early.
The so-called "life and death contract" is equivalent to the mutual inspection period, which not only restricts the landlord but also restricts the tenant, and even if there is a rental dispute, it can also be resolved with the Rating and Valuation Department and the Land Tribunal.
Next, let's take a look at how other countries are doing it.
Germany's Rental Law stipulates that the cumulative increase in rent within 4 years must not exceed 15%, and once it exceeds 20%, it will be subject to a huge fine, and more than 50% is a crime.
The British government has arranged a third-party deposit protection agency and customer money protection scheme, requiring landlords and agents to authorize these agencies to protect when they receive deposits, rents, utility bills, and if they don't, they will wait for fines of thousands or even tens of thousands of pounds.
It's been more than three years since the eggshell thunderstorm, but its aftermath has not yet dissipated.
The confrontation between the young female tenant and the landlord seems to be just yesterday, and none of us wants to be the next her, let alone the next her, to continue to appear.
Source: Weibo @Radar Video
But life has to go on, and renting will also run through a large part of life, and we want it to be flat, bright and spacious, not gloomy, ambushed on all sides.
Back to that question again, is "Lantern Damage Assessment" really the finale?
Perhaps until China's housing market tends to normalize and stabilize;
until the landlord and tenant trust each other;
until the black intermediary disappears from the market;
Until the rental platform is no longer deceived and maliciously raised prices;
Until renting for a living really becomes a viable option;
That's the end of it.
Resources:
1. "[1818 Golden Eye] specially hired a cleaner when I quit the lease or was it said to be unclean, who is "cheating"?" - Station B @1818 Golden Eye
2. "Cultivating and Developing the Housing Rental Market" - People's Daily (2021-06-04 17th Edition)
3. "Vision丨Refusal to become a "house slave", a sober and rigorous country in the world: insights into the German housing rental market" - URI Urban Rental Society