Hi, I’ve been searching for relocation agents but most of the sites are for moving companies. I’m not looking for a big moving company. I’m basically looking for a freelance person who do this as a side job or weekends.
What I’m looking for is a person who will do the work of looking at apartments for me, book viewings, and drive me around to see the apartments. I tell this person what I’m looking for and my budget and requirements of course.
This person should charge a flat fee for this service. What search terms should I use for this? Note that I can speak basic Mandarin but I cannot read or write it. So some English would be nice. This person should also help me fill out forms in Chinese or do some other work to help me get settled in.
Basically I’m looking for a short term assistant/driver/interpreter (hehe).
How do I go about hiring this type of person? Thanks.
Sounds like you need a temporary personal secretary. I have no idea if that exists. I know you said you don’t want a “big moving company” but it wouldn’t hurt to reach out to a few of them, since they are the only people/companies who have experience doing exactly what you are asking for.
You may need to hire a few separate people. I imagine you could find a guide/interpreter fairly easily, and real estate agents are a dime a dozen.
I had a person doing this (as you describe) way back when I moved here, but it wasn’t very useful. Anyone working in this capacity will only show you listings of agents that they already have a relationship with. Said agents will only show listings they are contracted with. This usually results in a generally poor selection vs. what is actually available on the market. The advantage is the flat fee structure, but that’s it. Sorry, I don’t know how to search for this, but someone might. They aren’t all that common here and usually work with large multinationals/expats.
So what @tigerninjaman suggests is probably more useful. Someone who speaks the language, can pour over listings in 591 or whatever, give you a short list of candidates for review, schedule viewings, and then work out the negotiations once something is selected. This won’t be a flat fee type of job, but will be more efficient and you’ll likely get a better flat in the end.
In the past I tried this twice in Taiwan and once in Japan and it was a complete fiasco each time. In exchange for a hefty hourly fee they were supposed to take my list of features I wanted in a property, research the market to find properties that met my requirements, and then make arrangements to take me to see the properties. In reality all they did was take me to overpriced properties that had little to do with my requirements and apparently hope I was stupid enough to bite so they would get a big commission. When I asked them what they thought I was paying them an hourly fee for they went blank as if they had no idea what I was talking about. I’m pretty sure they didn’t either. I suppose they just thought I was a stupid foreigner.
Moral of the story is don’t try to hustle the East by trying something outside the norm because you won’t be the first fool who tried and failed miserably.
Good luck with this. Remember their skin isn’t in the game so they have little incentive to find you a place that’s a good deal. Plus they wouldn’t know what you want fully so it’s a fool’s errand.
What you probably want is a real estate agent who will take you around properties to look at. Standard fee is half a months rent. The agent would only be showing you properties they’re assigned to.
Besides if it’s a personal secretary the op wants I wouldn’t be inclined to serve temporarily, because I have to know you real well to know exactly what you want. This isn’t something a freelancer can do.
I’m planning to move to somewhere around Taipei. From all the responses, it sounds like I should actually call up a few moving companies and ask them if they offer this kind of service.
They aren’t real estate agents. Moving companies would only move (or possibly store for you for a fee) stuff.
You should look for an English speaking real estate agent, or failing that learn to use AI/google translate and look at listings on 591.
It’s two separate professionals you need. A real estate agent for helping you look for apartments and maybe drive you around town to look at properties they’re assigned to, and once you found your apartment, a moving company to move your stuff over.
If you are doing an international move, there’s van lines and such but they charge a LOT, like around 10,000 dollars USD is what I heard. Most English teachers don’t use them.
I wouldn’t have thought it’s too difficult to find someone willing to do that for some extra income. I’ve occasionally seen people advertising those kinds of services on Facebook. See below, for example (I’ll leave the personal info in because they’re clearly trying to offer a service):
Probably the easiest would be posting your own request in various groups to see what responses you get. You mentioned a flat rate, but I would have thought an hourly rate would be more reasonable.
Relocation companies exist (in general, don’t know about Taiwan specifically, but I’m sure) that coordinate all that. My last move was coordinated through Cartus.
$10k? my last domestic move cost the company $130k (minus any fees they might have incurred that I didn’t see (that was a full move package including temp housing, per diem, etc. to be fair, but the move itself wasn’t cheap (a bit over half that (small 2br house, full service move - pack up, unpack, provide and haul away packing material, storage, +2 cars and 2 motorcycles)))), and that wasn’t even the executive package. We give $5k-$10k to fresh out of college hires moving themselves. I don’t think you can get a van line local move out of a 2 bedroom apartment for under $1.5-2k these days (random guys and a u haul, sure).
That was just to stick some machines into a container. These companies are for executives whose companies don’t mind paying almost a quarter of a million bucks to move an executive to some country.
Sounds like you’re talking transport / shipping costs, not typical van line international move. My parents paid that for self pack transport / shipping a medium sized household to Taiwan almost 20 years ago.
I thought the rate was something like 1000 per TEU during that time. 1 TEU is like enough to cram an entire household of stuff into, if you don’t have a whole house of stuff you could basically barely take up a quarter of that space.
And if you throw out all the IKEA junks and such you could probably take up barely any space when it comes to sea shipping.
The stuff I was inquiring about having shipped didn’t take up even a tenth of a TEU.
Even if you factor in stuff like local trucking and stuff there’s no way it’s costing 10 times as much as the normal container rate from Taiwan to the US (or back).
A cheap local household move is load, local trip, unload, which is what it seems you’re baselining for prices + container shipping. A cheap household move internationally to taiwan, if you’re not in a port city to start, is really a load, regional trip, unload, load, shipping, storage, unload, load, local / regional trip, unload. So 3 load / unloads, likely longer road trip, storage. And often paying someone to help deal with paperwork. Shit adds up.
If you’re using a van line and expect them to insure, they’re going to insist on packing, likely with their provided, new material - on my last move, they actually unpacked boxes I had packed and repacked so they could at least eyeball the condition of everything (it took a 3 man crew 2 days to pack my 1500ft2 house, 2 man crew a full day to unpack (less likely to be required)). For anything nice, they might also insist on making custom crates or boxes.
my last domestic move cost the company $130k (minus any fees they might have incurred that I didn’t see (that was a full move package including temp housing, per diem, etc. to be fair, but the move itself wasn’t cheap (a bit over half that (small 2br house, full service move - pack up, unpack, provide and haul away packing material, storage, +2 cars and 2 motorcycles)))), and that wasn’t even the executive package. We give $5k-$10k to fresh out of college hires moving themselves. I don’t think you can get a van line local move out of a 2 bedroom apartment for under $1.5-2k these days (random guys and a u haul, sure).