Trying to rent/sell an expat style apartment in Kaohsiung

We were tired of Taiwan style apartments with tiny kitchens, hard beds, and cold tile floors, so we bought a house and remodeled it to give us a piece of North America in Taiwan. Now, we have recently opened up a new coffee shop, and had to move there in order to help it grow. Now we’re looking to rent or sell the other apartment, but it is now “ruined” for the Taiwanese who have looked at it. For example, the kitchen is foreigner style (open to the living room, not small and hidden.) We added a dryer and turned the large balcony into extra bedrooms (now no place to hang large amounts of laundry.) The only offers we got were for the apartment space itself, so the buyer could tear everything down and fix it back to the way an apartment “should” be.

Since it’s ruined for Taiwanese, it’s probably better to sell or rent to another expat, but we’re not sure where to look for buyers or if any house agents handle foreign clients. We posted on a few forums, but few responses. Any ideas?

Tobey


Located near MinTzu Dollars, it’s a two bedroom apartment (upgradeable to three), a master bedroom with a bath and a smaller bedroom that can use the common bathroom. The large bathroom has a foreigner sized bathtub. It used to have a 3rd bedroom, but we took out a wall to make that the open kitchen, and the tiny Taiwanese kitchen turned into the laundry room that includes a large washer and dryer. Total inside is about 43 ping. It has a large enclosed balcony (5 ping) we were planning to turn into a greenhouse, but can be used for storage or we could remodel it into a 3rd bedroom if wished. It has hard wood floors in living room and bedrooms, king size bed, and a ski machine. There’s air conditioning in the living room/kitchen and both bedrooms. There’s a projector that can hook up to the DVD player or computer to make the living room into a movie theatre. It has a large, open kitchen with a 4 burner stove on an island, an oven big enough for a Thanksgiving turkey, microwave, dishwasher, and a bunch of cookware, appliances, cups, and dishes. Phone and wireless Internet is already hooked up and just would need a name change. It has a cable hookup, but we never used it, so if you wanted cable we’d help you hook it back up. We have a cleaning lady who comes once a week, and we hope you can continue to use her service. Rent is $25,000 a month. The guard fee is 1800/month. You can see some pictures at the link below or contact us to take a look at it.

playgames.tw/house/index.htm

Personally, I think the rent price is a little too high for Gaoxiung, probably the foreign expat market is to small to get the price you want …

That seems crazily expensive for South Taiwan. My place is a shopfront (ie more expensive than normal apartments) on a big road a bit further north of there just off from BoAi Road. 45 ping. I pay 12,000 a month. Unfurnished and not as nice inside… but it does have a shopfront, which should make up for the nicer interior. I doubt any foreigners are going to pay 25,000 for an apartment in GaoXiong (Kaohsiung) unless it is very central, down town or near the ocean or ChenChing lake.

[quote=“Two Baby”] We posted on a few forums, but few responses.
Rent is $25,000 a month.[/quote]

I think you’ve just answered your own question…Stop trying to get your renters to pay for your Dai-kuan and I think you’ll be ok.

Nice kitchen :slight_smile:

I guess I was basing the price on seeing similair apartments go to forigeners for between 15-20K. And the furnishing/uniqueness/comfortableness would be worth the extra $5000.

Have you tried employing real estate agents? Up here in Taipei there are a few that specialize on foreigners, maybe you can find one in Kaohsiung, too …

We tried the an agent, but no bites for sales, other than the bottom basement “empty apartment” price. We’ll see what $20,000/mo will bring, and probably will try another realtor to see if they can find a buyer. Shrug. Thanks for the suggestions.

Doesn’t seem so, according to what you’ve found so far. I’d kill for a kitchen like that here, though. Just as a metter of interest, can you recall how much it cost you to remodel the kitchen, including the appliances?

Kitchen only was about 350,000 with everything–cabinets, island, boch dishwasher, some italian oven, fridge, stove hood had to be imported too as taiwan doesn’t produce a hood that can hang from the middle of the room. That doesn’t include the floors, plumming, lights, walls…