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Rental place forced to delist
Print Edition
“SHANGHAI Family,” an apartment near the Bund which was popular with tourists, has been forced to shut down and is no longer listed on Airbnb and other vacation rental websites.
The owner of the apartment, a man surnamed Wu, decided to delist after neighbors of the 100-year-old residential building on Sijing Road complained about noises late in the night and of strangers who posed security threats.
Wu told Shanghai Daily his apartment was always booked ever since he started renting it out at the beginning of this year. About 40 percent of his tenants were foreign tourists.
The building is the last-standing oldest neighborhood in downtown.
Home owners like Wu have had to deal with complex issues like complaining neighbors and of safety as they struggle to maintain a profitable but unregulated business.
One of Wu’s neighbors, an 80-year-old woman surnamed Liu, claimed she was the worst affected by Wu’s business and had filed a complaint with the residents’ committee in July.
“I didn’t mind when he occupied two square meters of public space in front of my door while refurnishing his apartment, but his tenants keep me awake most of the nights,” Liu said.
Liu said as they walked their “thuds and stumps” on the wooden floor made it worse and disturbed the peace of the night. “After he refurbished his apartment, I felt like people were walking all over my head and the ceiling would collapse,” she said.
Wu declined to comment on his neighbors’ complaints but said he tried to persuade them to get on to this profitable business but they rejected it as they were not ready for some great business ideas. “Profits from turning their 10x30 square-meter apartments into quality hotels are five times larger than renting them just to someone. People from out of town are obviously getting more and more interested in this kind of cultural experiences,” he said.
Liu said she does not remember Wu giving any such ideas but concedes the idea does not fascinate her. “Most of the residents can’t even afford to refurnish their homes,” she said.
Some home owners said they usually refuse those who plan to hold parties.
But not all tourists were sold to the idea of living in old residential places. On the Airbnb’s Chinese website, a user called “Gill” recounted her experience in one such building.
“The creaking sounds of the floor above were disturbing at night since this is an old building, and sometimes we could hear people talking in loud voices,” she wrote.
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