'No, you can't sleep in the kitchen': Shanghai changes its rental laws

How many people do you think can cram into those apartments? In Shanghai, it's often a lot more than you think.

The 31 changes emphasize the importance of space and limits people’s ability to rent as a group (the practice in which rooms in a single apartment are rented out as separate units), something increasingly more common as Shanghai rents rise and city recruits migrant workers -- and English teachers.

Migrant worker or not, the new regulations try to make people thing twice about renting that extra closet as a low-cost bedroom to a friend.

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The policy would prohibit landlords (or other tenants) from converting rooms like kitchens, bathrooms and storage rooms into bedrooms.

Another key point? Each renter in an apartment should have at least 5 square meters of space to live in. Kind of them.

It also puts the onus on landlords to go to the police and/or local housing authorities to register that their apartment is being rented within 30 days of signing a contract. Technically those on residence visas should register with the local police station within a few days of moving into a new place, but theses regulations get one step closer to ensuring this will actually happen.

It also means that landlords will have to register the income they get from renting the apartments and pay taxes on it, a highly evaded practice in Shanghai.

"I am worried the cost of my rent will increase to offset the landlord's taxation," said Wu Yan, a tenant from Jiangsu province, who lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Pudong to China Daily reporters.

Unfortunately, other than saying that a landlord can't change your rent more than once a year, the new restrictions don't do much for the steady upward trend of many people's rent over the last few years.

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More than 31 million square meters of floor space was rented in Shanghai during 2010, said Liu Haisheng, director of the Shanghai Municipal Housing Support and Building Administration Bureau, at a press conference earlier this week.

Of that number, eight percent of the space was occupied by local residents, 88 percent by Chinese from elsewhere in China and a mere four percent by overseas residents.

People will be able to comment on the new 31-point regulations though April 20, 2011.