Shanghai’s New Law Bans Group-Rentals, Imposes Stricter Rules On ‘Middleman

Recently, the 46th meeting of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress passed the Shanghai Housing Leasing Regulations, which clearly prohibits group renting, and bans the use of illegal buildings or the leasing of buildings that underwent unauthorized modification. Besides, it specifies the codes of conduct that lessors and lessees should abide by. The regulations also stipulate that the management of market entities should be strengthened, and the supervision on individual that are known as “second landlord”, aka, middleman landlords, should be tightened. Additionally, individuals who sublease a specified number of houses for the purpose of profit and engage in housing leasing business activities shall go through market entity registration in accordance with law.

Rental prices in first-tier cities in Communist China remain high. For young graduates in Shanghai and people working in Shanghai from other provinces, sharing and group renting are often the only affordable options. The term “second landlord” is actually derived from this context, as these people who are the original renters, would partition the house and allow separate accommodations to be rented. Because of being highly affordable, these little rooms are very popular. At the moment, however, under the extreme Zero-COVID policy, Shanghai’s legislation prohibits group renting and increases the supervision on “second landlords”, which makes it even worse for people living in Shanghai.