Clearly, renting has entered the era of deposit-free rentals, yet non-refundable deposits remain the "number one trap."

On September 15, Black Cat Complaints, in collaboration with the China Quality Report, released the "2026 Housing Rental Consumer Pitfall Avoidance Guide" (hereinafter referred to as the "Guide"). Coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the implementation of the "Housing Rental Regulations," the "Guide" is based on 12,003 housing rental complaints received by the platform during the same period and 11,096 tenant questionnaire surveys from the Beike Research Institute. It sorts out the "Top Ten Pitfalls" along the entire process of "before rentingduring rentingafter renting," and provides prevention and suggestions for each item. Top Ten Pitfalls in Renting: Non-refundable deposits top the list, "lighting a lamp to assess damages" becomes a typical case On the day Beijing tenant Manzi checked out, she disposed of the last bag of garbage early in the morning, and the room had been restored to how it looked a year ago. The landlord did not look at the walls or the floor. He took a highlighter out of his pocket, squatted down, and shone it on a few cat hairs in the sofa seams. Before signing the contract, the landlord had verbally confirmed that "pets are allowed," but the landlord said that allowing pets did not mean the house could be damaged, and the entire 5,200 yuan deposit would be deducted. Manzi had no choice but to call the police and posted the scene online. In the end, she got the full deposit back. The problem Manzi encountered was precisely malicious deduction of deposits through "lighting a lamp to assess damages," also the biggest "pitfall" exposed by the "Guide." Sorted by complaint share, the top three of the "Top Ten Pitfalls" are all directly related to "money": non-refundable deposits and malicious deductions rank first at 33.3%, meaning one in every three rental complaints concerns deposits, with about 9.39 million yuan involved. Among them, complaints about delayed non-refund increased by 51%, and "lighting a lamp to assess damages" became a typical example of malicious deduction; contract fraud and unfair terms account for 14%, among which complaints about broken verbal promises account for 71%, and the "short-term rental, long-term contract" scam continues despite repeated bans; rent and fee disputes account for 12.4%, and over the past year complaints about disguised charges outside the contract increased by 34%. The three "main pitfalls" are prominent, each exceeding 10%, while the other "secondary pitfalls" are also commonly seen, in order: non-refundable deposits and advance payments, platform performance obstacles and customer service failures, lack of maintenance guarantees, fund security and fraud (complaints about absconding with funds increased by 33%), infringement of residential tranquility (involving privacy violations, violent eviction, etc.), housing quality and safety issues (involving formaldehyde, partitions, noise, gas and electrical safety, etc.), and fake listingscomplaints about "catfishing" rose instead of falling, by 12%. It is worth noting that some areas have already shown improvementafter the regulations were issued, complaints about formaldehyde pollution fell by 28%, while complaints about mold, odors, and pests still increased by 46%. The "Guide" shows that in the year since the regulations took effect, tenants' awareness of rules has clearly improved. There were 12,003 housing rental-related complaints on the Black Cat Complaints platform, up 11% from 10,767 in the previous year, averaging about 1,000 per month; in March 2026, the peak month for returning to cities to rent, monthly complaints reached 1,636, a new high in nearly two years. Half of the respondents said their awareness of defending their rights had strengthened, and 47.6% were more inclined to defend their rights through official channels; the proportion of complaints of the "rationally citing rules" type rose from 4.0% to 10.6%, with 955 complaints citing the "Civil Code" and 118 directly citing the "Housing Rental Regulations." Reminder! Do your homework before signing In response to the top ten pitfalls, the "Guide" provides countermeasures according to before renting, during renting, and after renting. Before renting, conduct a video inspection of the home, and do not pay any viewing fees; ask clearly about the name, amount, purpose, and refund conditions of the deposit, and try to pay the lowest possible proportion; all verbal promises should be written into the contract as clauses, and before signing, list all fees and do not pay a cent outside the contract. During renting, keep communication records, retain work orders for repairs, be alert to the combination of "newly renovated + odor," and resolutely do not rent partitioned rooms or group rental housing. After renting, safeguard funds, try not to pay more than 3 months' rent at a time, and pay only to corporate accounts; on the first day of move-in, take a video of the entire home, inspect the home face-to-face at move-out, and if the deposit is not refunded after the deadline, issue a formal demand. The "Guide" also condenses the key points of rights protection into a "pre-payment self-check list": whether the listing has been verified, whether the purpose of the payment is clear, whether verbal promises are included in the contract, whether the fee list is complete, whether the payee is a corporate account, and whether a single rent payment exceeds 3 monthsif you cannot answer even one of these six questions, do not pay yet. However, not all disputes can be "prevented in advance," and governance is extremely complex. For example, house leaks. After a rainstorm in summer, the ceiling of Hangzhou tenant Xiao Zeng began to drip, and she reported it to the sublessor for repairs, but it was not handled for a long timeseveral previous repair requests for home appliances had not been properly resolved. The leak worsened day by day and affected living conditions, so Xiao Zeng could only terminate the lease and move out. The sublessor neither repaired the house nor returned the deposit. At the same time in Wuhan, a tenant heard clear sounds of water in the bathroom ceiling, even though the unit upstairs had long been vacant. After on-site confirmation by a Beike steward, they communicated with the owner, neighbors, and the water company door to door; shutting off the main water valve affected other residents, so the steward bought bottled water and delivered it to apologize. In the end, it was found that an aging water valve and pipe in the upstairs bathroom had burst. In reality, many complaints also "reverse." In Ningbo, there was once a complaint: a tenant self-tested for excessive formaldehyde and demanded a room change, lease termination, and moving compensation; but when staff visited, they saw mountains of express delivery cardboard boxes piled up in the roomcardboard boxes release formaldehyde at room temperature. After the boxes were removed, third-party testing proved that formaldehyde did not exceed the standard, and the Beike platform bore the 680 yuan testing fee and moving fee. But this "tuition" was not paid in vain: besides the well-known new renovations and new furniture, triggers for excessive formaldehyde may also include cabbage, takeout insulation bags, hoarded express boxes, fuse beads, and figurines. Who will translate the pitfalls into rules? The common root cause of the top ten pitfalls is "information asymmetry, lack of service, and no one taking responsibility" in the fragmented rental market. This means that the truly effective solution is not to make every tenant a legal expert and evidence-gathering master, but to turn "verbal promises" into "system rules" and fill in uncertainty in advance at the institutional and regulatory level. Taking the public practices of Beike Provincial Heart Rent as an observation sample, it can be seen that in response to the stubborn problem of deposits, reliance on cash deposits is reduced: in 12 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu, tenants who meet credit conditions can pay 0 deposit and pay rent monthly"0 deposit" does not mean exemption from responsibility. Arrears, breach of contract, and man-made damage are still borne according to the contract, but the deposit changes from a sum of money held in the landlord's account back into a promise linked to credit; in Chengdu, the move-out deposit is promised to arrive within 3 days, with 100 yuan compensation per order for delaycompared with "refund as soon as possible," the time limit and responsibility are made concrete. Similarly, in response to the publicly concerning issues of formaldehyde rooms and "chuanchuan rooms," Beike Provincial Heart Rent's governance is moved forward to before move-in: risks are identified through listing information and handheld screening, with special attention to newly renovated homes and newly added furniture, and then confirmed through professional testing, treatment, and re-inspection; in the first half of 2026, Beike Huiju cumulatively tested 14,880 listings nationwide and identified 1,278 "formaldehyde rooms," treating 4,488 in total. For leaks in rental housing, not only front-end screening is needed, but also someone to provide backstop support after problems arise. In the first half of 2026, Beike Provincial Heart Rent inspected more than 450,000 homes, reducing the monthly average of soft-furnishing water leaks per 10,000 homes to 2.4, down 67% year on year. For repairs with complex causes and overlapping responsibilities, such as waterproof layers and concealed pipes, it bore 19.61 million yuan in costs and 5.3 million yuan in leak compensation, covering all parties including owners, tenants, neighbors, and property management. Indeed, the order of the handling process is most critical. The general handling process of custodial institutions is: first stop the loss and first protect the tenant's residence, then clarify responsibility, and after responsibility is clarified, seek compensation from the party actually responsibletenants do not have to face the growing water stains on the ceiling alone on a stormy day, and even less should they be caught between the owner, neighbors, and property management passing the buck to one another. Huang Hui, a senior rental analyst at the Beike Research Institute, said: "Beike is translating every 'pitfall' into a system rule: 0-deposit monthly payment corresponds to the stubborn deposit problem, time-limited repairs correspond to no one responding to repair requests, third-party account fund custody and facial recognition correspond to sublessors absconding with funds, and gas and electrical fire inspections correspond to rental safety." Indeed, the market needs more standardized housing rental. From "lighting a lamp to assess damages" to "0-deposit monthly payment," from "no one responding to repair requests" to "time-limited repairs," these changes all point in the same direction: in the future, avoiding pitfalls in the rental market will not depend on tenants becoming shrewder, but on compressing the space for unreasonable behavior even smaller. When rules run ahead of disputes, and when the cost of breach of contract and buck-passing is higher than the benefit, "pitfalls" can truly be filled in, and secure, worry-free living can become the everyday reality of rental life.