When you are moving to Beijing as an expat there are a few options for the type of residence you like to live in;

Hotels
Dormitories
Foreign Diplomatic Housing Apartment
Villa Homes
Chinese Housing

Hotels

There are two kind of hotels in China ; hotels that accept foreigners as guests and hotels that do not accept foreigners as their guests. In general, you can say that the hotels which accept foreigners are far more expensive. Most of the star-rated hotels do offer rooms for long-term as most foreign companies put up their staff in these kind of hotels. Living in a hotel has many advantages as for example you do not have to take care of paying bills, cooking, laundry and most hotels offer cable TV as well. Disadvantage is that you never feel that your hotel room is your real ‘home' (e.g. guests to your room most probably have to register when visiting you and should leave before midnight )

Foreign Diplomatic Housing Apartment

These kind of apartments are usually well situated and offer lots of space compared to Chinese housing, hotels and other foreign expert housing. You can stay in a Foreign Diplomatic Housing Apartment if you have lots of money to spend. Because these apartments have people with lots of money to spend the apartments are protected with concrete walls, iron gates with sharp points and guards…which do not much contribute to a nice atmosphere.

Villa Homes

Villa Homes are located outside the city center, let's say around 30 kilometers out of town. Therefore you will have to need your own transport, your own car or a driver. The villa homes are very expensive and usually only being paid for by the big multinational companies. The advantage is that if you have little kids the village homes provide safer environments in terms of playgrounds, yards etc.

Chinese Housing

The cheapest but most challenging option is to live in a Chinese apartment. For example, 2 or 3 nights in an expensive hotel equals the amount for one month of rental in a Chinese apartment. The side-effect of living among the Chinese is that you will have to speak some Chinese in order to be able to communicate with them. Also be aware that Chinese have a different meaning for the word ‘hygiene' (and a lot of times the word does not have meaning at all…).

However if you could find a real estate agent who has experience with relocating foreigners into Chinese apartments you could find a reasonable priced apartment not far from town, or even in town itself.

Dormitories

Worst of all options is to live in a housing facility of a big college campus. Most of the big colleges provide such housing facilities for foreign experts, but unless you are going to work at one of these colleges it is no point of staying there. The only advantage is the rental is (very) cheap, but the facilities lack reliable warm water, electricity etc. and besides that most colleges wake you up at around 5:30 with the Chinese national anthem blasting out of the campus speakers.