After viewing the site situation, Pei Qian asked Xiao Sun to take Liang Qingfan to the hotel to rest, while he returned to the office at Shenhua Luxury View.

By now, Pei Qian had established multiple safeguards for Sloth Apartments.

The apartment layouts appeared fancy but were impractical.

To prevent wealthy people from taking interest, he deliberately chose a minimalist decoration style, avoiding the luxurious “garden villa” aesthetic.

Moreover, the model of buying buildings and then renting them out meant that regardless of whether they could be rented out or not, it would be impossible to recover costs within several or even dozens of cycles.

A fully furnished apartment would cost around 3.5 million yuan. If the monthly rent was set at 8,000 or even 9,000 yuan, even with continuous occupancy, after deducting cleaning and other expenses, it would take three to four hundred months to recoup the investment.

In Pei Qian’s memory, the rent-to-sale ratio in China had never been good. Many people were keen on buying houses mainly because of the associated benefits like household registration, school district advantages, and the potential for future appreciation.

Of course, houses themselves preserved or even increased in value, but as long as Pei Qian didn’t sell, the value of the house could never be realized.

For Pei Qian, the appreciation potential of houses was a negative factor, but no matter how much a house appreciated, the system would still calculate it as a 10% depreciation of fixed assets during settlement. As long as he didn’t get greedy and controlled the total amount of fixed assets so not exceed half of the system’s initial funds, there wouldn’t be too much impact.

Therefore, whether the Sloth Apartments project succeeded or failed, became popular or not, it was very profitable for Pei Qian.

Of course, it would be best if it didn’t become popular, so he could at least lose an additional hundred thousand yuan in rent every month.

This alone wasn’t enough for Pei Qian; he needed more methods to dissuade target users, specifically those young people who enjoyed the petite bourgeoisie lifestyle.

The method was simple: raise prices, raise them drastically!

Currently, the reasonable rent for such an apartment in the Jingzhou rental market would be around 6,000 yuan, suitable for 4 to 6 people to share, with each person paying just over 1,000 yuan.

This price was slightly higher than other rentals on the market, but considering it was a fully furnished apartment with all appliances, this price was reasonable.

If the price were truly set at 6,000 yuan per month, there would be people in Jingzhou willing to rent it.

Since the system restricted prices from exceeding reasonable levels too much, if he wanted to raise prices, he had to provide services of comparable value, whether customers needed them or not.

So, Pei Qian decided to provide additional services for these apartments!

Cleaning: Mandatory cleaning services for all Sloth Apartments. You might not use it, but you still have to pay for it.

Hire a certain number of cleaning staff, with minor cleaning every three days and major cleaning every seven days, completely matching hotel service standards.

Butler: Assign a house butler for each building to handle various issues at any time, while also keeping track of all tenant information, refusing entry to unauthorized personnel, and striving to protect the rights and interests of tenants.

If there were problems with the apartment, the butler could directly use Sloth Apartments’ funds for repairs, and Mr. Pei would be very pleased with this.

Regular upgrades: Periodic upgrades to the rooms, such as updating the latest smart devices, providing tenants with the newest gaming equipment, purchasing new games and memberships to various video websites, and so on.

Of course, these items belonged to Sloth Apartments, and tenants had no right to take them away.

After adding all these, Pei Qian tried asking the system again and finally set the rent for this apartment at 9,000 yuan per month!

The apartment had five rooms, but one bedroom was relatively small and not suitable for living, so Pei Qian planned to arrange it as a study.

This meant the apartment effectively had four bedrooms.

Calculating based on 30 days per month, the daily rent for each room had reached about 80 yuan, which was still cheaper than most mid-to-high-end hotels in Jingzhou but exceeded 99% of the rental apartments there.

Looking at it this way, if the apartment could be rented short-term, it would still have a certain cost-effectiveness.

Therefore, Pei Qian had one last trump card.

No shared rentals, no short-term rentals!

The apartment must be rented as a whole, and information for each tenant and visitor must be registered with the butler.

Rent could be paid monthly without a deposit, but rental contracts only had two options: six months or one year, and the full term must be completed.

If tenants wanted to move out before the end of the term, they could do so without penalties, and the remaining rent would be refunded, but they would not be allowed to rent any Sloth Apartments property again for one year.

This way, people who wanted to use Sloth Apartments as a hotel would likely be deterred.

Based on current wage levels in Jingzhou, those who could afford to rent Sloth Apartments would probably be wealthy individuals.

But wealthy people could afford to buy their own houses, so why would they rent?

As for average office workers, perhaps only Tenda Group employees could afford it.

But Tenda employees want to pay to rent Sloth Apartments? Absolutely not.

Pei Qian was considering that Sloth Apartments would initially refuse Tenda employees, and after verifying that Sloth Apartments indeed couldn’t make money, he would then build on a larger scale and arrange for Tenda employees to move in, offsetting the rent with employee benefits.

This way, he would achieve double happiness!

Of course, the system required that only a small portion of Sloth Apartments could be used as employee dormitories, probably to ensure this project had a chance of profitability and wouldn’t change in nature.

But as long as Pei Qian built enough Sloth Apartments, he could accommodate all employees.

Then, a small portion would be used as staff dormitories, while most would remain unoccupied and unable to be rented out, which would surely lead to skyrocketing losses!

Finally, Pei Qian needed to find a person in charge of Sloth Apartments.

Previously, new project managers were transferred from other departments, but this time, Pei Qian decided to change his approach slightly.

Having Liang Qingfan, an architect, be responsible for Sloth Apartments seemed like a good choice.

Of course, he was currently still an employee of Gaoling Design Company, but Pei Qian firmly believed that with the right approach, any talent could be poached.

Having a young architect manage apartments should be quite mismatched in terms of professional expertise, right?

Of course, whether to poach him or not would require further careful consideration.

If the Sloth Apartments project developed exactly as Pei Qian imagined, and Liang Qingfan followed Pei Qian’s requirements completely without showing any management or marketing skills, then Pei Qian could consider poaching him.

…

…

April 14th, Thursday.

At Tuoguan Fitness

The trainers were either sitting or standing in the rest area, looking somewhat at a loss.

There were a total of 20 trainers, 14 male and 6 female, all carefully vetted and screened by Guo Licheng before being officially hired.

The fitness circle in Jingzhou wasn’t very large, and Guo Licheng knew some friends there. After mutual introductions and Guo Licheng explaining the salary and benefits of Managed Fitness, the positions were quickly filled.

Guo Licheng had strictly followed Mr. Pei’s instructions for screening, finding trainers with solid professional qualifications, honest people like himself who didn’t just talk the talk.

“Brother Guo, are you sure we shouldn’t be handing out flyers or something?” asked a sweet-looking, curvaceous female trainer.

This female trainer was named Li Yaling. What could be seen now was just her appearance; if she removed her jacket, one would see her prominently raised biceps and four visible abdominal muscles, vividly illustrating what it means to say “if I punch you, you might die.”

The other trainers were also looking at Guo Licheng, waiting for him to make a decision.

Guo Licheng nodded: “The boss said we don’t need to do anything, just wait for customers to come to us.”

Li Yaling sighed slightly: “Can we trust what the boss says?”

“Which fitness center in China doesn’t use the strategy of handing out flyers and selling memberships and classes?”

“We’ve all done this before. Although we don’t like it, it’s just how work is, right?”

“I think, regardless of what the boss says, we should still actively look for work to do.”

Guo Licheng hesitated briefly but quickly firmed his resolve: “No, Mr. Pei seems different from other bosses.”

Li Yaling felt somewhat helpless: “Bosses only seem different from each other. Some are strict, some are easygoing, some appear to be approachable, but they’re all the same in reality—they all want employees to take initiative.”

“We don’t have to sell memberships here, and the pay is so much higher than at other fitness centers. It doesn’t seem right for us to just wait around doing nothing.”

Guo Licheng still shook his head: “Even if we brought in customers with flyers, so what? Think about our gym’s membership system.”

“Members must come a certain number of times each week, and fitness meals are bundled with membership.”

“How many customers brought in by flyers would accept such strict conditions?”

Li Yaling was momentarily speechless: “Then… what should we do?”

Guo Licheng looked around at everyone and said, “If we can’t figure out what the boss is thinking, we should just strictly follow what he says.”

“Mr. Pei has his ideas. We’re not good at marketing anyway, so let’s not mess around.”

“In short, don’t overthink it. If Mr. Pei comes down to blame us, I’ll take all responsibility.”

“Since there are no customers now, everyone goes to warm up. These are all excellent equipment, don’t waste them.”

“Remember to come try the fitness meals later.”

With no customers in the gym, the trainers had nothing to do, so they split up to warm up.

All the fitness equipment was newly purchased—not the most expensive, but from top global commercial fitness equipment brands. Durable, stylishly designed, and incorporating modern ergonomics.

Currently, only a few high-end hotel gyms in Jingzhou are equipped with such gear, which is generally not accessible to most people.

Guo Licheng had also ordered uniforms for all trainers, bright yellow and very eye-catching.

At the same time, nearby Slackin’ Delivery had staff responsible for regularly delivering fitness meals to the gym, but since there were no customers yet, they only delivered meals for the trainers.

The Food Lab was not yet fully prepared, so the fitness meals were the first version made by Slackin’ Delivery’s chefs. They had achieved low oil and low salt, but there was still much room for improvement.

Guo Licheng planned to have the trainers try the meals over the next few days, so they could provide feedback for gradual improvement.

At noon, the delivery person from Slackin’ Delivery arrived.

Guo Licheng and several other trainers arranged the healthy meals in the rest area, waiting for everyone to come and eat together.

The original gym rest area wasn’t very large and was used for selling memberships and classes.

Now, to meet customers’ dining needs, Guo Licheng had slightly expanded the rest area during the redesign and additionally purchased some high-end tables and chairs to ensure customers could dine here in shifts.

Just as Guo Licheng was about to call the other trainers who were still exercising to come eat, he saw a familiar figure push open the door and enter.

Mr. Pei had arrived!

Guo Licheng hurried to greet him.

After entering, Pei Qian first looked around.

Some trainers were preparing to eat, others were using the equipment to work out themselves. There wasn’t a single customer in the entire store, and the trainers weren’t outside handing out flyers either.

Hmm…

What a satisfying scene!