Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Story of the House
6-OCT-2009:
Today, my aunt posted a blog about the house opposite hers, which was bought by a contractor for RM 2.3 million and then he flattened the entire house! See photos here. If I have 2.3 million, I could have done that too and cut out the hassle of looking for a house. Many of you know that I've been looking for a long time now and it's really stressful.
I've been wanting to come back, get a house (with a garden) and settle down nicely and to be honest, I think I've been day dreaming about it for about 2 years now (or more). Two years ago, when I checked the property price in Malaysia (particular PJ), we could still get a corner unit for about RM500 - 600k. Why a corner unit? Because after almost 4 years, I've become really tired of air drying our clothes indoors, without the sun, for 2-3 days (yes, some thick clothes do take 3 days to dry), so I'd really love a huge space where I can sun-dry my clothes.
Anyway, coming back this time, without checking the property market again, I had budgeted RM600k in mind for our house. At least I was more realistic - Saimun thought he can get one for RM300k! I told him he was living in his dreams.
Anyway, what happened, it was almost impossible to get anything decent with our initial budget and totally impossible for a corner unit, unless we move to far away places like Kota Kemuning or Shah Alam. With that, we launched into a house hunting exercise with no budget. We saw houses that are RM700k, we saw those that are 800k and we also saw houses that are 1.x million.
A month ago, we made an offer on a semi-D for RM830k and the offer was accepted. Unfortunately, the deal didn't go through because of some risk factors. The seller/owner is a lawyer himself and he insisted on representing himself, which my lawyer advised that will pose a slight risk to us (actually to me it was a huge risk, i.e. exposure of 10% of the property price, therefore we decided not to go ahead with the transaction).
Since then, we (particularly myself) have viewed many units. Initially, I tried to bring my MIL along whenever we went but I soon noticed that her comments were extremely biased. Everything is no good if the house is not opposite or next to or behind hers. :p There was this run down single-storey corner unit behind her house selling for RM400k and without even taking a look inside, she said it was a good buy and encouraged us to get it! Well, to be honest, first of all, the house is only single-storey. If we buy that we'll have to do what the contractor did in my aunt's blog and flatten the whole house and rebuild it. The original layout is way too old fashioned - bedroom doors directly visible from the living room and no attached bathroom (for example). And there are only 2 and a half rooms. Besides, it will take up to 1 year to build it and I can't wait that long! Plus, not to mention the side is directly facing the afternoon sun (which I'm suffering daily now, so would I want to make that mistake again?). Even though a corner lot, there's actually not much land and the car porch is extremely short and can only park 1 car.
Geez ... anyway after scouting the various areas for a while, we decided to get something in Bandar Utama - lowest price starting around 650k and all the way up to 2 mil. MIL was obviously not very happy with that because it's "far" - in fact it's only 15 mins drive. However, I didn't imagine that even with a fixed target of what we wanted, it would be so difficult. Bascially, we knew what we wanted but we couldn't find anything that we're comfortable with. Either the house was not right or the price was not right. I was really running out of patience by then.
Saimun had been a good help without actually doing anything. He merely made suggestions and opened up options, so everytime I felt like I was giving up, there was new hope. One day, he suggested looking at condominiums instead, and can you believe that condos these days cost the same price or more as a 2-storey landed house? Anyway, we checked out this new condo (which is due to complete in December) in SS2. A friend bought a unit 3 years ago for 500k++ and now it is selling at 700k++! Can you imagine that? I have so far only inspected the floor plan without actually seeing the unit but I love the idea of living in a condo with facilities just downstairs. The only downside is that we'll have to pay RM500 a month for maintenance. Plus, there's another new development coming up next to the condo and as Saimun put it, we wouldn't want to be breathing in dust for the next 3 years. By the way, the new development next door was selling at 800k per unit (lowest price) and they're all sold out within 3 days. :p
So ... what are we going to do huh? We have our eyes on something currently. More to come next ...
