Officially A Housebuyer

The final set of bank documents were delivered to me yesterday and I am officially a homeowner today.

Owning my own home was something that I had been thinking of for quite some time and it was not until I turned 30 that I really did anything about it. I guess the thought of not being able to get a home loan for the maximum amount of years was one of the reasons why I decided to buy a house this year. Most of my friends also encouraged to do so as it seems that the property market is currently experiencing a slump and some pretty good deals are out there. So after thinking long and hard about it, I decided to bite the bullet and start the journey of home buying.

The first thing that I had to think about is what kind of residence that I would like to procure. Initially I was looking for a double-storey link house since I’ve been living in one apartment after another for the past 12 years. I was actually sick of apartment living and yearn to have a yard to call my own. Of course, once I started looking at the prices of link houses, that quickly had to change. The houses that I looked at were either too expensive for me or too far from where I worked. I must have looked at least at 15 different places before I decided to revise my choice to buying an apartment. I’ve always been a finicky buyer.

Buying apartments in KL is actually easier than getting a house. I guess that this is unavoidable since there are more people coming into KL and land space is becoming more expensive. I just hope that we don’t become like Singapore or Hong Kong someday where apartments are cramped and expensive. For the time being, apartment buyers in KLM need only to look at their budget and match it to the offerings out there. For most, to find a good financial fit wouldn’t be too difficult as there is a broad range of apartment choices that cater for most of the income groups. After looking at least at 8 more apartment sites, I decided to take a service condominium in Sunway.

Frankly speaking, I don’t really know the difference between a service and non-service condominium. From the brochures it seems that the facilities are the same as any normal condominium complexes that I’ve seen. Anyway … the price was right and the location was hard to resist being so close to other more developed facilities. I’m thinking that even if I decide not to live there, this was a piece of property that would appreciate in value quite fast once completed. Once that was decided the process of the sales and purchase agreements, EPF withdrawal for down payment, lawyers and applying of bank loan was relatively painless. Although it took some time between each process, I was actually surprised at how smooth the process went all the way to the final documents that I got yesterday.

Now I just have to wait for my apartment to be completed by Aug 2006.