At crossroads once again

Many things and changes had happened, and it made m e-tink about my career options again. So many what-ifs…

Politics At Play

I never knew office politics could so dark, scheming and catches people unaware. I had the fortune of not having any (even if there is, it’s minimal) in my ex-company but it’s a totally different ball game at my current place. Guess I’d been a total noob for ignoring its presence, feigning innocent but yet, treading dangerously on it. It’s like you can’t seem to really trust anyone cos’they might have their secret agenda but at the same time, you cannot be fighting this alone. To feign ignorance… you could just die without knowing why.

Farewell to colleague

As it is, yesterday was the last day for one of my colleagues. Although we weren’t very close, I still felt some loss cos’ after all, is accustomed to her sitting in front of me and she was one of the interviewees when I first joined.

Reminded me of my last day in my ex-company, some of us cried and they even made a music video for me.

The buzz on looking for resale flats

Recently there has been a great hoo-ha on the climbing COVs that resale owners have to pay when they buy for flats — the record highest COV involves $60k in cold hard cash. *gasp*

Having recently just bought a resale flat myself, I concur with many of the comments that for young, married couples who want to set up a new home, they face barriers such as: waiting for a new home (built-to-order) takes very long (at least 3 years — so many things could have happened by then) while buying new immediate resale flats requires coughing out a lot of cold, hard cash. The former manifests itself into other potential problems — staying with in-laws is not something easy to handle and brings about many problems with it too, although money can be saved up during the transition period.

For normal earthlings like us who depends on ourselves with no ’strong financial backing’ from parents or anyone, what else can be done to get out of the situation?

I’d say luck and timing play a big part in buying both new and resale flats. For my case, I’d balloted at least 5 times before I’d gotten a chance to select a new flat (and the number wasn’t very good either). Really desperate to get a flat back then, I hurriedly paid a deposit of $2k without really considering other alternatives - resale flat prices were at their peaks towards end-2007.

When it was time to really commit to purchasing the new unit, I got cold feet as I thought: with the flat ready in est end 2012 (probably 2011 in actual), I’d have lost a good 2 years of spending quality time with Vince (‘quality’ as in, having privacy to ourselves etc ). Coupled with the fact that we might have an addition to our family (which changes the family equation totally) by then, we’d never had any quality time to ourselves at all. A few of my friends had since given up balloting and waiting for new flats but proceeded to buy their ideal resale flats.

Thus I braked and forfeited the $2k deposit; tough decision but I guess it was something that has to be done. With that, we started looking for resale flats for about 2 – 3 months,  spending weekday nights and weekends looking around. Either the flat was cheap but requires major renovation, or that everything was good but the asking price was too high. We stopped looking for flats earlier this year and wanted to wait till after CNY, since it was purportedly said that prices drop after CNY (some agents confirmed this).

Then on Valentines’ Day (which was very near to our deadline: we require 3 months for the flat handover and if we want to have own place by June, end-Feb is the latest we can do so), we chanced upon our current flat: below COV and require minimum renovation!

For couples who have plans to settle down, my advice is to save up early, you’ll never know when you need the sum of money for. Be it for the marriage expenses (banquets, honeymoon etc), COV or renovation (try not to go for bank loans as the interest rates are exhorbitant at 6-7% pa), cash is king. Then, really set some time to look for the resale flats. Having seen quite a few flats and gained some experience, here’s some tips I’ve summarised, hopefully they are useful!

How to get started:

1) Can you wait or you have to get a new flat immediately after marriage? New BTO flats generally require a waiting time of at least 3 years. If you get married before the flat is ready, chances are that the bride will live in the groom’s house and share his room. Alternatively, the couple may decide to rent a place outside while waiting for their flat but this is likely to bring objections by both parents (doesn’t make economical sense) unless they are quite cash-rich and does not require more savings (read on only for those who decided on a resale flat)

2) Prioritise your wants / needs: Unless we have unlimited resources ($$), there’s no way we can want something that is cheap, good location, requires no renovation, high flooring etc. Decide on a few important factors (cost, location etc) and rank them accordingly

3) See what is the comfortable range that your monthly combined household income can afford. Go to CPF website and use their monthly mortgage calculator to estimate the monthly installments to be paid (2.6% pa for HDB loan, 25 or 30 years for repayment).  Bear in mind that once decided, repayments can be shortened but cannot be lengthened. Know what is your monthly CPF Ordinary account contribution to see if you need any excess top-up (in cash) if your ideal flat costs more than what you 2 can currently afford

4) For first-time resale flat owners, the government gives a $30k grant off your final sale price.  For those who are buying resale flats near either parents (within 2km radius or in the same town estate), extra $10k grant. The 2 above applies to first-timers only and taking either or both grants require the house owners to stay in their flat for at least 5 years

Now for the flat itself…

5) Look at the house in whole perspective, rather than just by the final sale price. There can be places that are cheap in sale but you require major renovations which can be heftly and cost up to tens of thousands

6) For flats that require COV, look at the curent condition:  Do you still need to do renovations, or it’s a move-in condition? If it’s the latter, you may want to consider COV as part of the ‘reno’ the owner had done for you

7)  Consider the location and amenities around the flat. Especially for location, no doubt there’s a premium on it but look at the tradeoffs: Avoiding traffic jams during peak hours, spending less time commuting to and fro work / leisure,  spending less money on transportation etc are all long-term perspectives that come into play

8 ) Even slight touch-ups in renovation can cost thousands. Hacking of walls and re-flooring are the major expenditures in renovation

9) COV and renovation are not the only expenditures when setting up a new home. After confirming the sale, you need to stock up on furniture and other necesstities which can be hefty as well

In general:

10) Have a timeline planned out between you guys. Major costs involved between a couple’s union are: Wedding ceremony & banquet (another long list of expenditure), A roof over the couple’s head & *tada* Honeymoon. In general the sequence for couples in SG are: Flat first (since have to wait), Ceremony (some ROM first before the banquet, esp. for the purpose of getting a flat) then Honeymoon. Of course, the sequence can be interchanged, decided by the couple.

Shall input more details if I think of any or if there’s any questions / queries. Happy house-hunting!!!

Finally connected to the outside world

Finally got my desktop, HP touchscreen’s range. *phew* Hadn’t been able to blog much recently due to the poor network and also, use of laggy, old laptops turn me off from uploading any pictures.

So many people have been asking me, “How’s married life?” What I can say is, it takes time, effort and patience to accomodate and adjust to the new lifestyle. Put 2 persons from different family background together and start everything all over again; the house rules, the financial issues and preferences / habits matters; you get the drift. Besides, the attention somehow has been shifted towards “Us”, the household and everything. Find myself a housewife in the making but I’m definitely not giving up my occupation as a shoppaholic!

It’s really apt to say that ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ ; you get a chemical reaction that can be explosive. *smirks*