Yeah we finally gotten our keys! Now the renovation can start. Hopefully we can get the place done up and handed over before the wedding. It's been very tiring journey for the past six months and even more to come till June. I really have to thank Meimei for organizing all of this. I would never have been able to take so much stress on the planning. I'm marrying an amazing lady.
We start our search with a few simple criteria, one it has to be a mid to high floor. Preferably we can find a one with a bigger floor space than the shoe-box units in the new estates. Corner unit is a must, we cannot stand having a window looking out into the walkway. And lastly, it must be affordable. The market is getting heated and flats were transacting at sometimes excessive prices but we didn't want to burden ourselves with a huge housing loan.
So our hunt took us from Bedok to Bukit Batok and finally we settled on Tampines. The flats in Bedok were going for ridiculous prices. The cash over valuation on a simple 4 room 30 year old flat was going from $20-30K. The going rate was even worst for 5 rooms at $50K. And that's for units that are un-renovated. The ones in good condition were attracting even more premiums. After several months of hunting we gave up, we just couldn't afford any unit in Bedok.
Thankfully we chanced on a 5 room unit in Tampines. At 126 sqm, it's one of the larger units we have seen. Though it has weird inlets and design, I had a vision of how we could reno it into a good layout the moment I took a walk through the place. It had an added bonus of having 4 good size bedrooms which translated into the possibility of having a study room. This is an ideal place, and at $23K cash over valuation of $385K, though still on the high side, was something we were willing to fork out. So long story short, this became our first home.
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