Our Biggest PurchaseWhat a day!! Was out and running about from 10.30am and only reached home at 12.30am!!
In less than 2 days, I have made the biggest purchase of my life. A purchase that will ground me in Singapore for life… :'(
Earlier this wk, I will still telling my mum & bro that we won't be able to enjoy the HDB grant anymore since we have burst the $8k income cap, and EC is too expensive. So can only settle for re-sale flats. Then one or two days letter, one of my colleagues was telling me about a new EC coming up and told me it will b a good investment and that his son may be going for it! I rmb I told him it is out of our means, and he replied 'But it's cheap!'. -_-""
So in any case, perhaps out of kapo-ness, I went to check it out on Wednesday. Other than Esparina (which we were earlier interested in before its launch but later decided it was too expensive using the HSBC home loan calculator on its website and hence didn't even go to its showroom), the other ECs launched now are The Canopy@Yishun and Privé@Punggol. I am not in favour of the location of The Canopy and its publicity material designs are simply not attractive!! Though I was rather intrigued by the badminton court they offer rather than the usual tennis court [Later on I was told that The Canopy is from a Chinese developer hence they prefer badminton to tennis.. lol!!]. As for Privé, turns out that it will be launched to the public on 10Dec (Friday), and the e-application to ballot is just closed the day before (Tues)! Not really sure what this e-app to ballot thingy is about, but we contacted the agent anyway to see if we can go see see look look on Friday.
Earlier on when considering to get resale flat, we already calculated the comfortable budget which we can afford. So when we went to the showroom on Tues, we know the biggest unit we want to get is a 2bedroom + study (2B+S). With that in mind, we checked out the remaining 2B+S units left and asked a banker to help calculate our loan installments. To my surprise, it is much lower than my calculation! I then realised it is because of the very low interest rate offered by the banks now. With these info at hand, we went home to think through, bearing in mind we had to make the decision by the next day if we still want to have any decent units.
With the illusion from the current low interest rate, plus the more choices available with bigger units, and of course a more comfortable size for a family, we decided to forego our earlier 2B+S and hunt for a new 3B unit on the next day! Most of the remaining 3B units are <10 storeys with no balcony and for those >10 storeys most come with 2 balconies (i.e. very expensive!!). We very much wanted a unit with 1 balcony.. so we had to either settle for a lower flr e.g. 10th storey, or we go for those units with the number '13' or '14' in it.
We kept scanning back and forth on the big board showing the list of units with yellow stickers tagging the sold units when I suddenly noticed that there are a few top fl unit with 1 balcony not taken up!! Checked against the price on the agent list.. "eh.. not TOO ex for a top flr unit leh!! so why are they still not taken up?" that's because of their locations - either facing the road which can be nosiy and dusty, or facing the HDB with no view. Oh well. "But top flr got high ceiling in the living room!!" haha.. so we went to recalculate our budget, and just like that, we placed the booking fee for a unit.
Of course it is not so simple lah. Before going down to the showroom a second time, I whipped out my potential-banker-skills and worked on a few excel spreadsheets to calculate our available cashflow against our future expected wedding expenditures and did a comparison between buying a resale flat and a new EC. If we looked purely at the aspect of buying a home, it is obvious that an EC will be more value for money since there is no COV, marginal reno cost with wardrobes and aircon and stove etc given, plus it is new. So that is expected. When it comes to forking out cash upfront, it seems that there is no diff since the COV + 5% downpayment for resale works out to be the same or even slightly higher than 5% for EC. So if we were to go for resale, it is only because we get to choose the location and we can get the flat sooner!! right??
WRONG!! Of course, usually it will be faster to get a resale flat than waiting for the construction of a new EC to complete. But with our minimal or no savings, even if we get a resale flat.. we still gotta slowly save up before we can renovate the flat and buy the furnitures then move in. So in terms of waiting time… there is only a few mths difference, or at the very most, 1 year.. which is so not worth it in our opinion!
So turns out it was a fairly easy decision to go with an EC. :) Although the location IS pretty far, it is just abt 2 min away from TPE, abt 5-10min walk to MRT & bus interchange, and hopefully it will be rather self-contained after the new town centre is up. Just hope that our HQ don't shift to Jurong… otherwise I will ask for a transfer to go work at Punggol-Serangoon Reservoir!!
So after filling up all the application forms, HDB grant forms, this form that form and sign all the documents and OTP twice until my signature went distorted, and running from bank to bank to put all the savings into one acct to make up the 5% downpayment cheque… We have got our 'love nest'!! lol!!!
And from now on, I am declared to be a poor girl with no savings and no CPF. :( But i am oh so excited how to wait till it's ready?? It is now only a piece of bare land with some concrete and crane on it!!
