The hunt for bargains begins!

As our tenants have moved out and we're on our way to finalising details with our I.D for renovation to begin - hopefully by the end of the month - buying household appliances and furniture shopping doesn't sound so ridiculously early and a waste of time anymore. Warehouse sales are de rigeur now and it was killing me that so many were just passing us by because it was too soon to shop.

That's the other good thing about getting married: it really gives you a good (and probably the most acceptable) reason to shop and be cheapo. We spotted Tecno's ad for its 2nd-4th November Only sale right in the nick of time on Sunday and went on a drive inside Tagore Industrial Avenue where we spotted bus loads of aunties and uncles alighting. Apparently, there were shuttle services from Ang Mo Kio mrt already.

Going at lunch time on a hungry stomach is probably not the best strategy for bargain hunting but we managed to come away with

1) A cooker

2) A hob

3) An oven

at 25% discount, plus a 2-pc toaster as a free gift :)

Oh and we also got us a cordless kettle for $25 (probably cos it just looked all slick and nifty).

Another place we've heard so much about and got down to exploring over the weekend is Royal Franco at 131 Jalan Besar. They really do (as the forums claim) have a whole range of bathroom fittings at great great prices. For instance, compared to this store in Plaza Sing, a rainshower set worth $1000 was going for about $300 at the store... We're definitely going back to talk to Henry.

Tonight, we meet with our photographers to place a deposit and next week, I'll be getting a glimpse of what the wedding gown will look like in design.

The count down to March is here =)

26 and hearing wedding bells

It's always great when someone else has already said what you wanted to say and probably did a better job than you could have.

Here's a fun read for all my contemporaries who in our mid-twenties are getting married much to the chagrin of everyone around us who's not.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/young-and-married--its-not-a-political-statement/2007/10/16/1192300767470.html

Wedding Chores

Wow, it's been four months since any updates to what's been going on on the marriage front. Not that nothing has been happening, but anything that could have been considered exciting has already been done and the last few months were mostly spent in the doldrums, dealing with the mundane stuff.

What's the status now?

1. I've finally secured my bridal package.
2. We've hired The Marriott for the dinner and have booked Elim Church for the ceremony in the morning.
3. We now legally own our flat in Pasir Ris, keys and all, except the previous owners occupy it till 10 Nov.
4. We bought laminate flooring at $4 per sq ft. during the reno fair at Expo.

What's on the to-do list?

1. Wait for the wedding gown design to turn up.
2. Continue on the hunt for a reliable Interior Designer or Contractor (or someone who can coordinate the work since I already know how I want to design the place and so far all the IDs have not impressed me) although we really need to decide on one sOOn
3. Secure the caterer for the church ceremony
4. Book wedding photographer
5. Get him baptised
6. Start doing our Marriage Preparation Course homework a.k.a think of all the big and unanswerable questions related to Religion and Marraige, and make appointments for the course to even get moving (sigh)
7. Lose weight for both him and her (this is probably the most difficult)


So far, it's been quite fun - our hunt for wholesale furniture, tiles, caterers and Interior Designers have brought us to corners of Singapore we'd never ever have seen or thought to venture to, and we've met the strangest people and/ or the most unreliable ones.

Greatest find so far?

Ikea's Home Planner, downloadable off the Ikea Singapore website!

A great 2D and 3D set up of each room in your house that you can custom configure and then select IKEA furniture to do the room up.

Even if not buying Ikea furniture, it's an excellent programme for ppl who know what they want and only rely on IDs for visual confirmation with their perspectives and floor plans software what-not.

At long last

Ok so in the end, the agent finally called in the afternoon to say the deal was off, sellers don't have the cash to buy their condo, taking their hdb off the market blah blah blah...

But it doesn't matter anymore -

cos' over the weekend, we bought our dream place !!

Wednesday we're going to exercise the option for it - stay tuned =)

Lowest lifeforms on the planet!

Be warned: this is an angsty entry regarding our house-hunting saga, to the point where I'm too miffed to explain everything again. So here's the MSN conversation I had with my pal DeeplyDisturbed which says it all:

-----------------------
DD says:
i take it the house search ain't going so good?

imeg detests real estate agents says:
it was...like yesterday we found just the right place at the right price and at the right time so we offered at a price that the agent thought would be able to close the deal, so he was like cancelling all other viewings for the day and we signed our end of the option papers and the agent told us to meet at nite with the owners etc. So we went there at 10pm (meeting was arranged for 1030) then he called at 1015pm, said he would be coming down with owners from redhill so would be late, 1045-11pm like that; but owner not too happy with our offer.

imeg detests real estate agents says:
Then at 1030pm he called again to say rejecting our offer, wants more, is that ok? we say ok , then agent says will call back, which already means he was lying about travelling down frm redhill.

imeg detests real estate agents says:
At 11pm he calls and says they accept the offer except that husband not ard to sign papers and only wife has signed, which means he was LYING again bout being on the way down with the owners in tow...

imeg detests real estate agents says:
so he is suppose to call me today instead, once husband has signed...

imeg detests real estate agents says:
blardy hell - so my whole family was there at nite for nothing and now today he still hasn't called yet dunno whether really will get the house or whether he's just lying to stall for time and wave our freakin' cheque around like a sign post for the sellers going "ppl want out house, don't you?"

DD says:
(wah... big lump of text....)

imeg detests real estate agents says:
(sorry big lump of angst)

DD says:
i can tell

you know...
your nick is misleading

it says... 'detests'...

you mean hate...

see i thought detests... not so bad... won't be so much angst... and so i msg you

imeg detests real estate agents says:
...

DD says:
if it had been 'hate'... i'd have steered well clear

Much ado about...nothing

So we waited... and waited.

The agent never got back to us so in the mean time, we kept on house-hunting albeit half-heartedly. Still, even in our less heated search, another seemingly possible 5'A' apartment came to our attention. But before we made an offer for this latest one, we made one last ditch effort to contact that agent who pointedly told our agent that the executive apartment had been sold...

Fine. We went ahead and made an offer on the second viewing of the 5'A' one only to be engaged in what the seller's agent had expressedly said he was loathe to do i.e Bidding War. The malay agent's friend (also another malay agent) had brought an elderly malay couple - do you notice a trend here?? - to see the place for the first time alongside our second viewing for what seemed to be a pressurising tactic (according to my dad). With buyers lined up, the owner even raised the bid from an original 20k above valuation to a minimum sum of 30k instead. What ensued was some furtive "ok write your offer on a piece of paper with your name and we'll take it upstairs for comparison. Highest offer wins out."

Turned out, the malay couple played to the owner's tune and offered exactly 30k whereas we stuck to our original 24k. So we left once more, without a house to our name... (which was a relief in a way, cos' I really wasn't too keen on the chinese workers to whom the apartment next door was rented out by the government).

BUT not only did we find ourselves with no house this weekend, we also saw an Ad in the papers for the very same executive apartment that the agent had told us was already sold. Apparently, he would rather market the apartment again than sell it to us - he hates us/ our agent that much!

Sigh. We reckon it's because we've got a bad rep in town now (long story about ending up at the apartment which actually we had already viewed but turned down while using another agent, only to visit it unintentionally again with a different agent - father's friend - and making an offer to the seller's agent who probably thinks we/ our agent are scums in the market and has spread the word ... )

Ok, I'm not neurotic but really, why else would some random agent (whose apartment we were viewing with my father's friend) keep telling us (albeit jokingly) to remain loyal to our agent i.e. father's friend??

Something's up in the air. I wonder if the agent we dropped has been bad mouthing us on the streets of Pasir Ris.

This apartment hunting is starting to take its toll - we're slowly being exiled from a town we haven't even moved into yet. Can you beat that?

We're calling it a day for now and taking a breather from all this trauma till the weekend comes again.

Only productive thing that happened over the weekend is that we met up with and decided on our actual day photographers:) yay

With bated breath...

We've been seriously house-hunting for more than a month now. I don't know if that's a normal time frame but people around us seem to think we're taking too long and viewing too many to make decisions easy. My mom is too tired to continue flat-viewing with us anymore (she zonks out by the time we get home), my dad is trying to figure out what we want and strategising all the time, and the agent - well... I can't fathom it an easy job being our agent.

EVERY time we have wanted to place a deposit on an apartment we could finally decide on, our agent rings back to tell us we're "too late - it's been sold". And I'm not even talking about us taking 2 or 3 days to think about it, more like hours. The last one we liked we lingered around until 5pm while the last group of viewers strolled in. We deliberated over dinner and by the time we called at 8pm to place an offer, we were informed that the apartment had been sold at 6pm.

So now we are in the thick of things and trying to get on track with the speed of real estate transactions, which is hard given how risk averse we are as first-time buyers. Still, it's really been quite a learning experience so far (kudos to my dad to whom I just realised I owe my neurotic disposition) in dealing with the frenzied property market. After all that we've seen, here's what we've gathered to date about

Housing...
1) Location is everything i.e. transport and amenities
2) Corner units, point blocks are da shit in property listings
3) Good prospects of a future sale (see point 1 and 2 )
4) Large area essential (in case future sale never happens)
5) Peaceful environment is ideal (lifestyle issue rather than priority)

Apartments...
1) Walk-ups are a no-no if living there long-term (think furniture shopping, baby prams, injuries, old age)
2) North-South units in high demand (gets most wind, least direct sun)
3) Unblocked flats are the most private
4) If blocked, consider where windows look into
5) Option to have windows opened is important - as daddy says, "Are you sure you want to bring up kids in air-conditioning all the time?"
6) How loud the MRT passing by the window every three minutes is
7) Don't forget location of rubbish shutes (the one for each unit and the huge ones for collection)
8) Apartment viewing both in the day and the night before deciding
9) Neighbours - well we've seen quite a few with " O$P$" scrawled on walls...

Negotiation...
1) Bargaining power is IT
2) Information is bargaining power
3) Holding onto information is strategic power
4) Timing is strategic key

Agendas...
1) Seller (conditions of sale - illegal/ legal/ contra)
2) Seller's agent (based on commission or lack thereof)
3) Buyer (see Housing/ Apartment aforementioned)
4) Buyer's agent (based on co-broke option/ commission or lack thereof)
5) Other buyers

Of course, to top everything off, price is the be all and the end all of discussion - affordability before commitment. The toughie is what to compromise to get a good deal in hard times like these? How do people juggle ALL these considerations in a blink of an eye and a flick of a cheque book?

Well, we couldn't so it took us 3 viewings, 2 agents, and a night of pondering before finally making an offer for an E.A in Pasir Ris (yep, we like this area).

And now we wait.