thickbie

a preview of the house...

Just some pics we took during the 2nd viewing of the house. Some of the pics is a bit blur so just bear with it... =P


 
 
 
  

posted by thickbie @ 8:38 AM 0 comments

and we got the house !

Hahaha...we finally got the house. It happen last week on Sunday night. Our agent called Sunday afternoon saying that since there's only a 1k difference between the price we're offering and the price they wanted that we should try negotiate. Finally after some talking we agreed to meet halfway and we got the house !

What's surprising is that it turns out that the owner's house agent, whose actually the owner's aunt is also our neighbour to be ! They stay apparently on the 4th floor while the unit itself sits on the 5th floor.. We love the aunt's garden and the way they put garden chairs in front of their house. We want to have something like that too !! Hopefully we have good "green hands" so that we can breed orchids and other lovely plants...

So after sealing the deal we are off to our hunt for a bank loan. Can't believe we've got so many things to do for the house..not to mention finding either an ID (Interior Designer) or just a contractor...depending on the budget of course...

posted by thickbie @ 7:48 AM 0 comments

searching for the right home...part 2

Finally last week (Saturday), we get a chance to see 2 corner unit flats around rivervale and compassvale area. One of them is just opposite Rivervale plaza, which is convenient because the place has NTUC and a food court and I kinda like that fact. But the flat is quite bare and basic which means we have to do a lot of renovaiton. It is also not quite as near to the MRT station as we would've wanted it to be but there's an LRT station about 5 min away...

The second flat we saw was totally different ! It has a more spacious living room because hte owner has done quite a big renovation. Downside is that the renovation that the owner has done does not suit our taste. Personally I think it looks a bit "chee-na" and oldies. So we are in the same position here, that is need to revamp whole house. And worse, we'll have to hack a lot of in built stuff, plus the marble flooring which we really really dislike. But this unit is only 10-15 min away from MRT (walkable) and it has a priviate so called foyer which you can use ! Sigh, so much confusion...

After viewing the 2 houses, we told our agent what we would still consider the 2 units we just saw but we definitely now prefer a corner unit. And we wanted to see some more units since we saw from Classifieds there's some more corner units being put on the market.

Finally our agent arrange to view 4 more house on Monday, after work...sigh, tired tired tired. To make story short, out of the 4 house we really like 1 house which has a so called private area and spacious living room. It also has marble flooring for living room and parquet flooring for bedrooms (yeay !), another thing we kinda like the built in wardrobe that they have made...it's big and really not oldies at all..
So we told our agent we wanted to go for second viewing and that he'll arrange for the following Saturday (which is yesterday)...

So yesterday we did 2nd viewing for 2 units, one which we really like, the other one is the flat was totally renovated but didn't suit our taste. After a second look, the obvious thing comes to our mind. We want the parquet flooring unit ! Yeay....so we decided on that and ask our agent to bargain for us. We are now still in the midst of bargaining (haven't heard from the other side now...) a bit worried, but just pray that things pull through for us....

posted by thickbie @ 11:53 PM 0 comments

searching for the right home...part 1

For the past 3 weeks, we've been scouting for a house that will be our home starting from next year. Yes, that time has finally come ! Both me and HB are very very excited. Our search began with Clementi area first, this is because we wanted a place in the West side, but not too "ulu". We soon realise though, that the search is not easy because our criteria for a house is to be 4 room (i.e. 3 bedroom + living room), lift landing and near MRT. Since a lot of the Clementi houses are rather old or built in either late 70s or 80s, we cna hardly find one on the market which is on the lift level. There are newer flats in Clementi but the prices is sky high that it's beyond our budget :(

The first house viewing we did is at Clementi, block 356. It was a corner unit and lift landing ! It sounded to good to be true. Before we went up to the unit, the other agent told us "Please be prepared to see a house that is very basic". Well we thought we were prepared, but noo....the condition of the house is horrifying ! We got a trauma afterwards. Basically the house hasn't been renovated since the owner purchase it, which means around late 70s !! And that's not all, for that kind of place the owner daringly put a price tag of $260k !! We thought, if we can only get houses with that kind of condition with the budget that we have, then we should reconsider Clementi.

Then after we decided to look around our next preferred location Sengkang. Well, it was supposed to be Ang Mo Kio but then my agent told me that AMK is more ex, so what's the point huh? So on Sunday we went to Sengkang to see if we would like the area there. We took a train from Dhoby Gaut (approx 20 min) and then we just took the LRT to look around further. We quite like what we see and decided that we shall try to view some houses here.

The following week, after calling a couple of agents on houses that we are interested in, after work we viewed 3 houses on Saturday from 2 agents. They are all near to MRT, except for one at blk 226A. Mind you, we were really looking for a house which is walking distance from the MRT. We kinda like teh houses we saw but they were all on corridor (meaning all the windows of your living room is faicng corridor so when you open the window other ppl passing by can almost get the whole view of your house (lack of privacy).

Both agents asked if we want their help to source out more units and we thought why not. Less work for us. Subsequently we only went with one agent, since we like his honesty and non-pretentious attitude. The guy was kinda geeky as well and totally not the salesman type, which is a plus point for us ! Not really into salesman type. Anyways, before deciding I wanted to see some corner units. Our agent warn us that there are not many 4 room corner units in Sengkang, but I told him try and find out and let us know the following weekend.

TBC...

posted by thickbie @ 11:25 AM 0 comments

all look same

I dunno about you, but most of the time, the only way to differentiate whether an asian is a chinese/korean/japanese for me is through language. They are very hard to tell apart, even when you are familiar with the those 3 ethnics..

Here's a quiz that test you on your ability to tell them apart :
http://www.alllooksame.com/

I've scored only 7 !! Hahaha...but my HB scored only 6 so yeay for me ! =P

posted by thickbie @ 10:51 PM 0 comments