House Purchase

Recently we have bought a house, after almost 1 year of house hunting process. We have been surfing propertyguru almost daily. Thanks to the rising SIBOR, price of house seem to soften. Even though the agents are still advertising at a higher price, some buyers are willing to accept a $50-100k below the advertised price. The sellers are affected mainly of the Total Debt Servicing Ratio (TDSR) ruling which affects sellers who own more than 2 properties. Rental market is also sliding, hence, sellers are becoming more realistic.

Here are some tips which I've picked up:
1) Go to URA Caveat to check the transaction price for the last 3 years. You can filter unit by size and floor number. You will have a gauge whether you are paying around market rate.

2) Propquest
This tool is very useful, you can find out how much did current owner bought the unit for. Eg if they are the first owner, they would have made more than half and prices are usually more negotiable.

- key in project name

- Select the stack number (eg if your unit is #05-01, please select stack 1), change the year from filter accordingly, click submit.
- Scroll down to Past Transactions, you will be able to download the csv file and do your analysis.

3) Singapore Real Estate Exchange
- Select X-Value TM for Real Time Property Appraisal tab
- Input the project name, unit name.

4) Get your bankers to quote valuation
We realised that UOB valuation is usually very high, which is advantageous to the sellers. Standard Chartered Bank seem to be more conservative.

5) Bring cheque
If you are really interested in the unit and want to offer a really low price, we realised that presentation of cheque usually works. Agents will check with the sellers rather than be the bottleneck that block us off.

Here are some of the fengshui considerations we take into considerations:
1) Door must not face Northwest that is when you are standing inside the house and you are looking outside of house. My husband is a sleeping partner of a business, we don't want to eat 西北风.

2) Main door should not face lift/ staircase.

3) Toilets should not be at Southwest sector of the house. This leads to financial loss and marital problems.

4) Kitchen should not be at Northwest sector of house. The family breadwinner could lose his job, lose his wealth, or worse, lose his health. 

5) Unit should not be east west direction else the house will be very hot due to the sun.
 

Hope you find these tips useful.

Love,
Sherlyn