My Future Home – Part II

Here’s some pictures of the 3D model of West Ridges:

From this picture, you will be able to tell how “enclosed” the units in middle of the plot are. Plus, the units facing the other blocks are a bit too close and the neighbours will definitely be able to see you from across.

This is the exterior of the flats.

There are 2 multi-storey car park in West Ridges. This is the bigger car park with 8 storeys, a roof garden and 2 link bridges to the flats.

For the unit we chose, there is an option to add the kitchen wall ($800 top up) which we didn’t take because I wanted an open kitchen concept. I have claustrophobia so I don’t like enclosed tiny kitchen.

For the other 2 optional components, we didn’t take them as well. I didn’t like the internal doors and sanitary fittings offered by HDB, and I have not decided on the flooring so I rather not have it first. Unfortunately we can’t opt out for the bathroom and kitchen flooring as it’s already included in the cost of the house.
I consulted interior designers, and they confirmed that we cannot remove any of the tiles in the bathroom and kitchen within 5 years of flat possession, but we can choose to layover them.

We received the floor plan with measurements on the first appointment day. This unit comes with a bigger dining area because it doesn’t have a long corridor to the bedrooms. The dotted line at the kitchen is the wall which we didn’t get.

The estimated flat possession is in year 2019. OMG… it takes so freaking long to build and settle the paper work. No wonder young couples choose to buy their flats first and risk forfeiting the down payment if they break up before the flat is even ready.

Anyway, while waiting for the flat to be built, I have drafted the interior design of it. Yeah, I am excited!

I will have a movable shoe cabinet outside the household shelter, camouflaged sliding door for the bedroom 3, storage platforms for main bedroom and bedroom 2, glass sliding door for the kitchen to keep the smoke and oil out of the living room when I cook.

Well, this is just a very simple draft for the moment. I have not thought of the color theme and furniture. I am still considering whether to engage an interior designer. For now, we shall start saving money for the renovation work. With the current inflation rate, in 5 years’ time, I bet we need at least $50k to get a decent renovation. Plus, please let us continue to have a friendly relationship with countries that supply us the raw materials, otherwise, the renovation cost will get even higher.

My Future Home – Part I

Living in Singapore can be an enjoyable experience but at the same time, it can be a headache too. Enjoyable ones are the safety, the cleanliness, no natural disaster (if I were to complain flash floods as disaster, it would be such a first world problem), good technology and city planning. The thing that gives me headache, especially being in the middle-income group and not born with a silver spoon, is the living expense.
Without financial support from parents, the young people can hardly afford a vehicle and a decent sized apartment without ending up with 25-30 years of heavy debt. So, if I were to buy both items at the age of 25 (probably just graduated or only worked for 2 years), I can only pay off the debts (housing + car + education fees) when I reached 50 years old. Yep, that’s the sad fact which the rich will never understand.

Anyway, I shan’t rant on forever and return to the topic of this post: My Future Home.

Following the footsteps of many locals, we went to apply for a Built-to-order (BTO) flat from the Housing & Development Board (HDB). It was the Nov 2013 BTO, and we were lucky enough to get queue number 105 (mainly because it wasn’t a popular project). So why did we chose the West Ridge in Bukit Batok flats? Here are some of the reasons:

1) Near our Parents
We prefer to stay near our parents because they are getting older each day and we as children should be close by their side and take care of them. Imagine travelling across the country to visit each other every week. It’s so time wasting.
Also, I am definitely NOT putting my kids in child care centre in the future, so it would cut travelling time for picking up my kids from my parents’ place after work everyday. I want my kids to be well-mannered and have close kinship with family members, so child care centre or maid is a 100% no no for me.

2) I hate Punggol and Sengkang
To me, both are very ulu. It’s no where near majority of the good schools, good food, and the estate is too new. I am a person who loves old markets and coffee shops so the mature estates suits me better. If I intend to stay in the HDB flat for a longer period of time, I don’t want my kids to waste time travelling to their schools. Also, even though both areas are new estates, the flats are overpriced!

3) Why not Keat Hong or Clementi?
I don’t fancy the transport system in CCK area, so Keat Hong is not in my preferred list.
Clementi is nice but the estate is already over-crowded and the price of a 4 or 5 rooms flat is almost comparable to a small condominium. Seriously, it’s not worth it.

4) Layout of the flat
Finally I found the flat layout which I prefer. West Ridges has flats that do not come with long corridor. I shall explain this further in another post.

Yep, so thankfully this project wasn’t popular, so we managed to get a decent queue number to choose from the 550 units of 5 rooms flat. We applied for the flat in the first week of Dec 2013, received the queue number in mid Jan 2014, and appointment date on 02 Mar 2014. Ever since the start of the flat selection in Feb 2014, I have been monitoring and praying that my preferred units don’t get selected by other couples.
So here’s a picture of the project site plan (from HDB):

So how do I go about choosing the BTO flat? Here are some tips:

1) Will it be windy?
Personally I prefer a more windy unit. Which means, I have to choose those units that are not blocked. All the units facing the road or school are the better choice as there will be no other buildings or structures that will obstruct the wind flow. I avoid choosing all the units that forms a quadrangle because they are commonly the hot and stuffy ones. To avoid wasting so much energy on air conditioning, we chose the units facing outwards.

2) Will it be noisy?
Imagine you worked hard for the whole week and needed plenty of rest on weekend. Then, at 8am on a Saturday morning, you hear kids screaming and yelling in the playground. Or, the noise of the traffic and the irritating honks. That would be terrible, isn’t it?
So the next thing to decide is the potential noise level audible from the unit.
Units facing the main road (Bukit Batok Road) will definitely be hearing the traffic noise from day till night. Those facing Bukit Batok West Avenue 6 will have lesser traffic noise as it’s not the main road. Units facing the school will hear noise on weekdays and maybe Saturday morning when the kids have activities outside the classrooms. The rest which faces the playground, you will be indirectly joining the fun of the kids playing there. Even if you stay in the top unit (14-16th storey), the noise will still channel up due to the enclosed surrounding.
Since the project isn’t that fantastic in terms of layout, we end up choosing the ones facing the school. At least the kids have gone home by the time we return from work.

3) Which level to choose?
Well, those who have stayed in HDB flats will know this well. Lower levels (cheaper in price) are commonly visited by pests, and experience more noise. But they have better water pressure so washing and bathing won’t have much problem. High levels (higher in price) are usually more windy but water pressure might be a problem depending on where the water is pumped from (water tank or ground). Top floor doesn’t have ugly pipes in the kitchen and toilet, no noisy neighbours living above your unit who might like to stomp their feets or dragging furnitures around and gives you a headache. Well, HDB flats aren’t so soundproof. But top floors may potentially have problems such as water leakage on the roof/walls, or heat from the roof after one whole day of direct sunshine. But these problems really depends on the construction workers’ skill and the structure.
Having weighed all the pros and cons, we decided on getting top floors.

4) Feng Shui
Well, that’s if you are into such thingy. Get a feng shui master to advise you on which direction (North, South, East, West) should your unit face.

5) Other minor issue
The location of the service yard. If you tend to wash a lot of clothes and doesn’t like to use a dryer, the sun is your best friend. With all these new HDB flat layout, you will find very few units that have the service yards unblocked by buildings. Hence, you will hardly get any sun to dry your clothes and trust me, they will smell if you just air dry them indoor. What I hated most is, the smell of your neighbours’ cooking will channel upwards and make your clothes smell like hawker centre. If possible, look out for such potential issue too.

Corridor units will need to have window grills at the service yard. This is to prevent thief from climbing into your service yard from the corridor. Here’s a picture for reference:

From the picture, you can see that the service yard is adjacent to the corridor (circled in red). So, if HDB did not include a partition at the corridor, the thief could easily climb into the service yard, or steal clothes that are hung outside.

Ok, after considering all the factors above, Pakcik and I finally chose our ideal unit on 02 Mar 2014. Kinda lucky that no one booked it before us. So on the first appointment day, we brought all the required documents, went down to HDB hub earlier than the appointment time, took the queue number, and waited for our turn to book the flat. For 4 or 5 rooms flat, we have to pay $2000 option fee (Cash or Nets only) on the first appointment day. The HDB officer will calculate all the fees and price of the flat and list them down on the official documents. So, don’t think that you will only be paying for the cost of the flat. There are several fees (e.g. stamp duty and legal fees) which need to be included in the total cost as well.

Calculate and plan your finances
1) Do you have sufficient amount in CPF or cash to make the down payment? Apart from the application fee ($10 cash) and option fee ($2000 cash), the down payment (10% of flat’s cost price) will need to be paid either via CPF or cash on the 2nd appointment (within 4 months after flat selection day).
So taking our flat as an example: Our flat cost $434800 (freaking expensive for a 112 sqm unit in the non-mature estate!). So our down payment is $43480, to be paid at the 2nd appointment.

2) Are you taking housing loan from HDB or Bank?
Taking HDB loan as an example, the current interest rate is 2.6%. So for young couples who do not have much CPF or cash yet, taking a loan is inevitable. So, the current maximum loan period is 25 years, and say for example, the couple needs to take a $300k loan for a $434800 flat, the monthly installment for the next 25 years will be $1361. Hence, if you calculate the total payable sum for loan, it’s $408300. Plus the amount which you have already paid via CPF or cash, you will be paying  $543100 (excluding stamp duty and legal fees) for that flat instead of the original $434800.

So, buying a decent sized flat in Singapore is no longer that “affordable” for young couples now. We really need to plan our finances well and not over-estimate our income capability. And for young couples who are overconfident of their relationship, may end up forfeiting the huge sum of down payment, should they not end up getting married while waiting for the flats to be built (approx. 3-5 years).

Alright, that’s all for now. I will write about my flat design in the next post.