Malaysia Money Matters

It's a Malaysian dream to own a property - our culture is not geared towards renting long-term. Renting is considered something you do either as a student / newly working / a temporary solution if you're prone to being transferred - but in the long run, conventional wisdom is to bite the bullet and buy at least ONE property for your permanent residence. So the conundrum lies in the wherewithal for the deposit and attendant costs. To some, the need is urgent and saving up takes too long - so what are your options? The fastest but most expensive: Credit Card cash advance - that baby will hit you with an 18% p.a. interest rate the moment the cash comes out of the ATM. Do Not Use This Method. Please. Even though it pays my salary. The slightly less fast, also kinda expensive but sort-of bearable: Personal Loan - you can take a bigger amount, take a longer time to pay it off and you have that lump sum to help secure the property you want to buy. Only use this method

Am thinking of offering pro-bono financial advisory services to certain vulnerable segments of society here in Malaysia. Something along the lines of say, young LGBT Malaysians - especially the transgender community. I have a few transgender friends and a couple of them are doing well financially but the rest seem to struggle somewhat. Perhaps I can help but it's a sensitive subject to broach. Anyway, if any of you youngsters out there need someone to give some advice on how to get ahead financially - maybe Uncle here can help you or at least listen to you. Just drop a comment below and we'll take it from there. :)

A new development that is on the site of the old Century Paradise Country Club (more recently known as KK Club) in Taman Melawati. I noticed it this morning as I drove past, not having been in the area for some time - so naturally, checked out their website. The design and concept of this development is rather interesting - they have a range of sizes from 450 sf up to 2,000 sf - and 10 different layouts. What I like about the layout designs is that there are duplex options / iterations - i.e. the 450 sf studio is the basic unit, then you'd have a duplex design which follows the studio layout but doubling it. It's a personal bias of mine, I do like duplexes because it gives you the feeling like you're living in a house. AND I believe - looking at the floor plan - that the living room ceiling will be double the height in the duplexes; thus creating a very spacious feel that is missing in the standard 1-floor condo unit in Malaysia. Price is starting from RM684 per

Check out brickz.my This website basically digitizes the public information of stamp duty paid on the sale price of all properties sold. Currently they have uploaded the data for the major urban areas of KL and Selangor. Believe Johor and Penang are on the way as is the rest of the country eventually. The great thing about it is that you can see a lot of details like transaction date, the price, property size and type - down to like intermediate or corner unit and even the floor level for condos and apartments. Hence, before you buy into an area or a unit, you can do an independent check yourself without relying on the real estate agent to get a good gauge of how much you should pay. The latest information is at the last 2 months - i.e. as of November, you will be able to see September 2015 data which is quite a good recency. Of course, for areas where there is active sales transactions, you will see up to September. Other areas that are quieter, you will see the most recent

Surfing around, I found an office lot at 750 square feet, freehold, RM80,000. 80,000 wei! Below 100k wei!! No affordable property meh?? In fact, it's in a quiet, kinda dead commercial area of a small suburb near KL but if one were innovative and had own transport - this is an ideal starter home! Say you're in your 30's with a family, single breadwinner earning 3k to 4k - just making ends meet. If you can get together 10k or 15k (your EPF should have some of that) - your loan payment per month on a 70k loan is like only RM350 or max RM400! That's only 10% or 15% of your salary and if you're renting a flat somewhere - you're likely to be paying 1.5 times that amount. Sure it's an office space, so what?! In fact, it's more convenient because of the sundry shops and cafes below. All I'm saying is, there are options if one looked and are prepared to take an unconventional step.

Well, that depends on your definition of "affordable" coupled with "liveable", isn't it? You can still get flats and apartment units for about 120k or 150k.. that means you need about RM500 to RM600 per month for repayment. At that price point, you *could* possibly get a 95% or 100% loan - usually from Islamic financing - especially from Bank Islam, Bank Rakyat and so on. So you hardly need any money down. Of course, you still need SOME money but if you're really serious about it then surely you can save it up? During my first job, many many years ago, my starting pay was RM1,700 (very decent already considering most of my peers were getting RM1,200) and I was staying with family - so my expenses were not very high, just transport and lunch - I managed to save up 3,000 in a few months. My only indulgence at the time was to get a couple of CDs a month - back then at RM40 each, expensive O! My bus fare per day was 50 sen minibus PJ to KL, then another

Many columnists and politicians (especially Opposition ones) like to harp on property prices being out-of-reach to the majority of people. This is a rather simplistic slogan that they like to keep repeating because a lot of people tend to agree with it at face value. Such a statement is only true up to a certain extent. To what extent, you ask, gentle reader? Well, if you are referring to newly launched properties by developers - then hella yes, they are QUITE expensive by both ticket size and cost per square foot! Why is this so? This is their pricing strategy - actually they give a lot of "rebates" and "discounts" to trick you into thinking that you are getting a good deal, AND that by these methods, you can get nearly 100% financing because the banks think you've paid down 10% but the developer is helping you "cheat" on this. Given the limited land available and the need to turn the maximum profit out of each project, developers will p

Yet another "stumbled upon" development last weekend after going to the morning market & breakfast. Went in to have a look and spent quite a lot of time there because it seemed like quite an interesting project. Executive summary (tl:dr version upfront) - I reckon it is a Good Deal . BUY for own stay, it will be a nice place to live. Buy to flip also can. Rental may be so-so, this place looks like it will be an owner-occupied type of condo. So here are the reasons why I quite like it: Price wise - not bad, works out to be about RM600 per square foot Option of a dual key unit AND if you want, you can convert it to a single with more combined square footage Huge sports centre as part of the deal for the land - the developer has to build it for DBKL, so there is that whole "healthy lifestyle" thing going for it Facilities are extensive - sales lady kept going on and on about it, I was like, yeah yeah - we've lived in fairly high end condos before ba

Over the past few years, with the rapid spread of social media in Malaysia - there has been an exuberance of opinions especially from the chattering classes. The freedom of expression offered by blogs, Facebook, Twitter and so on was seized upon with glee by Malaysians who have long felt that the officially sanctioned opinion was the only voice of the media. Therefore, the democratization of opinion grew at an unprecedented pace. However, such freedom also comes at a price. Most people are sadly unable to discern critically which information is true, false, partly both and how significant it may be. At a benign stage, it is merely stuff like urban myths and hoaxes but it can quickly turn malignant if irresponsible people and groups purposely create pictures and articles as propaganda. Sometimes it is organised and sometimes, it can be just a loner trying to get some attention - the validation comes from the number of likes and shares on social media. Unfortunately, as this ma

As part of a "mini" budget - the Government will fund a 24-month mortgage subsidy of RM200 per month (RM4,800 in total) for young couples in their first home. The program is managed through Bank Simpanan Nasional. Married couples must be below 40 years old and have a household income below 10k per month. The allocation is for 200,000 couples - works out to be almost a billion to be disbursed over 2 years. To me - this is a good bottoms-up pump priming of the economy because it is directly funding discretionary spend that keeps money moving, thus creating wealth. The only problem is that it can create somewhat of a subsidy mentality but with a relative short period of 2 years, it may not be so bad. It would definitely mean a lot for the lower income group because it is an extra RM200 in their pocket a month - imagine, if their household income is 3k a month, that's a 6.7% increase in cash to spend.

A simple correlation - the more views a post gets, means more people are interested in finding out more about that particular subject. Most readers land on my page via Google - although it seems that some people actually come to my blog by typing in the title, meaning repeat readers! Awww I love you guys! muah muah! So here are the "hottest" properties that get the most hits here: Seasons Gardens Serini Melawati 28 Boulevard Pandan Wangsa 9 Residence Picasso Residence Astoria is not that popular despite being a new launch - could be a niche thing. Nadayu and Arte+ also have lukewarm hits, also could be due to being niche There you go - those are the popular developments (or the only ones!) around this Ampang/UK/Wangsa Maju area :) love youse all

Was at Nu Sentral and saw the Kota Semarak booth there, so went to have a look - I was aware of this development some time back but I think the promotion is only just starting to rev up now - they are also just taking registration only, not deposits. Pricing, layout and other details are available already but since I was rather in a rush that day, what I got was this: Large scale development - will end up with around 1,200+ units over 4 separate buildings The land area is pretty large - 27 acres, so it's pretty massive Leasehold Location is actually very close to town, just down Jln Semarak - heavy traffic though Location has no LRT nearby You'd have to travel in the opposite direction away from town to get to town - e.g. the condo is pretty much equidistant to both Sri Rampai and Ampang Park - if you're working in town, you might as well just drive (of course, parking considerations etc etc) Next to the DUKE Highway with access to both directions of the highway

After the recent launch of the Sunway BRT line, there will be several more BRT lines coming up - they are cheaper and faster to build as they utilise existing roads. So far I have only used the BRT in Bangkok - they only have 1 line so far and it has been running for some time now. Wonder why they haven't continued with more though? I guess there are certain challenges with Bangkok with the road width in the more densely populated areas, there isn't much leeway for a BRT line to take up more road space because the original road is fairly narrow as BKK is a very old city. Anyway, looking at the BRT plan for KL, it looks interesting - the only areas it doesn't seem to cover are the affluent neighbourhoods of Damansara Heights, Bangsar and Mont'Kiara. Also, looks like the Government is making the hard decision to take up 2 lanes on the MRR2 from Melawati to Jln Ampang - this stretch is jammed in the morning and will be worse with only 2 lanes for traffic instead of

Alamak!! 2 months without any new posts - no new property launches that seemed interesting although I have been receiving sms ads from unknown agents; nothing catching my eye. Been so busy at work.. Anyway, the good thing about being so busy is that I find I hardly spend money - except for a recent holiday with my sisters and that didn't cost too much, had a great time! So with the new job's salary and me not spending much, have cleared off the renovation OD balance which was on FD anyway and thus, no more debt apart from the monthly credit card bills - not too much there, can settle. Now the things to consider are: Should I settle the car loans in one go now or just continue paying - only 6 months to go on 1 car and a year on the 2nd one? Total o/s is about 30k.  Should I buy another property and what should it be? An apartment up in the hills like Bentong or Gohtong Jaya seems appealing for retirement but it is ultimately a luxury because one would hardly use it n

Recently, I got to know that an acquaintance of mine is now a hot shot property investor - well, he has been doing so for the past number of years so I'm not surprised. And he's still quite young too, in his mid 30's and said to have accumulated more than RM10 million worth of property. Kudos to him and he's also now giving talks on how to do so... Now this is where the ethics part comes in - he's still working for a financial institution. The rules are that you can still have a second job or a direct interest in a business outside of banking provided you declare it and it doesn't affect your work nor should there be a conflict of interest. E.g. you can be a TV ad model / actor - not an issue However, seems that he's giving talks on how to get bank loans easily to buy lots of property in a short time. Now, I can guess how it can be done but I can't bring myself to do it - simply because it is not particularly ethical. So anyway, dear reader

A commenter asked me about it some time ago and I said I didn't check it out ... and wasn't particularly planning to either because I thought it was already launched and sold out etc. ANYWAY, coincidentally a relative wanted to go see the showroom so I tagged along - seems to be a theme going on of me tagging along! and so I DID actually check out it. So here's the deal: This is the last parcel of land by the same developer of Villa Wangsamas and it is the plot closest to the Sri Rampai LRT station (surprised? Of course not, save the best of last, isn't it?). 3 towers of about 30+ floors if memory serves me correctly Leasehold Big-ish layouts, starts from 1.1k sf, 1.3k and I think the biggest is close to 2k sf thereabouts Price is about RM800 per square foot About 8 units per floor, each unit is like a "corner" because they are arranged in a circle around the lift column - so 4 pairs each, then each unit can have corner windows. What do I think

Let's be a little snarky for once - really, "Astoria" .. is the developer trying to 'tumpang glamour' from the Waldorf-Astoria of New York? Did you know where the name Astoria comes from? It is from the old-money New York family, the Asters. Specifically, the erstwhile matriarch Mrs Aster was so incensed that the Waldorf hotel was built next to her mansion that she decided to move out and build her own hotel on the site called the Astoria. The two hotels later joined up and became the now famous Waldorf-Astoria. So what does this story have to do with Astoria Ampang? Nothing really, except for the penchant of Malaysian developers to choose fancy names for their condos that have NO RELEVANCE whatsoever. :) Anyway, I saw the ads and came across their show booth during the Renovation Expo at the KL Convention Centre that was held during the 3rd week of January. Only had a cursory glance and a brief conversation with their sales people - the lady was nice

A new development open for registration just appeared on Jln Jelatek. It looks interesting and the location is good but there are some risky aspects to consider. Details like floor plans and pricing are not available although it is said to be around RM750 psf which is considered "low" in relation to M-Suites which is about 300m away and going for RM1,200+ psf - of course there are other factors in play with regard to M-Suites. Anyway, the pros and cons of Picasso according to currently available information: Pro: Location - just off Jln Ampang, it is close to KLCC (about 3km). It has access to the Ampang Elevated Highway (the entrance to the highway is like only 30m from Picasso) and the DUKE. The Jelatek LRT station is a stones throw away. You can drive straight into the KLCC car park within 8 minutes if there is no traffic (and if you use the Smart Tag! LOL) from this property. Relative low density at 452 units - half the size of the recently launched condos aro