Malaysia Money Matters

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.