Malaysia Money Matters

A summary post of my thoughts and learnings from buying property and renovating - while there are tons of discussion forums, you'd have to trawl through a whole lot of (rather badly written) comments and sift through the rantings, boastings and fluff to even get a glimmer of useful information. So here goes and hope it helps: The majority of Malaysians prefer to buy brand new properties from developers. There are definitely advantages in terms of lower pricing and the satisfaction of owning something first hand. However, there are hidden costs to it too - primarily the risk of uncertainty that touches many aspects of a new development that includes: Risk of non-completion - this is the worst one, you're stuck with a loan or if you paid cash, you can't liquidate. Risk of non-compliance - I have viewed a 2nd hand property before where the owners have been cheated by their developer: the S&P states that the house dimensions were 22x60 but they only built it to 2...

How time flies - almost a month since my last post. I'm in the midst of working with my designer on the renovation plans of my new house. Going to do some restructuring as the current layout is not very optimal. Some background - bought a double storey terrace corner lot, the layout is a pretty standard terrace house design. Unfortunately, the previous owner had done some extensions that are not pretty - it looks like it was done without much thought or planning into it. So we're have to break down quite a number of walls to create an open plan space downstairs - dry kitchen, dining, entrance foyer, formal sitting and casual lounge area all into a seamless design while keeping the costs down!! Upstairs, the master bathroom was "remodelled" (if you can call it that) into a heinous L-shaped ... thing! So that is going to need some major work and we're knocking down one room wall to turn it into a central open family lounge area between the rooms. Going bac...