Hell seems nicer than the eternal hunt for reasonable housing at an affordable price. Last week we went up to Island resort, (about 45minutes from the center of Hong Kong CBD, which may prove to be too far..) to look at flats. For a change, we saw something that looked really good (incredible sea view, nice clubhouse/pool etc.), the meager ~1011sqft, actually looked like that figure. Unlike Sam Wan Towers (south side of Hong Kong Island), that says it was ~1000sqft, but looked alot more like 7-800.
The big trouble comes from cost..., for these tiny apartments, which we could just about squeeze everyone in, along with 10 years worth of collected crap. We would have to fork out HK$7 million dollars (or pretty close to US$1million).. Well, like most people we are not rolling cash, so morgageing that kind of property works out at around HK$25-30,0000/month (US$3-4000), leaving out the issue that interest rates may rise soon, pushing that monthly figure even higher. (which was already over budget!)
So this weekend we sat down with an estate agent near our current house. and informed him of our requirements....
Cluesticks for estate agents
- Dont tell us how difficult our requirements are and how crap the properties are going to be.
- Dont tell us, we must buy now as the market is going up.. (and dont bother arguing/discussing with the us, if we dont believe you) Do you think we take advice from someone who has a vested interest in saying that? It's just downright annoying
- Dont tell us about the area, if we already live there!
- When we say that we have certain requirements, dont ignore them... even so you can show us round places..
- If we found prices on the internet for properties, listed them out and asked to see them, even though they may be wrong!, show us the buildings we wanted to see...!!! (just let us know that on your books they are for XXX)
I actually asked my wife to avoid speaking cantonese to the agent to see if the blabbered on so much in english.. They do, and apparently it's the same rubbish.!
Anyone living in a civilized country (definatly not asia's world shoebox), would have been amazed at the flats we where dragged round to. Swinging cat's would be a miracle, and the fact the only view from your living room window is your neighbours bathroom, is classed as 'open view', does make you wonder if there's more to life...
It was not all bad, I did see one I liked, but let's just say my better half did not approve of the idea of renovating it.. (at least we could see the sea from the lounge.)
It will be interesting to see where all this is going, as for the first time in 10years, we actually have a budget for this, just have no idea if property prices are in a mini-bubble at present, or is just holding steady prior to the climb....
