I spent a good 13 years of my younger days working in Brunei. However, in the end Mia and I decided to move back to our hometown, KK. It was quite a brave move because it meant starting practically all over again from the bottom.
Upon my return to KK in late 2002, I bought a 3-bedroom single storey terraced house. Although I was already a Chartered Valuation Surveyor then, my qualification was not recognised in Malaysia and I had to go through the Malaysian qualifying board, a process that took me over 2 years to complete. I remember I made a promise to Mia that I will try to buy another house within 5 years' time. It happened that in July that same year, my daughter, JJ was born.
Well, JJ is now fast approaching 8 years old, and we're still living in the same single storey house. To be honest, I have been hunting for a house for quite a while now, but we found no suitable ones. I've missed my target by almost 3 years now.
Then about a month ago, someone instructed us to value his house. He intended to sell it. It's a semi-detached house located in Taman Sinar Bukit, which is about 5 minutes' drive from my father-in-law's house in Dah Yeh Villa. The property satisfies almost all of our requirements, i.e. a double-storey house with 4-bedrooms; near to the hospital, schools, the city centre and the Likas Sports Complex. But it is an old house, probably about 30 years old. However, it has been well preserved, and the owner had carried out renovations over the years.
It costs quite a fortune because of all those positive features above, but these days it's no longer possible to find a vacant residential lot within this location, so it's quite normal for people to buy old houses and then refurbish them.
I brought Mia to see the house one afternoon and she immediately fell in love with it! That night she was already planning what to do with the house, the kind of furniture, a huge flat screen TV (I don't know why, because we hardly watch TV anyway), this and that. So about a week later, I wrote a cheque, i.e. the down payment to the estate agent to close the deal. Then I scouted around for a bank loan, and I was pleasantly surprised that quite a number of banks were fighting for my business! I don't know if it had anything to do with my handsome face (smile).
I reckon I would probably require something like RM100,000 to RM150,000 on top of the purchase price just to refurbish the house, so there's still plenty to do! While inspecting the house, I noticed a small device which appeared like a calculator on the wall in the master bedroom. It was evidently some kind of security alarm system. I don't know if it's still working.
Our present house has no alarm system, but perhaps it's a good idea to install one in the "new" house. For a brief moment, I entertained the idea of a CCTV too, but then I remembered that CCTV is quite useless. About 3 years ago a CCTV in a shop caught a man on video. That man rode a motorbike, and he left a huge bag at the shop. Turned out that that bag contained the dead body of a little girl. Although caught on camera, it could not help in identifying the face of that man; not even the registration number of his motorbike. The story of Nurin Jazlin became quite a famous case because the video was sent all the way to the USA to seek help from the mighty FBI for video enhancement! Quite fantastic, really, because after the FBI had a hand at it, we got some important information from the tapes! Check it out here. But anyway, I think I will do without the CCTV for the moment.
It's quite a densely populated neighbourhood, and I wonder what kind of neighbours we're gonna have. Relationship with neighbours can be quite a tricky matter, and I'm sure some of you can still remember about my present neighbour?
Our present house has no alarm system, but perhaps it's a good idea to install one in the "new" house. For a brief moment, I entertained the idea of a CCTV too, but then I remembered that CCTV is quite useless. About 3 years ago a CCTV in a shop caught a man on video. That man rode a motorbike, and he left a huge bag at the shop. Turned out that that bag contained the dead body of a little girl. Although caught on camera, it could not help in identifying the face of that man; not even the registration number of his motorbike. The story of Nurin Jazlin became quite a famous case because the video was sent all the way to the USA to seek help from the mighty FBI for video enhancement! Quite fantastic, really, because after the FBI had a hand at it, we got some important information from the tapes! Check it out here. But anyway, I think I will do without the CCTV for the moment.
It's quite a densely populated neighbourhood, and I wonder what kind of neighbours we're gonna have. Relationship with neighbours can be quite a tricky matter, and I'm sure some of you can still remember about my present neighbour?
Still a while more for us to sort out the documentations. Then at least a bit of refurbishment work first. Then the scary thought of having to move house! I hope to get it all over with before the end of the year! It's been a long-delayed plan, but I'm glad that I'm finally able to keep my promise to Mia. I just hate moving house so much, I hope this will be the last time I'm doing this!
4 comments:
lol, I know what you mean by the last time you'll be moving house :) I told that to my hubby too :P. Anyway, congratulations on your new home.
Yeah, Ju, moving house is sooooo not fun!... the packing, carrying and arranging, some more arranging in the other house, and unpacking! Hahaha! Mia is all excited about it though!
Like you I will be moving to a new home also possibly at the end of the year.
While in your case you are relishing the thought of so much to move, so many things to buy and arranged,my situation is just the opposite.
You see we have been staying in a landed property (terraced house) for so many years and accumulated so many things (some which I treasures while my wife considers them to be thrash)and the new place is a condo unit.
As everybody knows,a condo unit is unlike a landed property in terms of space availability so our problem is sorting out what to bring over and what not to bring to the new home due to space constraints.
Leaving the unwanted stuff including the dogs in the present home does not solve the problem because we still face the dilemma of whether to keep the house, rent it out or sell it off.
A friend of mine used the following idea. He rent out the house,keep his old stuff in one of the rooms while the tenant use the other available rooms.Another friend bought a 48' long container,put all his stuff in it and park it at the back of is house leaving the house empty to his tenant.
That's quite an idea, Socrates29, but if it's me, I would either throw away all the stuff, or donate them away. No point to keep if I'm never ever gonna use them again?
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