HomeHow to buy a house within 3 hours: our house hunting journey!
housethingsgoing…
A frog and a duck living in a 4rm resale flat …

How to buy a house within 3 hours: our house hunting journey!

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  • Minimalist
  • HDB (Resale)
  • ~900 sqft
  • 3 br
  • Couple Living
  • housethingsgoing's photo
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    HipVan
    Mia L-Shaped Storage Sofa Bed - Graphite…
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    Polished Metal…
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    Our house hunting journey was actually pretty short - we looked on and off for about a month, took a break, came back to it and bought our current place within a few weeks of restarting our search. One reason why we managed to find the house so quickly was because we had a whole list of criteria for the house (which we settled on even before getting a property agent and starting the search). Among others, here are some of the things we wanted for our house: 1. 4 room flat (would have loved a 5-room for the space, but it was either space or potential bankruptcy because we all know what the resale market looks like these days *nervous laughter) 2. Newly MOPed/less than 10 years old (so we wouldn't have to overhaul the electrical wiring and piping 3. Located in the west within 4km from our parents (we love the Proximity Grant!)
  • housethingsgoing's photo
    After doing a couple of random viewings, we also realised that we (or maybe just Duck...) really like this particular layout, which is the current layout of our place. The household shelter opens into the kitchen instead of being located opposite Bedroom 3 or in the living room, which makes the house look more spacious somehow (even though it's actually the standard 4-room flat size). Other things we liked about this layout: 1. The potential to make an open kitchen because of the large kitchen entryway! 2. A separate service yard (some of the newer flats don't have a clear demarcation between the kitchen and the yard so you'll have to dry your clothes near the stove) That was when we really started zooming in on houses with this specific layout and within our (kinda limited) budget.
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    This picture shows how we turned the large kitchen entryway into Duck's dream open-closed kitchen concept! Wouldn't have been able to do this for layouts where the kitchen entry is just the size of the normal door. Anyway, among all the houses we viewed with this layout, we realised that... nobody had the same vision as us LOL. Everyone just opened up the entire kitchen, or created a built in island+dining table concept right in the middle of the entryway. It was nice, but it wasn't exactly what we wanted. So that led to a third round of zooming in - now we were looking for houses which fit our 3 original criteria, had this specific layout AND no large built in furniture, especially in the kitchen/dining area. By this time we were pretty sure that we'd have more luck (and more savings) doing our own renovations... so we shortlisted only houses which were in as 'original' a condition as possible, meaning that the owners didn't do too much renovation (minimal built ins, no hacking of rooms, no false ceilings, etc)
  • housethingsgoing's photo
    By this stage in the house search, we kind of already knew what we would be getting with our list of criteria AND our budget - it would likely be a 2nd-4th floor unit within one of the blocks in an estate we had shortlisted (based on its proximity to amenities and future MRT stations). BUT then we met THE ONE. Aka our house! Not only did it fulfil all of our criteria, it also was a MID FLOOR UNIT - in fact the only mid floor unit we viewed that actually fell within our budget. The owners were just kind of excited to move out as they wanted more space for the family so we managed to seal the deal just a few hours after viewing the flat for the first time. In fact we literally paid the option fee at the coffeeshop beside our place over cups of teh o and milo HAHA then after that we were like 'omg what have we done' This was what our house looked like before our reno - the walls were very colourful and the condition of everything was not the best - but we gave it an overhaul anyway and it's now our home! PS. We didn't tell our parents about the house until we paid the option fee - literally sent them a photo with the document signed and say 'yo we just bought a house' As expected they were shocked LOL but that's a story for another day!
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