recently, i have started looking for a place of my own (cannot stay with parents forever mah). for those who have done it before, kudos. for those who have yet to do so, good luck.
because finding the perfect house in singapore is like striking the lottery. for all practical reasons, i am only coming from the average everydayman's viewpoint here since a well-to-do person can use his wealth to mitigate the difficulties that i am going to list down below.
first of all, there is the BTO lucky draw. if you're lucky enough to even get chosen to select a flat, chances are that you will probably have to settle for some place in the outskirts of singapore. you may argue that no where is too far anyway since singapore is only that large, but nothing can be further than the truth than that. our public transport system is patchy at best; it is efficient only if you live near the transport hubs, and only to a certain extent. connecting buses seem to take forever to come, and trains are not as reliable as they seem after the recent breakdown saga. even the BTO's only saving grace that they are cheaper than resale flats have been diluted due to the current practice of pegging BTO prices to market value.
and if you are one of the successful ones in the balloting exercise, congratulations - you only have to wait for another 4-5 years for your house keys!
second, resale. this option gives you the opportunity to choose relatively larger houses in mature estates, but oh - the COV has become somewhat a means of legal extortion. coupled with unavoidable agent and renovation fees, a resale flat might cost more than an arm, a leg, and maybe your firstborn son. and just like men, all the nice units have already been taken up. the good but unsold ones are probably haunted or loanshark-marked; leaving only the lousy ones on the market.
looking at this rate, i think it'll be a long time before i become a flat owner in singapore.
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