Thursday, February 14, 2008
Before you buy that condo.....
Before you buy that Condo…..
When you wish to buy a condo, whether it is for living in or to rent out, it is definitely worth spending some time investigating if the developer is a reliable one. The best thing is to look at the condos he had completed and to also talk to those who bought the condos. You will definitely find out a lot of useful information, free of charge. Unscrupulous business practices are on the rise in every country. In some countries, verbal contracts are legal. Never accept a verbal contract. Always have agreements written, and duly signed. Illustrated cases with statistics are not readily available because people naturally want to paint a perfect picture of their own country, to attract foreign investors.
Never based your decision to purchase on the show piece the developer provides. That show piece is surely constructed by skilled people. I have seen so-called skilled technicians and engineers, with technical diploma and bachelor degree, who did not know how to drill two holes on a steel plate or concrete wall, say 1 meter from centre to centre, with drill bits. They thought they only had to point the drill bit on the point marked and started drilling. The drill bit will definitely move away from the exact point to be cut and then your plate or wall will end up with extra holes.
The next thing to look for is your floor. Are the floor tiles properly leveled? Pay attention to the point where the four tiles meet. Is one tile more than 1 mm lower than the others? The gaps between the floor tiles must be filled up with sealant. One way of cheating the owner is to fill up the gaps without sweeping or removing the dust in the gaps. After few days of moving in, you will find the holes on those gaps crop up every where. It will be very expensive and most inconvenient to remove the dust and refill the sealant.
Buy a good pair of binoculars to check the cracks which are too far for the naked eyes to see. Check the East, South, West and North side of the building. How many cracks have you seen? How long is each crack? These cracks may not cause the building to collapse during the next twenty years. But when you wish to sell the condo, the buyer will surely want to have all the cracks repaired and the expenses incurred will be deducted from your asking price.
The next thing to consider is the fire fighting system. Do not trust the report you see on the paper. In many countries, the papers state the system have been approved and tested satisfactorily, but in fact it is not working at all. You can take the fire hose and release the valve, no water will come out, and no fire- water pump will be started. Your life is at risk. When you prove it to them, they will say: “It only broke down this morning, an hour ago. Our engineer and the supervisors tested the system yesterday and it was working properly.”
You may be an expatriate who just arrived in Asia for the first time, still thinking that if things go wrong, you can take the developers to court. It may not be that simple. It is very seldom that we find a country where the jury is not controlled by the politicians. Your court case may drag on longer than usual because of political clouts or you may not win the case even though you are right, and concrete evidences are available.
After deciding to buy the condo, you may have to start paying a certain amount of deposit. Then the developer will bill you later on as he claims he has completed such and such a quantity of works, based on the architect ’s report, without you actually having the chance to see the project on site because he will never allow you to visit the site physically.
After the condo has been completed, do not accept it immediately. It is worthwhile to spend another three months or more, and use the time to identify the defects which may be visible only three or four months later. When you move in the developer will accuse you of causing the damage. In the end, it will be still cheaper even though you have to keep on paying your existing landlord.
Most concrete take many months to cure properly. The cracks on the building only appear many months later. You will be very lucky if you can find one developer who is willing to guarantee the building for 12 months. First of all, these cracks should not have occurred if the concrete had been mixed properly. The trouble is cement is many times more expensive than sand or water and therefore you concrete will be consisting of more water, sand and others.
Portland cement takes 28 hours to cure. But don’t expect all developers to use this. It is more expensive. Before the concrete can be safely used, a slump test must be carried out. If the wet mixes sink more than four inches, it means the water contain is too high, or there is deficiency in the proportion of the five aggregates.
The developer only has to make sure that the main structures will not fail. He will surely cut corners here and there.
Before you move in, do not have the electricity and water supply connected. You will be shocked at how much you have to pay even though you have not yet consumed them. I have heard of incidents like this before. The developer will allow his workers to use your toilets, electricity and water. Worse still, they have no manners to clean up the toilets after they used them. Asia has the dirtiest toilets if you compare them to those in the USA, Europe, Britain, Australia and Canada.
Some bad apples will think that they can make some money out of you thinking that they can dirty your condo walls, and then you will pay them extra money to repaint the condo urgently because you wish to move in to celebrate the New Year and so on or you are paying USD 3500.00 every month for your existing rental. So these hooligans think that if you move in one month earlier, you save USD3500.00. For this obvious reason they believe you wound not mind paying them extra USD400.00 to have your damaged paint on the wall repainted. If you have not signed the acceptance certificate, you can still tell the developer to clean up the mess because first of all he should not have allowed the hooligans to have access to your condo. Moreover, some people may have duplicated your condo keys. You may be safer, if you arrange for steel gates to be added to your front and back doors, and use padlocks for these two doors. After moving into newly completed homes, it is very common for the owners to lose their expensive items even though the doors show no sign of damage.
Mosquito problems will be in the grey area. Is the maintenance provider responsible for making sure there are no mosquito breeding grounds around? What about the areas near -by which are not your condo compounds? The mosquito can surely fly into your condo.
Mosquito proofing your condo does not help much because as your walk to the car park,
many of the mosquitoes would have sucked some blood out of you before you have the chance to start your car engine and drive off.
There will be lots of sales people visiting you asking you to add on this and that so that your condo will be most impressive. I would compare it like after paying for your new Mercedes-Bent, you tell the sales personnel to have a huge stainless steel white elephant fixed on the roof of the Mercedes-Bent. This elephant would weigh 300 kilograms. It costs only USD 2000.00. Does it add value to the car?
***
When you wish to buy a condo, whether it is for living in or to rent out, it is definitely worth spending some time investigating if the developer is a reliable one. The best thing is to look at the condos he had completed and to also talk to those who bought the condos. You will definitely find out a lot of useful information, free of charge. Unscrupulous business practices are on the rise in every country. In some countries, verbal contracts are legal. Never accept a verbal contract. Always have agreements written, and duly signed. Illustrated cases with statistics are not readily available because people naturally want to paint a perfect picture of their own country, to attract foreign investors.
Never based your decision to purchase on the show piece the developer provides. That show piece is surely constructed by skilled people. I have seen so-called skilled technicians and engineers, with technical diploma and bachelor degree, who did not know how to drill two holes on a steel plate or concrete wall, say 1 meter from centre to centre, with drill bits. They thought they only had to point the drill bit on the point marked and started drilling. The drill bit will definitely move away from the exact point to be cut and then your plate or wall will end up with extra holes.
The next thing to look for is your floor. Are the floor tiles properly leveled? Pay attention to the point where the four tiles meet. Is one tile more than 1 mm lower than the others? The gaps between the floor tiles must be filled up with sealant. One way of cheating the owner is to fill up the gaps without sweeping or removing the dust in the gaps. After few days of moving in, you will find the holes on those gaps crop up every where. It will be very expensive and most inconvenient to remove the dust and refill the sealant.
Buy a good pair of binoculars to check the cracks which are too far for the naked eyes to see. Check the East, South, West and North side of the building. How many cracks have you seen? How long is each crack? These cracks may not cause the building to collapse during the next twenty years. But when you wish to sell the condo, the buyer will surely want to have all the cracks repaired and the expenses incurred will be deducted from your asking price.
The next thing to consider is the fire fighting system. Do not trust the report you see on the paper. In many countries, the papers state the system have been approved and tested satisfactorily, but in fact it is not working at all. You can take the fire hose and release the valve, no water will come out, and no fire- water pump will be started. Your life is at risk. When you prove it to them, they will say: “It only broke down this morning, an hour ago. Our engineer and the supervisors tested the system yesterday and it was working properly.”
You may be an expatriate who just arrived in Asia for the first time, still thinking that if things go wrong, you can take the developers to court. It may not be that simple. It is very seldom that we find a country where the jury is not controlled by the politicians. Your court case may drag on longer than usual because of political clouts or you may not win the case even though you are right, and concrete evidences are available.
After deciding to buy the condo, you may have to start paying a certain amount of deposit. Then the developer will bill you later on as he claims he has completed such and such a quantity of works, based on the architect ’s report, without you actually having the chance to see the project on site because he will never allow you to visit the site physically.
After the condo has been completed, do not accept it immediately. It is worthwhile to spend another three months or more, and use the time to identify the defects which may be visible only three or four months later. When you move in the developer will accuse you of causing the damage. In the end, it will be still cheaper even though you have to keep on paying your existing landlord.
Most concrete take many months to cure properly. The cracks on the building only appear many months later. You will be very lucky if you can find one developer who is willing to guarantee the building for 12 months. First of all, these cracks should not have occurred if the concrete had been mixed properly. The trouble is cement is many times more expensive than sand or water and therefore you concrete will be consisting of more water, sand and others.
Portland cement takes 28 hours to cure. But don’t expect all developers to use this. It is more expensive. Before the concrete can be safely used, a slump test must be carried out. If the wet mixes sink more than four inches, it means the water contain is too high, or there is deficiency in the proportion of the five aggregates.
The developer only has to make sure that the main structures will not fail. He will surely cut corners here and there.
Before you move in, do not have the electricity and water supply connected. You will be shocked at how much you have to pay even though you have not yet consumed them. I have heard of incidents like this before. The developer will allow his workers to use your toilets, electricity and water. Worse still, they have no manners to clean up the toilets after they used them. Asia has the dirtiest toilets if you compare them to those in the USA, Europe, Britain, Australia and Canada.
Some bad apples will think that they can make some money out of you thinking that they can dirty your condo walls, and then you will pay them extra money to repaint the condo urgently because you wish to move in to celebrate the New Year and so on or you are paying USD 3500.00 every month for your existing rental. So these hooligans think that if you move in one month earlier, you save USD3500.00. For this obvious reason they believe you wound not mind paying them extra USD400.00 to have your damaged paint on the wall repainted. If you have not signed the acceptance certificate, you can still tell the developer to clean up the mess because first of all he should not have allowed the hooligans to have access to your condo. Moreover, some people may have duplicated your condo keys. You may be safer, if you arrange for steel gates to be added to your front and back doors, and use padlocks for these two doors. After moving into newly completed homes, it is very common for the owners to lose their expensive items even though the doors show no sign of damage.
Mosquito problems will be in the grey area. Is the maintenance provider responsible for making sure there are no mosquito breeding grounds around? What about the areas near -by which are not your condo compounds? The mosquito can surely fly into your condo.
Mosquito proofing your condo does not help much because as your walk to the car park,
many of the mosquitoes would have sucked some blood out of you before you have the chance to start your car engine and drive off.
There will be lots of sales people visiting you asking you to add on this and that so that your condo will be most impressive. I would compare it like after paying for your new Mercedes-Bent, you tell the sales personnel to have a huge stainless steel white elephant fixed on the roof of the Mercedes-Bent. This elephant would weigh 300 kilograms. It costs only USD 2000.00. Does it add value to the car?
***
