Finding a House and Making a Home

577

Beach Resort
HDB (Resale)
~1,000 sqft
3 br
Couple Living

Turning a house into a home :) Welcome to our house-hunting and house-buying journey!
One unique criteria we had with our home was for it to be a corner unit, because we wanted to be able to host friends and didn't want noise to be an issue. Although we didn't manage to get a corner home, our unit is in between this walkway (see pic), and the fire staircase. So, there are no units directly next to us. We effectively are able to host loud parties and haven't had any complaints (yet!)
One other unique criteria we knew we wanted to have, was a rattan and fully custom ceiling. This is why, we chose a unit that didn't have any false ceilings installed (to save us some money in hacking down any existent false ceilings!). Besides having a floor plan, our planning extended all the way to having a ceiling plan - we planned our rattan panels, our light fixtures, etc. We were able to do all this meticulously with our light consultant from Sol Luminaire.
During the house visiting process, we also wanted to check: 1. Noise Levels 2. Light/Sun 3. Breeze In the end, we chose a nice north-south facing unit that keeps the harsh sun away from our place. Although we're facing the playground, we don't really mind the level of noise of the kids - better than traffic! And since we chose a lower level floor, we had to compromise having a good breeze.
- #hdbrenovation
So, once we found a unit that was: 1. Lower level (we wanted to use the stairs and not the HDB lifts because we have large family dogs that visit occasionally) 2. Didn't have false ceilings, didn't have extensive renovation done (because we wanted to tear everything down) 3. Within our budget We bought our first ever home!
- #firsthome
- #hdb
However, this was actually not the first home we could've bought. In 2020, we successfully got a queue number for a BTO unit in Dover (it's the PLH one). The waiting time (back then) was estimated to be 6 years, and the BTO price was 610,000 SGD. If we costed out rent of about 2.5k/month, over the next 6 years of waiting... it just didn't make sense. We ended up foregoing that unit, and bought resale instead. We tried our best to get a resale unit in Dover but none of the units worked out for us.
In the end, we settled on a unit somewhere in the east!
At the point of purchasing, we felt that a 4-room flat would've been enough for both of us, and maybe a pet/kid and helper someday. Hopefully, this isn't our final home yet because we definitely want more space when we're older!