This story was submitted by Tong Hiew Wei
My first home buying experience was disastrous! It was in the year 2001, when I was 24 years old. I scrimped and saved RM20,000 downpayment for my first home purchase.
Like every young graduate, I dreamt of owning a car and a home with my hard-earned money. Having bought my first car the previous year, I was excited about the prospect of being a proud home owner next!
Back then the homes in Malaysia were still affordable and within the reach of most average wage earners. I did my calculations and figured I could afford an RM200,000 home with an RM20,000 downpayment, with a mortgage loan of around RM180,000.
Unfortunately, being young and naive, I failed to do “research” or even bother asking around. All I was thinking back then was to buy a landed property near to Bukit Jalil Park, where I go jogging on weekends. Then I came across a newspaper advertisement featuring exactly what I wanted.
It was a 20’X 70′ double-storey house which was within my budget. I was super excited, visited them on the spot and signed up!
Within a week, I paid my deposit and applied for a housing loan. All because the showroom gallery folks kept pestering me to hurry up before the units get sold out.
Only now I know that was their sales tactic. But back then, I was too ignorant. The nightmare lasted eight years!
For starters, the project that was supposed to be handed over within a year got dragged on for three years. I regretted immediately upon handover of keys.
Where do I start? The workmanship was horrifying; there were deep cracks everywhere on the ceilings, walls, and floors; it was misaligned, uneven, with rotten tiles; there were huge gaps between the skirting and the walls; there were water leakages from the gutter right down to floor tiles causing fungus to thrive; the doors and windows were not installed properly with the aluminium frames falling off.
The roads weren’t paved properly and were full of sinkholes; the street lighting were sparse leading to regular house break-ins until today and my neighbouring houses looked like they were about to sink anytime!
The subsequent complaints to the errant developer went unattended and after almost half a year, they responded with some useless minor repairs. Frustrated, I had to fork out my own money to fix the defects to quickly rent it out, as I was not interested in moving in. Appeal letters to the Malaysian Home Buyers Tribunal as well as legal action were met with zero response.
Luckily, I found a tenant three years later and sold the house off in 2009 at a loss, after years of servicing loans, interest, insurances plus the cost of repairing defects. I heaved a huge sigh of relief upon signing the Sales and Purchase Agreement and handing over keys to the new owner.
Needless to say, the detailed background checks and research I conducted via prominent property portals such as PropertyGuru.com.my and onsite location visits helped me to make profitable property investments later on in my subsequent purchases.
A very steep lesson learned indeed from my first home purchase, but I’m grateful that it made me a wise and informed home buyer.
This story was submitted for the MY HOME, MY STORY campaign. The grand prize winner will stand a chance to win RM10,000!
