Buying a property. Why the long…………… wait for the whole process?

When you have decided to buy, you would normally view the properties within the requirements you have decided. Typically if you are quite sure, it would take 5 – 10 viewings and you would have decided. For those who have more than a few properties, it may take you just 1 – 2 views to confirm. Oh yeah, more viewing does not necessarily mean you are more careful. The careful part should start before you start viewing, not after you started viewing. If you can never afford an area, do not waste your time with that area. If you somehow found one which you can afford easily within that area which you cannot afford, think very carefully, why is the property still waiting for you? Okay, perhaps you are lucky. If that’s the case, please proceed. I would not have such choices because for areas that I have decided not to buy, I would normally not view them. So, this may take few weeks, at most within one month.
Next would be bank loan applications. If your documents are all in order, it takes nothing more than just one week and another week for the letter to arrive at your mail box. Even the lawyer’s side would take nothing more than 2 weeks for you to sign. If buyer and seller are both using different lawyers, multiply that by two. Still within one month. Then, why it takes me more than 6 months to get into my home last time and my friend took 9 months?! Well, some delay would be due to different banks being used by both the buyer and the seller. Bank to bank, they do not normally like each other anyway because one would be losing business to the other as soon as the transaction is completed. So, of course they would take their time.
The one thing which delays everything tremendously is the approval from the land office. Typically, it’s 3 + 1 months. Thus, everything may be completed from viewing till moving in within 6 months. If it’s a leasehold, this becomes even longer. State consent alone may take many months. This meant the whole process from day one of viewing until moving in may be nine months to one year after. When you think of it closely, what’s the main reason for up to 6 months? After all, it is highly likely that the same leasehold unit has also been given consent before and thus it is highly unlikely that consent would not be given. Of course it’s very clear that for bumiputera units, it cannot be transferred to non-bumiputera but for the usual leasehold units, why does it have to take so long? Seriously hope that this would be something which all the state governments would look into, especially Selangor. The only time when I felt that it took ‘forever’ to complete the property transaction is my two purchases here in Selangor. Both are leaseholds and both are secondary properties. Let’s hope this improves soon.
written on 23 Oct 2014
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