How do you know if the property fair was poor but the organiser tries to cover up? Well, instead of telling you the overall number of visitors, they would tell you, ‘huge crowds were there’ or ‘many property buyers visited the show’. Instead of telling you the overall transaction which may number over RM50 million easily because RM50 million is just 100 units of RM500,000 properties. They would say, ‘developers said they have lots of interested buyers’, or ‘some booths were busy for the whole day’. Truth is, if there are 30 developers, each developer needs to sell just 3.3 units and it would hit 100 units. Furthermore these days, do you think properties exhibited are really Rm500,000 and below? For those, they do not really need to exhibit. They only need to do advertisements and it should sell well.
How do you know if a property is ‘not selling well?’ When you see lots of advertisements about it on Facebook by different agents. When you received SMSes which tells you, ‘Final call, few units left’ and that same SMS is sent to you again one week later. There was even a developer who said, their offer ends on Friday. For the next 3 weeks, every weekend, they were still advertising in the newspaper. I am not saying you should not buy these but sometimes there are reasons why it could not be sold for a very long time. Sometimes, it may be just the wrong marketing used. No one knows but if there are so many new launches, why go for the ‘long time no one buy’ kind of property then?
How do you know if the price is really overpriced? When they kept telling you about the MRT which is going to be right next door within the next few years, therefore there is certainly some premiums in the pricing. Some developers would also tell you that their concept is the only one of its kind in the market. Please note that MRT may help your home price to increase but there is really no need to pay for a premium for it today. For the only one of its kind concept in the market, if the concept is not liked by many, you are doomed if you buy it. If the concept is loved by the market, you think the next few projects would not be based on the same concept? If that happens, are you still the only one of its kind?
How do you know that the area is very far away? Most of the time, it would say things like, ‘with the highway, the journey to city centre would be a breeze as it would take just 30 minutes’. Wait a minute. Highway speed limit is 110km, 30 minutes journey meant the property is 55km away! Alternatively, they would tell you, ‘escape the hustle and bustle of the city and come back to nature. The development is surrounded by a secondary forest. First of all, if it’s a forest reserve, it is unlikely that developer would get to build there. Secondly, once developments arrive at your area, the secondary forest would become ‘once upon a time forest’.
I love reading many of these advertisements and I love visiting projects. However, sometimes, after I read about the project, I would just do an online search and conclude that I would be better off visiting malls instead. How do you know? Well, just read more and visit more and speak more to your friends who are active in the property market. These are good knowledge to have.
written on 24 Sept 2014
Next suggested article: 84% of homebuyers have only ONE (1) outstanding home loan. 🙂
Leave a Reply