When our parents were younger, they read newspapers to search for properties. Developers would also advertise in newspaper. Leaflet was another very good way. Every house in the neighbourhood gets one. A developer which is building 50-100 units of terrace house need just to spend a few thousand and print 20,000 leaflets and chances are the units can be sold off easily.
Properties were also much cheaper then, I remember when my parents bought our Ipoh semi-detached, it was RM85,000 and my parents said, ‘it was so expensive!’. Today, affordable properties are terms as those which are priced between RM200,000 – RM450,000. Anything lower is called, ‘medium – low cost’.
Today, a condo may cost RM500,000 or higher. Do you seriously feel a black and white piece of advertisement in newspaper is enough to tell you about it? How about a colourful one? A leaflet of A4 size? I think we deserve much more than that. Of course, newspapers continue to play an important part but beyond that, we need more information, comparisons, reviews, map, layout and more before we decide whether to drop by the showroom or not.
Fortunately, many developers understand this and these days, every new development typically comes with a website which tells us more than just the price and some unclear pictures in black and white. Some even have Virtual Tours!
A Sample: http://www.propertyguru.com.my/new-property-launch/sunway-aspera-17656
Before you make any decision to buy, get to know more. Do the mortgage calculations online. Browse through all the developer’s past projects. Read latest news about them. News about properties in the location you are about to buy. What about the prices of other similar properties in the area? Are there new highways being built? All these transparency in information meant that we no longer make decisions ill-informed. It will also reduce the chances that you may make the wrong decision.
Then and now, when we buy property
Comments
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Another reason that I personally think of is there are a lot of projects nowadays. If I were going to buy a property, I’ll definitely search around before I make a decision. The more information I can obtain regarding the property, the easiest for me to make a decision.
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Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Are you into commercial properties as well?
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hi csb, thus far I only buy condos. however I do understand commercial properties give very high returns! 🙂 the most important thing for commercial I think is location. Fail that, nothing works!
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having said that, pls also note that for some places, the commercial shop lot has risen so much that it is RM1.5 million to RM2 million. If the price is that high, the business that you need to do must generate a profit of nothing less than RM20,000 just to sustain. It is no longer easy unlike few years back where RM1 million is still considered ok.
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