Buying a (HDB) Property

Ape sold his HDB flat a couple of months back... when property market was still good. Nope, ape did not make any profit - ape only managed to break even. How much ape (and wifey) took out from CPF to furnish the loan (including interests), how much ape (and wifey) returned back to our CPF. It's like saying ape has lived in a HDB flat for close to decade... for free :=)

For those of you who are considering purchasing a HDB flat, ape has no advice for you since ape is no property guru. However, the following was what went through ape's mind when he embarked on the journey of "owning" a property. (BTW, one doesn't really own a HDB flat since it's only good for a maximum of 99-years lease, that is, if you live long enough, the flat will be returned to HDB and you won't get a single cent in return)

What For?
The first thing that got into ape's mind was the objective of purchasing a property. What was ape buying a property for? To speculate and earn money or what they call "investment"? To live nearer to ape's workplace/parents/mistress (oops)? Or simply wanted a place to stay and able to declare "Welcome to OUR humble abode"? Well, it's all a bit of the above (and perhaps more for others) but ape set priorities and put "A place to stay and call our own" at the top.

Listing these objectives is important because they would eventually shape the choices and availability of the property ape were looking for. Therefore, with the priorities set, certain options such as "renting a property" or "staying in parents place" were ruled out.

HDB or Private?
First off, private property was (and still is) out of the question. Ape's income simply could not afford one. So ape turn to HDB. Ape didn't think further than affordability then. However, ever since, ape hears a lot of advice to make HDB your first property, even if you could afford private property. One of the reasons is that, should you ever wish/need to switch from private to HDB, it will be very difficult and it's not about affordability. Ape will leave that to the experts to explain.

Direct or Resale?
But then hor, should ape buy direct from HDB (supposedly subsidised?) or from the open market? Since ape was a first time buyer, ape can still enjoy a certain amount of grant ($40K then for a 4 room HDB flat) which more or less made the differences between direct and resale flats close to neglible - as far as $$$ is concerned. Eventually ape chosed buying resale for the following reasons:-

1) New flats were developing in places too far from parents (hey! ape still want to visit parents regularly hor!)

2) New flats were developing at areas not close to MRT (hey! ape no peanuts for private transport hor!)

3) Ape has to wait for a couple of years before the new flats are complete (hey! ape was getting married hor!)

To put it another way is that there's more flexibility in getting a resale flat instead of purchasing direct from HDB.

Where and Affordability?
So ape zoomed in on our requirement, that fulfilled our needs and start checking out the prices of resale flats in areas (near parents and/or MRT stations) to get a feel of "market rate". Next, of course is affordability. With our paychecks, we can afford a 5-rm or EC HDB flat but we decided against it. For the following reasons:-

1) The floor area for 5 room is big...which means we'll have to sweep more often, mop more often, pay higher Service and Conservancy Charges. BTW, Town Councils' Sinking Funds investments were not known and rebates base on flat type was also not popular then. So when all those news came out, ape said "Heng ah! Lucky I never buy 5 room flat!"

2) Whatever that went into our CPF would be utilised to service the housing loan... for the next 30 years! What? Did someone say "But your money just sit in the CPF cannot use for other purposes?"

But ape thinks simply, mah!

Firstly, can anyone guarantee that ape will keep his job for the next 30 years? On top of that, his income will at worse remain stagnant and will never decrease? Last time ape checked, no one gave such guarantee.

So how much can the ape afford? We estimated on this basis:- the monthly installment to furnish the housing loan should preferably be around 50% of our monthly CPF Ordinary Account (OA) contributions and not more than 75%. You'll need to do a bit of reverse engineering to establish what should be the purchase price of the flat. Other things ape had to consider was exactly how much loan would ape be taking? The loan cannot be more than 90% of the purchase price and cannot include any Cash-Above-Valuation (COV). On top of that, your initial CPF would be wiped clean first. (Ape will probably explain this in more details in the next post... but then again, ape thinks you shouldn't be lazy...so go HDB to find out the latest updates)

Why did we pick this figure of 50% of our CPF OA? Since no one can gaurantee that we could keep our jobs for the next 30 years, ape had to prepare for the worst - that is in case ape or wifey or both of us had been out of job! Let's say if ape was out of job the very fist month when he start furnishing his loan... where can he find the money? Not forgetting CPF already wiped clean. From his own savings, right? Then who's going to pay for S&CC, utilities, bread and butter? However, since ape applied the "50% rule" and if the ape was able to hold out for say 3 months before losing his job, he would be able to furnish the housing loan for another 3 months, right? The longer the ape keep his job, the longer he'll hold out if he loose his job. Boleh? In fact, if ape could afford it, he would not even want to stretch his loan for 30 years... the longer you loan, the more interest you pay!

So far,we're still on housing loan. We had to consider the cash sum, too. Thnigs that cannot be paid by our CPF, including Cash-Above-Valuation, property agent fees (if you're getting one), renovations and furniture. All these have to be worked out before one actually commit to purchasing the property.

So after working out our objectives, setting our priorities and calculated our affordability, the rest was a breeze - find a place that we like, give and take a bit base on priorities and make an offer within our affordability. Seller not impressed? Move on and find the next.

We got our first home within 3 months...I think. Had been staying there happily since. So why sell now? Well... objectives changed (or perhaps not) but priorities certainly changed but ape will tell you more next time.

Huh? Wats Tat Again?

Ape is away from Singapore since early Feb. Been busy with hardly anytime to blog. Anyway, was trying to catch up on some home news by back tracking and here's what ape found...

Netizens ‘squandered an opportunity’

Ape was like "Huh? You mean there's is something called a community in the internet? Remotely resembling a group with a certain kind of characteristics and somehow, have to rise and voice up when something socially unacceptable arise?"

Come on... "netizens" are as generic "humans".

When ape started to use his brain,the next question pop out "Wa lau! You mean there's nothing more important to discuss in parliament? Aren't we in a recession? Look into that!"

Anyway... ape rants. Good thing ape is neither human nor netizen... ape is erm... ape :p

Engaging The Government Online

Previously, ape pointed a few ways to engage the authority and mentioned about bloggers' response to AIMS consultation paper. If you want to know more about what AIMS has been doing, read here, I'm not sure if this is the official website though.

The Government held a press conference to conclude AIMS report. The full report can be found on AIMS website. Or you can be like the ape, read someone else's summary. Ape is too lazy to repeat what is said or written.

However, ape just want to give a bit of his peanuts on one particular area - Reach. Reach is the official Government feedback unit. Ape has been there some time ago but not very active there. Topics were quite boring actually and comments posted by netizens were hardly "thought provoking". Read a lot of "I agree" or "disagree" without further elaboration. Not too sure how are things getting on there...

Anyway, the Minister for Infomation, Communincations and the Arts, said they'll expand the role of Reach and Reach will still remain "as its authoritative online source to engage Netizens [... as opposed to...] wandering the whole of the Internet just to debunk every single misleading or wrong posting" (Today, 10 Jan 09, words in brackets by ape).

Some may see it as Government limiting it's engagements with the online community but ape feels it's purely for practical reasons.

Who To Engage?
First, which online community or blog, should Government engage? Even if we zoom down to social political blogs, which one? Perhaps there's only a handful of good social political blogs now but what happens when there's more?

"Eh, why gahmen respond to The Online Citizen but not my blog, Talk Only Cock, har? Same same what! they TOC, I orso TOC leh?"

Who's This?
Besides that, if, for example, ape decides to talk about social-political issues only and one fine day, some one allegely from the Government decides to engage in discussions here. Ape will think - "Are you really who you are?" and so ape check with the respective ministry to confirmation and everytime this person post then everytime ape need to check... because ape can't really know if this person is still the same person who last posted. Ape no time to count peanuts!

And what if readers of ape read here that ape is discussing with someone from the Governement, won't the readers think "Is this reeeaaaaal?!?! Or is this ape trying to impress and boost his readership to earn advertisement?" and so they'll check with the Government... one reader one letter, 10 readers 10 letters? Government no time to count peanuts... oops, Government not like ape, they don't count peanuts.

And if say, supposing someone uses the inital LKY and claims that he is a civil servant and gave his comments here, do I really want to enquire from the ministries if this "LKY" is really from the civil service? And is he or perhaps she writing in personal capacity or as "Government"?

So, ape still think it is better to go to Reach if one wants to seek Governments engagement. At least netizens (readers and posters) know respond is from Government and Government need not appear to be bias by visiting some online forum but not the others. Win-win?

New Name?

Ape must be suffering from identity crisis.

In my previous post, ape wasn't quite certain about where he is going with this blog but at least ape decided to change his name now and simply call himself... Ape... until identity crisis resurface :p

Previously, the name khirsah was used but seemed to cause quite a bit of confusion. (and more letters to type) "Khirsah" is unique but not original. It's actually the name of a dragon taken from a fantasy story book series called Dragonlance. Not many people are familiar with this name and some thought that I'm an Indian, perhaps of it's similiarity to Krishna. I'm not an Indian and I have nothing against Indians. I'm just an ape.

Some of those who know me through CNA forum called me M. K or Master K... nope, I'm not a Master in Karate or master in anything. It's just that I started my story telling there and one of them relate me to the late Master Lee Dai Sor, a well known Redifussion story teller. A shoe too big to fill.

Finally, ape decided to settle for Ape because Ape is simple. Ape loves peanuts, go Ooh ooh and Ape is simply ape.

P/S Ooh, ooh, Ape still dream of retiring by setting up a simple stall by the Singapore River and tell stories to entertain interested listeners and you only need to pay him peanuts.

Engaging The Authority

Once again, we hear the all too often "respect the authority"... probably more often in the year 2008 when we have a number of cases where the Singapore Court was challenged or questioned in several cases.

During the opening of the legal year 2009 in Singapore's Supreme Court, Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong reiterate that the courts requires its authority to be respected by all (read this).

I do agree with CJ Chan. For the court or any authority to carry out their duty effectively, a certain form of respect must be accorded. Hurling insults, making false and scandalous allegations certainly impedes the authority. However, I must add that respect should not only come from the people, respect must come from the law enforcers, the authority themselves, i.e. all, everyone. Those holding public office should also respect the authority accorded to them and not abuse their powers. The people have to respect the authority and not make false or scandalous allegations.

What if we don't agree with certain laws? What if we don't agree with how the authority applies the law? Can't we voice it out? Sure we can... but how? Protest? Even if it's peaceful?

Attorney General Prof Walter Woon also spoke about the need to protect the integrity of the judicial system.

"He said that while freedom of speech and expression is guaranteed in the Constitution, the line is crossed 'where a person deliberately attempts to undermine the authority of the courts by casting aspersions on the integrity of the judges in order to further a political or ideological agenda'[...]'I can only conclude they were testing our resolve and probing to see how far we could be intimidated by their tactics,'" (Straits Times, 4 Jan 2009)

said Prof Woon with reference to a group of activists at the Attorney-General's Chambers the demanding the return of items seized by police investigating certain offences, with threats of sit-ins and protests.

Why is it so important to protect the integrity of the judicial system?

If the authority is seen to be intimdated, they'll loose all credibility. Common people like this ape will simply think "Ah? Like that also can ah? So next time I buay song (not satisfied) I can also kow peh cow bu la (rant or protest publicly)!"

You see, the point is, not everyone understands the cause(s) taken by activists. Even less people will know the true intent of such "activists". (Note: I use activists broadly to include politicians or anyone who go into the streets and kow peh kow bu as well as those who don't kow peh kow bu). Sadly, what some people will see is that a group of people not happy and they make a lot of noise and the authority give in to their demand, and therefore, conclude that if you want your demands met, make a lot of noise?

So how should we engage the authority if we cannot make our opinion heard through protest? If there's something I felt strongly about, a change in certain policy or law that I feel that is absolutely necessary, what can I do?

Law Minister K.Shanmugam mentioned one... a difficult one where not all can meet.

"The way to change the law was to get elected politically and argue in Parliament why the law should be changed" (Straits Times, 4 Jan 2009).

However, that is not the only way. You can go for Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP). Even if you can't be an NMP, you can talk to your MP during Meet the People Session and request your MP to raise it in Parliament. Or you can approach one of the NMP to raise it, like what some did when they petition to repeal Section 377A through NMP Siew Kum Hong. Sometimes, you may not need to raise your concerns in parliament through a proxy for matters on a smaller scale. You can write to the authority concerned, privately, seek their views and perhaps publish in your blog if you want to for sharing with fellow citizens. Someone like Dharmendra Yadav in Think Happiness. You can also present your feedback through Reach, the official Government's online portal for feedback. Last but not least is to organise yourselves to submit your proposal in response to public consultation papers like what 13 bloggers did in response to the Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (AIMS).

The above examples are some of the proper channels to engage the authority. They are non-aggressive measures that we can do. Look at it this way, what is our objective? To achieve a certain intentionally good outcome, right? Would you go bang table and demand change, in the process making those in-charge loose face put up defences immediately? Or would you be consultative and engaged the decision makers politely and amicably to seek an ideal resolution?

To close this off, I politely request that you watch Anna and the King (starring Jodie Foster as Anna Leonowens and Chow Yun-Fatt as Siam King Mongkut). In a particular scene, where Tuptim (King's concubine?) was sentenced to death, Anna cried babaric! outrageous! "I will speak to the King!" publicly in the court. What she did was effectively sealing Tuptim's doom. The King, who had the authority to pardon a death-roll convict, was no longer able to do so because his subjects would think that he was led by the nose by a woman... and a foreign one. The King would loose the faith and credibility to lead his country... even though he was a wise monarch and he too, need to respect the law of the country.