Nearly everyone of my friends said they wanted to stay inside Penang island. No wonderlah the prices are going up a lot. However do you know that there is another place everyone can also consider? In fact it meets majority of what people tell me except for reasons such as ‘all my friends are in island’ or ‘there are no Queensbay, Gurney mall and Paragon mall. I asked an old friend who used to stay in island, in a place every Penangite loves, Greenlane. He is now staying in Butterworth and he said is is definitely ‘BETTER WORTH’. Thanks Jeffrey. 🙂
Affordability. Lets get real, money is never enough but if we use it wisely we can stretch it further than what we can use it for. In Butterworth, a typical terrace is around RM400K – Rm500K depending on actual location / size. A condo ranges from MR360K – Rm450K depending on the size. A famous one would be Ocean View. With this kind of money, there are no Condo projects in the island which is available to you. Typically, for a 1,000sf condo, it would be RM550K – RM650K easily, depending on size, renovations etc. RM500K means you cannot even get any 1,000 sf condo in my favourite place, Sungai Ara. Slightly smaller size, perhaps.
Less jam. It is true. If we consider the slow moving traffic in Butterworth as ‘jam’. Then, you must try going along the Gurney / Greenlane or even the Bayan Lepas during peak hours. That my friend are what real jams are. As of now, there is still the ferry connection but soon, there would be the second bridge as well the next time you would like to go to Queensbay. My friend works in Penang, thus he travels to and fro and thus far he is ok. Actually, everything comes back to getting used to. Once you are used to it, it becomes ok. My wife was ok to jam 40 minutes from her factory back to our home in Sungai Ara. For me, I travel from Sungai Ara to town everyday for over 2 years and I felt nothing.
Potential capital appreciation. Even if you assume that properties within island appreciates faster than mainland, please be reminded that as long as the island appreciates, the mainland would follow. Or else you may have a RM1,000,000 condo in island and a RM300,000 terrace house in mainland. Does not make sense right. To get this capital appreciation, the capital you need to pay up front is also lower by virtue of the lower property price in Butterworth.
My friend Jeffrey has no plans to move back to his newly completed condo in the island, preferring Butterworth instead. To him, Butterworth is really ‘better worth’.
written on 25 dec 2013
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0 Responses
My Penang friend said, there is NO JAM in Tanjung Tokong area……
Joke of the day…. no jam in tg tokong.
Hi All,
Jam is every where, it is unikely to find a place where jam does not exist with convenient surrounding of your work or residence area unless you would like to stay far away from town.
In fact, there is always pro and cons, thing is not perfect, let’s look at our neighbour country SGP with advance public transportation, it also can not run away from the jam even government keep stressing on the car tax, and encouraging everyone to use the public transport, however, it still exists. whether you like it or not, the trend is people are moving to some where with hire demand of job or for the sake of convenient, the city is getting to centralize model, in order to mitigate the jam, people need to reduce the travel, how can it be success? it only can be achieved by having a combination approach in city planning, for instance, by decentralizing the essential need in difference district of island, bank, school, shopping mall, food court and so on to reduce the travel. in additional, there are series of approach need to be deployed, like, more roads, control car volume, improve public transport and so on.
At last, do remember one thing, nothing is free, everything will have to pay for it including convenient and security. as a matter of fact, world is having sprout population. our space is measured by number of population, just think of Hong Kong and Singapore, we would know how congested we are.
In terms of population vs space, Penang has a long way to go to catch up to Singapore or Hong Kong. Thus it is important that the state government does its planning right. Use ‘Decision Science’ and not Political Science.
Hi Chialih,
You are right, whatever the decision is make should be for the benefit of all in term of environmental, people and country in growth