If you prefer to buy a home which you are the FIRST owner, then you may skip this article. 🙂 However, if you are looking at buying something of ‘What You See is What You Get?,’ then this sharing is written just for you. In my property investment adventure thus far, I have bought both new and secondary properties. My first was a secondary and my second was a new property. Both have its advantages but today, we look at 6 reasons to like secondary properties. (Tomorrow, we look at 6 reasons for new properties)
#1 – What you see is what you get. Yes, that leak you see will still continue to leak, so it’s either skip this property or negotiate for a lower price so that you can use the savings to fix the leak. The awesome thing is this, you know immediately what you are buying. That toilet door is too flimsy, the whole house needs a fresh coat of paint or even the kitchen cabinets which you like and you are looking at a saving of RM15,000 for it.
#2 – JAM or NO JAM? It’s already an established fact. If you need to change your lifestyle in order to stay there, Google Map would have told you so, too. This is not going to be a surprise like a new development where there were no jams before the development was completed but when 1,000 new people move in, the congestion starts. By the way, jam or no jam will be with you for a very long time… unless you be a good Malaysian and take the public transport.
#3 – FASTER returns. You may buy for own stay or for rental investment returns. For both, they will come much faster. Usually within months instead of within years when you are buying by looking at the brochure. In other words, you put in the downpayment, get a loan and a few months later, you save from not paying rental (which you gain nothing) or you start earning rental from your tenants for a very long time. Here are some tips on how to choose them.
#4 – Renovation savings. Okay this is a real fact. We could spend RM200,000 on renovation but any valuer would tell you that this RM200,000 is NOT going to be automatically added into your house price. This meant that if we are buying secondary properties, how about looking at the renovated units? Here’s an earlier article: Advantages of buying renovated units. Of course, this also meant that we should like the renovation done earlier too. If we do, we save a lot of money and a lot of time too.
#5 – Mature neighbourhood. This is definitely one major reason to buy secondary units. Newer projects are usually further away. If the new project is within a mature neighbourhood, then the price is likely to be extremely high. When we buy into a mature neighbourhood, we start to enjoy all the amenities immediately. For example, the nice restaurants, the nearby schools, hypermarkets and more. New townships may not have everything which a mature neighbourhood has.
#6 – CHEAPER. Yes, the price is usually cheaper when compared to a new project in the same place. The reason? Well, you are buying at today’s price. The new development meanwhile could only be completed a few years later. All these must be taken into account. Do note also that the prices are cheaper is also because there are some potential maintenance we need to do also yeah. Over 10 year old homes, it’s best to really check the piping and the electrical wirings. Doing it when we have moved in will be terribly inconvenient.
It’s not all good okay. Secondary properties usually have older design. Even the colour is no longer considered ‘modern contemporary.’ The external paint has faded and looks jaded. Haha. Maintenance has been mentioned above but I think it’s very important that we really check the property we are about to buy before buying. This is a few hundred thousand thing or sometimes over a million ringgit. We can choose to throw away the vegetable we bought from the market that was not fresh but a property will be with us for a long time. If it’s high-rise that you are looking at, then here are some tips in checking them out. Happy buying.
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written on 22 Nov 2018
Next suggested article:Simply buying or think of popular areas
