Days of queuing to buy condos are over?

I was in Penang last weekend for a house warming party. One of my former staff had bought the unit many months ago and had just moved in. It was at IJM’s Summer Place, a condo which I ‘instructed’ my sister to buy and cancel her booking of another condo unit which was cheaper and bigger. Reason was I do not trust that developer. She listened and today her RM299k property has appreciated to RM650,000. She bought an additional car park as instructed too. After the dinner, one group of us were chit-chatting and relating some of our crazy experiences many years ago in Penang during the boom. A rich friend said that he did not even wanted to buy his first property but because someone was asking for the unit he was looking at, he quickly booked it and in the process earned a huge profit.
I told him about my experience. I was at the developer’s office, looking at a unit which seemed reasonable and after a quick explanation decided to book it. However, it was booked few minutes earlier by an aunty seated right behind me in another table. I had to book a higher floor but as it was during those times, that 8th floor high rise condo has appreciated nearly 100% today. Another friend related the queue at The Vertiq, another IJM project for which queue started few days before the property launching happened. Those who queued were rumoured to have been paid RM1,000. Yes, those were the times. Today? Well, there are many developers who continue to sell their projects with a different reason in every different event. ‘Limited Units Launch’, ‘Only Limited Units’, ‘Limited Small Units’. I am not sure how long some of these developers would be selling their properties.
So, are the days of queuing up for properties over? Well, for attractive ones, apparently its not. Just last weekend, 70% of the units being launched were snapped up in a few hours and after 2 days, 80% of the total launched 350 units were snapped up. In fact, the first early bird arrived at 4am!! The property we are talking about is Liberty Tower @ i-City, Shah Alam. We seldom hear of these nowadays. A check online showed that its size ranges from 466 – 796 sf and will have the modern New York lifestyle plus its connected to a 1.5 million Central Plaza Mall. It’s jointly developed by Central Pattana, Thailand’s largest developer of retail properties and i-Berhad. Prices start from RM360,000 which is considered easy entry but prices per sf is not that low by any comparison.
Okay, I think the days of queuing really do depend on the property attractiveness these days. One of these days, we may be queuing next to one another. Not Shah Alam, maybe somewhere less popular but going to be popular. 🙂
written on 3 Nov 2014
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