Huge Problem Bought!
In my last post about how we ended out in deep debt, I mentioned about our money stucked in a house…here is what happened:
In Year 2004, Kent came to our family in January. We were most delight and celebrated, however, we need to solve one problem…who to look after him when CW done with her maternity. My mom will definitly be out as she is staying with us and she is already helping us to look after Marina while we were working. We do not want to hire a maid nor engage a nanny as well as child-care. Thus, logically we turned to CW’s mom for help. Then, the next question is, where will she be staying? She will definitly not staying with us, due to prior conflict between our 2 families (Well, another long story will be account in future), and no way any Singaporean family will rent out a room for her to look after our son. Thus, we came out a wise idea…why don’t we get a condo?
This seemed to be a good idea, a very very good idea; so, we started to hunt for nearby condo. We found Buangkok Green, which is about 2km away from our house and on top, behind the condo, there is a wet-market which is very convinent place. We found a small unit which cost $330000. We checked the initial launch price to be $500,000 which we ar the 3rd owner and it seemed to be a good steal! So, we jumped for it.
We gotten our nephew to be our agent, so that he too, can get some commission by helping us sorting out the paper works. We put our 10% cash and happily waiting for the due date to sign the document for 2nd 10% which is from CPF. On the last weekday, Friday, which the week before Monday, the D-day, I was looking through newspaper and trying to be funny by calling some agent to see if we can get a shop-house, so that my father-in-law can come to Singapore and run a small shop. While talking to the agent, I was surprised to be told that I CANNOT own another property as I had only stayed in my HDB for 3rd years! I need to be at least 5 years before I’m eligible to get another one.
I quickly called my nephew and he was shock to find out too. Yeah, tell me about it, he just gotten his license and did not do his due diligent too. I seek for help in HDB and the officer told me that he can do nothing. He would assume that I did not talked to him and asked us to ask for refund from the owner. Of course, owner will not do that lah! So, over the weekend, we have cracked our brain and squeezed out every single drop of brain-juice, wild ideas such as:
- Put Marina as legal owner which she is too young!
- Put Father-in-law as legal owner, but we cannot get any local bank loan
- Ask for refund…flat hope
- Ask for delay for…2 years? what a joke!
- Look for another buyer….no way, HDB will still fault us and how can we find buyer in 2 days!
- …
Finally, our nephew willing to be our proxy and we need to pay the owner for 1 month delay in term of his bridging to his new house.
Now, since, our nephew just graduated, he got no CPF nor income, so we become his guarantor for the loan and we need to pay the remaining 90% by CASH! OK, that is not all, we still miss out the 2nd 10% as bank only loan up to 80%. So, that mean we need another $33,000 + $10,000 (bridging and legal fees), a total of $43,000.
That’s where we were suck dried of. We do not have that much, so, we turn to our sister-in-law, father-in-law, overdraft, credit-cards…etc
So, lesson learn, do your own due-diligent even if you have a agent! Also, do read and understand any contract even if it is 100 pages before you sign it!