Buying Property in JB 104

It has been about 3 months since I signed all the required documents and surrendered almost 2/3 of my savings towards the downpayment and other misc fees for the home purchase.

Since then I have received about 3 updates on progress billing from Mah Sing totalling up to 35% of project cost. The first 20% should have been paid out of the downpayment while the 15% should be disbursed from the loan based on my limited understanding.

The due date for this payment fell on 15th August. Worried that I might not get my state consent and consequently the loan disbursement in time, I called Mah Sing to find out if I would be liable for the interest on late payment.

The finance personnel assured me that this was a common situation. What happens is that while interest will be calculated on this late payment, it is purely administrative. We can write in to request for waiver.

I am puzzled to this arrangement but it seems logical to me that this would be a common scenario. Say investor only buys into project when it is 50% completed and pays 20% down, he would be liable for late payment on the 30% until he sorts out the legal documents and gets state consent.

Anyway I finally got my state consent sometime end of August and I figured that would be the end of it.

Lo and behold, I got a letter from RHB KL informing me that they have yet to receive the letter of credit from my lawyers and would proceed to cancel my loan application unless I provide some explanation before end of August.

I called my lawyer and asked about the letter. I found out that they didn’t receive the letter even though they were in cc. So I scanned a copy for them and they went about explaining to RHB.

To me they gave this explanation – after we received the Johor state consent, they had to send the documents to Mah Sing KL for final authentication. After which, these stamped documents will be forwarded to RHB (JB or KL?) for their loan disbursement.

Last I heard two weeks ago, the docs were still with Mah Sing. Sheesh, can this process get anymore complicated?

Anyway I went to check the site again last weekend. All the units in D’Sierra Ville has been sold out.

I am so excited about the development and really hope that it will turn out to be a beautiful and vibrant (but not too much) estate.

I asked Theo if he would accept a full refund of our money if for whatever reason the purchase does not go through. He said no.

I think over the last few months we’ve come to appreciate what our neighbouring country has to offer in terms of a more leisurely pace of life, a shopping and eating haven due to our stronger currency and natural escapades that we cannot hope to find in Singapore.

But I notice that alot of shops offer services to meet demands of the visiting Singaporean which suggest a lack of local demand to support its economy. This is not a very healthy sign if they hope to develop the region. Somehow the locals have to benefit from our tie up.