Of course, you remember your first time. It just depends on what you did that first time. Did you regret it?
Well, let me tell you about my first time.
Yes, I was nervous. I did not know what I was getting into. Or what my action will produce. But every regular Joe or Joey had to do it once - those folks who can afford to do it anyway.
I am talking about the first time you bought your home, be it a tiny 2-room apartment, an ordinary terrace house, a grand bungalow or a palatial penthouse. Let us forget the last two purchases. If you can afford them, I doubt if you will have the attention span to read beyond the first sentence. Not that I am implying that if you are the fabulously rich, you have better things to do. Actually if you are the fabulously rich, what are you doing reading this? You should be off enjoying many other first-time experiences.
I digress. Yes, that first time. Was it bitter-sweet? Terrifying? Rewarding?
Because, and you may already know this, putting your hard-earned cash on a piece of property is the start of a journey which is not unlike saying “I do”. You can undo your “I do” but undoing your purchase may incur monetary losses. Come to think of it, ending your marriage has better chances of undoing you, in more ways than you think.
Let us not go there. Let us rejoice that the good news is that it is generally believed you seldom lose money when you sell off that bit of chicken coop you call home.
But the first time when you bought your home? All that research. All that scrimping and saving. All those trips to the banks. And lawyers. All that extra money you need when you thought you had it all calculated. And do you really need to renovate a little bit to make it liveable?
Was it better than all your first-time incidents? Was it worth it?
The first time I put down money on my first house, I was living in quite interesting times. At that time, in the 80’s, the supply of Petaling Jaya houses were limited. Yet banks were freezing loans. Fortunately, the 10% down payment was easily extracted from my parents, call it a soft loan. The hard part was running all over town begging for the other 90% from banks. The other tough part was that the standard operating procedure was when you find your desired house you buy it there and then. No second thoughts. Scary or what, eh? I saw my intended house at lunch time and I handed over the cheque at dinner time. And it was a second-hand house, mind you. Those times were really, let us say “entertaining”.
My first double-storey 24’ x 75’ modest house in Damansara Utama set me back all of RM137,000, a princely sum in 1980.
Nowadays, I hear, it is so much easier for first-timers. Banks come to you. Developers waive the Sales & Purchase lawyer’s fees. There is no interest until the house is built and what-not freebies.
A terrace house is now no longer known as a terrace house but a link house. Fancy name, but it is still joined to the adjacent houses. And, of course, you will need to fork out more than 400,000 of that Ringgit Malaysia to even sniff at a double-storey link house anywhere on the outskirts of Petaling Jaya. Looks like entertaining times are here to stay.
So, how was your first time like?