FAQ:

1. To buy or to rent?

Individuals' perspective vary based on their circumstances. For instance, a single person's might have different thoughts than those married with children and they shared various reasons and purposes. It will be too lengthy to discuss everything here, just take an example of a man with two children age under 10. He worries that when his children grow up, they might not be able to afford a home. Therefore, he wants to buy house them now. Although, the house maybe new today but 30 years later that house is an old house by then would his grown up children want to stay in that old house? Moreover, after children grew up what matter to them isn’t a house but job and grow opportunity, Malaysia exchange rate RM to USD was at RM2.50 to a dollar before 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, today crisis is over but people seeks more opportunity overseas so there is no certainty that his children will stay in the country or in a specific location where the house was. The economy is shifting and people are shifting one place to another but the house is immovable.

2. Should you refinance?

There are two implications of refinancing, financially better off or worse off. It all depends on the purpose and outcome and there are various purposes such as financial resuscitation, to fund a business/children education, to save money or to make more money, loan consolidation and restructuring, to spend and so on. One of the challenges here was how to project or assess the ultimate cost relative to benefits before making a decision thus couldn’t see the outcome and it become a total blind decision.

3. How to pick a new unit at condominium?

Let’s says picking a unit at a new 40-storey condominium project. Certainly there are many factors come into consideration, let’s take one factor an see the differences between the first 10 floors compare to the top 10 floors. For a new project bank loan is release by stages of completion thus lower floors will be paying more progressive interest than higher floors simply because every construction begins from ground up hence lower floor unit get the bill first and serving the interest first. Those at the highest floor get the bill last and if a project is abandoned they suffer the least and probably the bank have not yet release the loan, lowering the risk. However this knowledge must be learned before purchase a property because purchaser can’t swap the unit if you got a better idea later.

4. My parent/grandparent always says that property is a very good asset and urges me to buy and invest in it, but I’m not sure if that’s a good idea?

Thanks for highlighting this. The shift in generations also reflects a shift in the economy. Those born much earlier would have seen wooden and attap houses scattered around, some in clusters. Anyone could build those houses anywhere until the government enforced a law requiring every property to have a land title and approval. The government then started giving approvals to developers to build houses and ordered the demolition of old houses. During that period, new property construction couldn't keep up with the demand as people were transitioning massively from wooden/attap houses to those built by developers. People from that generation witnessed rising property prices and rents, which stayed in their memories and influenced their advice to their children about buying property. The new generation should not blame the old generation because they taught what they knew; they simply were not aware of changes in the economy. It’s similar to school textbook - just as we don’t use our grandparents’ textbook to teach children today, economic conditions and property markets evolve overtime.

These are just my views and not to be relied upon for any decision