Skip to main content

House hunting

The property market has gone mad. In four days, I will have only seen four properties (compare that to 26 properties in 5 days a year ago!). Looks like we might have to stay put and pay the rent increase.

They have an odd agent system over here. Both the tenant and the landlord have an agent, these are often two different people, both of whom expect their cut of the fees. This means that when taking out a year's rental agreement (the standard is two years), the tenant must pay half a month's rent in fees, this is as well as the landlord paying at least that if not more to their tenant. Being a property agent in this country is lucrative, and it seems they don't have to be all that good, and they certainly don't have to speak clear English...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Buses, bats, bites and other bits

I know I've been writing a lot about Singapore recently, but I guess that's what happens when you've lived in a new culture for a while. I've become very aware of what's around me. I get the bus to and from work every day. It costs around 15p and is fully air-conditione d. Most of the time I get a seat, it's brilliant. Today was a special day - I boarded a bus that was driven by the world's most friendly bus driver. He greeted each passenger and said good bye to everyone who got off. Sadly I was the only person to notice of the 40-50 passengers that recieved this star treatment during my journey. So I gave him a big grin and a wave as I got off the bus. I love how something like that can add an extra smile to your day. I'm currently learning Mandarin (week 2 of a 10 week course). Last week I was convinced that the whole language is a conspiracy to confuse westerners. Today, however, I am thoroughly enjoying the challenge of learning such a dramatically d
Post a Comment
Read more

Friends

I know, I know, it's been a while since I wrote, but life has got very busy recently. We currently have our friend Al French staying with us, he's moving to Hong Kong for a year and he's on a work trip here right now. It's great to see him again, and as always with good friends, it's as if we just saw him last week (in reality the last time we saw him was at our wedding last year). Anyway, as I said, we have been busy. What with Mandarin, Alpha, work and a trip to Malacca I don't seem to have had a free moment in the last three weeks. Malacca was great, it was good to leave Singapore for the weekend. The only downer was returning home to find that our debit card had been skimmed and we'd had money stolen...oh well, it looks like we'll get it back. Malacca had awesome food and it was a fun city to spend a couple of days in. This week I had an interesting experience, I was invited by my friend ZeNee to go to the final results show of Singapore Idol (the
Post a Comment
Read more

Pregnancy and stuff

How is it that my stomach, once almost a taboo subject, has become public property overnight? Often people's first reaction when they find out I'm pregnant is to stroke or pat my (already expanding) tummy! I guess I'll get used to that over the next few months. Here are the scans we have so far. Photos- Top: Scan at 6 weeks Middle: Scan at 8 weeks Bottom: Scan at 12 weeks Weather It's started to warm up and dry up here again after the monsoon. It's lovely to be able to eat breakfast on the balcony in the sun again. The hoards of ants are back, any morsel left untended is soon found and turns black with the tiny creatures. Wedding We went to a wonderful wedding at the Conrad Centennial hotel on Thursday evening. Two of our freinds from church got hitched after 13 years of on-off dating. It was a touching ceremony (during which, to our surprise, the champagne flowed freely). The meal was great - traditional Chinese wedding fayre - jellyfish, prawns, shark's fin so
1 comment
Read more