Both of us are never the people who actually follow rules thus we have been nagged by our parents for many many years that we are still living in rental. The thing is money don’t fall from the sky. And with buying a house/ property, you need money, capital or rich parents. And we have neither.

With the money that i have saved from working went to the wedding as well as supporting TH(after his grant ended) and us 3 when big J came. TH got a job in Munich and finally after working for 2 years, things are getting better. Savings started to grow and things started to feel more relax in our household and this is the same for all couples who works hard to work towards the same goal. Firstly, we don’t have CPF to pay our mortgage so please don’t compare what we are doing to how things are in some other countries. Good for you if you had your first property earlier than we are. There is no competition here.

We are the in the stupid middle class where we are neither here nor there. We have been searching for housing since 2016, Then finally the town relaxes their rule for ‘native’ house owner. We managed to be allowed to sign up for it.

It is a point system, according to salary, to years living in the town, voluntary works, no. of children etc etc. The land would be sold at 40% cheaper than market rate. BUT as land owner, you are not allow to sell the land away for 15 years. If you do, you have to pay of course the 100% price of it. And the catch is, you are not allow to choose the plot of land, as well as the size. It is allocated to you.

August 2019, we are Rank 32. There were only 20 plots for sale. So we aren’t able to buy it. And all start over again.

Which makes us think, how can the rest afford to be house owner when we are barely able to pay up with the mortgage etc. and yet have some sort of sustainable life as a family which includes HOLIDAY aka fly back to Singapore/ Malaysia. Well, of course these are all first world problem as well.

Anyway, sour as we are… we continued to look for new properties and possibility. We have been house/ land hunting for years. The older houses were really Crap. Which means you need to calculate at least 50% of the house price for renovation. Especially when the houses are built before 1980. Some would have change the piping once. Or the heating etc. So if the house is 400k Reno and all would be at least 200-250k. Which comes back to buy a land and build self or get a older house, move in and renovate ourselves bit by bit. Both options are open… the factor is price.

TH went to to house viewing while i was in SG with the boys. The house (barely 3 years old) is modern and nice, size is ok but the price was way too much. Not much of a garden but we can accept that. The price shot up to 200 thousand more than what we are willing to pay as well as what the bank offers. So the deal was off.

Then sometime in Feb, Big J’s BFF mom C asked if we are interested in building house together. I was worried about it because its not so centralised as where we are now. And then what if we don’t get alone and what if what if….

Anyway, TH said ‘try it’. It is not as if we are able to choose our neighbour when we get a new place. And now at least we know who they are.

So we bid together for a piece of land that is over 1000 m2, where we both share 50% of it.

Days pass, and C updated me once a while because she knows the whole neighbourhood. And people will update her on who came to check the land etc. And i sort off gave up on it when she said that there were buyers from Munich and Ingolstadt. Which means they will raise the price way more than we are able to pay.

Then Mid March came, C called me up and asked if are OK to match the price of the other buyer from Ingolstadt, And we did.

And overnight we became land owners.