the flat hunt
July 24th, 2007 by ruthnow that we’ve finally found one, i just shake my head when i look back to those two weeks of desperate flat hunting. i thought it would have been easier, since we (mainly i, actually) already determined where and what type of flat we wanted. we already decided early on that we’d rather forego the perks of condo living in favor of more floor space, which public housing can provide for less or even the same rental price. but what i thought was a generous budget for an HDB flat (public housing) turned out to be enough for nothing more than a dump. there was even one flat i knew was a no-go even before alighting from the cab. ugh! you can always change your flat’s interior, but you cannot change everything else surrounding it, y’know. oh well. apparently, we’ve come at the wrong time; everyone says that the rents have been spiralling out of control over the last 4-6 months or so.
we saw four flats that looked acceptable for about double the rent we used to pay back in germany. fine. one was up for just a one year lease, which means that we have to go through all these moving brouhaha all over again in a year’s time. ouch, no way. one was given to someone else who didn’t mind the rotten, most likely no less than 15 yr-old sofa that came along with the flat. one thing with renting flats here, is that most of them come fully furnished. seems like a good thing, eh, considering we sold everything back in germany, and except for personal effects, we don’t have much else, really. but gawd, i just can’t imagine living with such horrible mix and match of stuff that looked like someone salvaged from sperrmüll (bulky refuse). i even offered to pay S$500 just to have some items removed (not even to replace them), but the landlord then opted to rent the place out to someone less fussy. pity. that was a nice maisonette that would have been perfect, if only it was empty. the third flat was also fine, the furniture were acceptable, but the place wouldn’t have been available before september, and that was just too long a wait for us.
so here we are. our temporary abode for at least the next two years. it’s not perfect, but we got almost everything we wanted in the first place. three bedrooms, partial furnishing (kitchen and washing machine), aircon (which we might not even use that much as it gets pretty windy on the 13th floor), near MRT and bus stations, and near to the university where hubby works and jan’s preschool is located. just a fresh coat of paint, a couple more trips to ikea and courts, and we’re set.
