On Buying a Home for the First Time

Yup, it was a long holiday for me last weekend and honestly I didn't really feel like it was a weekend rest for me. Hectic house works needed to be done as well as looking around for the annual Baju Raya with Aidilfitri coming around the corner.

 But one of the biggest thing I was doing over the weekend was house hunting. Since I now work quite a distant outside of my area (and also the fact that I should be having my own place at this age), I am very very very keen on purchasing a condominium of my own. So I took it upon myself to hunt around for a place around Damansara area (which is the place I work and I kinda like the place because most of my mates live there) and focused on a small condo that is affordable for my budget, which I believe is kinda reasonable.

And this is what I found out very surprising...

With all the options that is "supposedly" available for people to purchase here in Damansara, NOT ONE that I found was around the reasonable pricing for a start up house owner like myself!

Here's the thing, as a start up owner, one would look around for a unit that is not too big which would be around the area between 800 - 1200 square feet. A reasonable price one would look at somewhere around the region of maybe RM600k and below. And the key factor, I would like to get someplace that is relatively new.

 And for these criterias, I would be looking to fork out at least RM700k AFTER DISCOUNT for a unit in town!

So here's the question, how can a newly employed home owner ever afford anywhere around town?

With prices this fluctuated in the market, is it still possible for a guy like me to get a decent place somewhere in town with a price that I can still afford? I open this discussion to all of you as I am sure a lot of you guys out there are facing the same problem that I am having at the moment and I would love to argue this one out.

Can we still afford to own a place in town? or do we have to resort to somewhere ridonkeylously far from town?

To start this discussion, I am going to say there is no way average Joes like us can find an affordable home in town anymore. With the pricing that they charge in Klang Valley nowadays, even the aged units are now selling in prices that we can never afford anymore which is very frustrating. For most of us, I believe that the price of housing these days no longer reflect the affordability of our own purchasing power which is hurting a lot of the new homeowners in town.

Unless of course we resort to buying somewhere outside of town.

However that would mean that we get stuck with the same problem that I face everyday, which is getting stuck in traffic jams which would last for more than 1 hour, mad commuting hours and in the end wonder why on earth would we want to continue on buying homes outside of town when we can go anywhere in time?

So basically that is what I think of the housing situation in KL, would you say that this would be the same thinking on your end, or do you think that there is still a lot of affordable housing that average earners like ourselves can still get hold off?

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