Life is full of Surprises @ Real Estate

Johann Strauss had his version of “Wine, Women, and Song”; I have mine for today variation – “Assets, Automobile, and Career”

Life is full of Surprises @ Real Estate  QEHPBQHPBKMMCKIJ

A penny is worth more than its trade value. What a real estate can offer – the gateway to Malaysia’s market? Johann Strauss had his version of “Wine, Women, and Song”; I have mine for today variation – “Assets, Automobile, and Career”. I am a fan of Strauss’s music. Even though I did not do waltz, listening Strauss’s music was the greatest pleasure for me. How my colleagues spelled out their achievement by way of spending in assets and automobile, had amused me the same way. One day, you saw them drove their expensive car to work, next time you saw them as a rising star in a new organization. If someone had successfully purchased a piece of “hot-cakes” property, they would be tendered with joy and luck; soon following them was a fairy tale ending. Those with lots of cash on hand have privileges to enter the job markets earlier than others. This was how people find the gateways to local market where their dream becomes reality in the country.

I found my first home in Butterworth in 2001, after living so long renting a room under a restrictive environment. Financially, I would still have to struggle to save enough to cover the monthly instalment, and all expenses for a home ready to move-in. That property was close to my office, located right in the middle of a busy business centre, and a walking distance from a potential future international sea port. Things that normally concerned a new home owner such as return of investment, reseller price, market growth, and local real estate broker did not bother me. It supposedly to be a long and foremost checklist before placed the deposit for a lifelong investment, however, I just missed that crucial part of dealing a property purchase.

I lost my job with heavy debts in late 2001 when the company I had worked for almost 7 years announced cease operation. Worse still, I could not find a permanent job 3 months after I lost the previous one. Until the fourth month, I decided to try a new job in Petaling Jaya. The first two years I was living under the roof of my brother until he signed that he needed a private place for his new family. It was a tough decision but a wise one decided to purchase another property near my new workplace while placed the first house on sale. After phone call over the phone call, the Penang’s broker came back with his theory of renting out my unit as a start to cover partial of the expenses while keep on looking for a buyer. Years passed, no sign of a potential buyer approaching the Butterworth property, except local brokers who offered to buy over with much below market value.

Having two properties on mortgages at the same time had led me deep into financial crisis. 50% of my monthly incomes went into housing loans and property maintenance fees. There left remarkably little for things that actually indispensable to me such as health, career expansion, retirement and travel. There were always up and down in the career life, but mine was always revolving the people from Penang in the new workplace. Quite often they appeared to be someone supporting you all the time just because they shared the experiences the way you emerged from the new market. You would never realize that it was another marketing trick until you found that you had fell-prey into their marketing’s emotional appeals. It raised a question what a market supplied and what a market offered for a success deal.

10 years later, I bumped into another bold twist in my career life. I resigned from employment, sold my second home, and returned to this fortune land. What I saw was once a perspective international sea port turned into a town filled with place of worships, cultural-rich temples, and night shift stages for sexy singers. Although it does pose a contradict panorama to Hong Kong’s spectacular, magnificent sea port, the town still has the lavish and luxurious version of Hong Kong’s famous tourist spot – Temple street!

I don’t think the government is out to get me or help someone else get me but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were out to sell me something or help someone else sell me something.  I mean, why else would the census Bureau want to know my telephone number? -  Andy Rooney.