Goodbye to our nest

They say a house is a true reflection of oneself. How true indeed.

Other than revealing the style we've incoporated into our house, I am also ashamed to admit the amount of clutter we have accumulated over the years. Before marriage, it was just a roomful of things and a suitcase packed to my new home. I have lost count of the number of boxes I have packed, half of which are things that I have no inkling clue of the last time I saw or touched it.

I am only glad I've managed to sell off some furnitures and appliances to make space for the temporary smaller place we'll be holding up at for the next 2.5 years before our EC is ready. Some asked why did we not consider buying a readily available development - well, with the current ever-rising prices, it takes alot of courage to sign your name under that large mortgage loan. We were actually thinking longer longer term. Hopefully, we can use this 'mortgage-free' period to accumulate our CPF savings and invest in a 2nd property in future. :) Hopefully.

Ok back to the our house. Dylan has been urging me to pack since the day we sold our house. So kan cheong spider. I hesitated for quite a while. Not because I was lazy to pack, but I was overwhelmed with emotions. After all, this is the first home I've owned, built, decorated and have had lots of memories in it. Saying goodbye was not that easy.

I started to re-collect the times where we went around house-hunting - covering places from the North to the East almost every weekend. 35 houses, we viewed 34 houses before we were satisfied with the 35th one. And the ironic thing was we wanted to find a house which was very much in its raw state from HDB. Alot of places were nicely decorated but it wasn't our style. We wanted to over-haul the entire place. So, we thought finding such a place was almost impossible, cause who wouldn't renovate their house right?

Well, no. 35 house proved us wrong. The place was as raw as it can get. Almost zero renovation done except for the kitchen cabinets. PERFECT. We even managed to seal the deal 30k below valuation. Where to get such deals these day right?!?

My last words to my beloved home (I know very cliche) - You've provided us good shelter and ample space throughout these years. You have also kept our friends comfortable and made every gathering enjoyable and memorable. Thank you for bringing us warmth and I hope you'll be happy with your new owner. I'm sure they will continue to keep you clean and tidy. Farewell my humble abode.

Luck ran dry

We had 2 piece of good news at the start of the year.

#1: We've sold our flat for a decent price! Offer came in when we were travelling in Bangkok in early Feb. Although I must say, we never expected a middle age lady to appreciate our house reno. But still, we're glad that we're going to handover our nest to a nice lady. I felt a momentary loss when I accepted the cheque. After all, we have stayed in this home for the past 5 years. I didn't know we can experience seperation anxiety at this age too. Hahaha.

#2: We've bought our new place when I was travelling in Taipei!!! All happened in a span of less than a month. We spent a few months of deliberating on where our next place should be - priority was the Son's future school. But after reading all the possibilities and non-possibilities of trying to secure a school purely using distance, we decided to play safe and just put Jayden at either one of our school. No need to lose hair anymore. Heh.
So choosing a home become no boundaries. We wanted somewhere near in-laws but anywhere near Bishan is very very expensive. :( My only bottom line is I do not wish to stretch the dollar and stress ourselves over mortgage. So we shelved finding a private condo and decided to go for EC. After all, it is our last chance to get a subsidized house from HDB.

So we went around to look at a few current launches. The only EC that caught our eyes was Twin Waterfalls from Frasers. We love their layout and location was very near future Watertown - the next Centerpoint in a suburb. So we took our chances and went for the balloting. And bless our souls, we got it! :D Very high floor, the layout we wanted - everything penned out nicely!

So everything went well and smooth in Feb and early Mar. But our luck suddenly ran out in mid-Mar.

Dylan got into a minor car accident - thankfully unharmed but the car is disfigured. :(
A series of unlucky things happend on me too.

I am hoping it is just a temporary 'suayness'. After all, the biggest contentment is that we've found our new place but only ready in 2015!!! We'll take this 3 years to save up and hopefully can invest in another small unit for future investment. :)

As for now, we'll be busy busy busy in moving to a temporary shelter.

Let's hope April will be a good month for us!