The House 14 Months On - Hitches, Glitches and Progress

At this point in the building of the new house it's important to retain a sense of perspective. I am also finding this to be quite a lot harder than I'd imagined.

If you buy an existing house, you buy what you see. You might buy something that needs no work at all and you can just move in and continue on with life. At the other end of the scale it may be a doer-upper with a process to convert it into the mental picture you had when you bought it. Either way, you have a rough idea of what's going to be involved.

In our case it is essentially the opposite and we're watching the slow process week by week and month by month. I can only imagine it to be like watching a factory build a car. When you buy a new car you are given the keys to a beautiful, shiny, new-car smelling dream. In the case of a second hand car you can still see the finished product. What you're not expected to do in this situation is to attend the production line to see exactly how it's put together. But curiosity, as in the words of Steven Wright, killed the cat (even if for a while I was the main suspect) and it is this, along with in most cases a significant financial investment, that forces us to go and take a regular look. In fact it reminds me a lot of knowing what the present is before it's wrapped and given to you.

Alternatively, and much more in keeping with human nature in this case, Albert Einstein pointed out that curiosity has its own reason for existing. That reason is to ensure, even without building, architecture, plumbing or carpentry experience, that you get to point out what's been missed. As a tradesman I assume that's what they live for, to have a layman point out that "you've missed a bit". I guess nothing makes your day more than knowing that Joe Public has his finger on the pulse and your best interests at heart.

That being said, there is always a period after the build called "snagging" where you get yet another opportunity to go around and point out all of the areas where the tradespeople "missed a bit". In our case we do seem to have had some aesthetically-challenged bods as you can see from the photos but all is being put right.

KITCHEN UPDATE
The kitchen is better news. We found out that the wall tiles that we wanted were out of stock in five places that we called. Then finally the sixth called back and confirmed that they had them and we can go ahead with the tiling on Monday the 18th of January. The kitchen equipment company are in the process of updating the CAD drawings and have confirmd that they can install once the tiling is complete anwe have the sink, hob, extractor and oven with them ready to be built in to the granite.

Next up are the wooden shelves and brackets....

The House...now 6 months on

Having just returned to Indonesia from an extended trip to the UK, Yohana and I thought we'd go and take a look and see what's changed with the house that we have bought 'off plan' and which is being built from scratch.

Our expectations were pretty low, especially as Indonesia's rainy season seems to have been extended, but we got a pleasant surprise.

Not only has quite a lot of building work gone on (they are making good headway with ours), we were able to take a look inside one property which is the same as ours will be and should allow us to start making plans for fixtures and fittings.

We'll also be able to speak with the site architect about immediately extending the rear of the house to increase the size of the kitchen and master bedroom.

Currently they are targeting December for a handover which means we'll only need to extend the rent on our current place for 6 months.

the land in the foreground is for phase 2. Our house is over at the back, far right

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The New House, 3 Months On.......

I thought that even though the handover isn't until March 2016, we'd go and have a look at the progress

Here's a reminder of what we saw the day we bought it......

And here's what we saw last week......

so not a lot happening then heheh. 

But actually there were some signs of movement.....

The cluster's entrance gate and the show house is nearly finished and they've started on the recreational facilities too. We'll be back for another look in March.

Buying a house in Indonesia - 1. finding the right place

Yes we're finally buying a house. Not the Dream House on the Sumatran island beach, not yet. After almost two years of marriage the days of renting are soon to be behind us and, following a suggestion from a friend, I thought I'd use this blog to share the progression (or regression) that we experience from day 1.

Instead of beginning at Day 1, the story actually began about 8 months or so ago. The yearly rental on our current place was going to be up in August and we started contemplating buying something in Gading Serpong, the area where I teach. The main problem with this idea was that there was nothing within our price range that also met our criteria for the house, so with that in mind I guess what we were looking for is where we should begin.

Ideally we wanted a 2 floor house with 3+1 bedrooms and 3+1 bathrooms and for this we wanted to spend about 80,000 sterling pounds or Rp 1.5 billion!

• The plus 1's are maid accommodation and maid bathroom and are pretty normal in houses here in Indonesia where many families have live-in maids. Whilst not yet being a 'family', should we wish to sell the house in the future it would be necessary to include.
• 80,000/1,500,000,000 is a realistic figure for this size of a house. In some areas we could get a lot more for that sort of money.
• In Indonesia you are basically paying for the land and the popularity of the area in which that land is situated, so pretty much like everywhere else really.
• Foreigners are not allowed to own land. 
• This means that everything needs to be done in Yohana's name or if you were in a situation where you're unmarried you could split the ownership around random Indonesian nationals. 
• Deposits are usually 30% of the purchase price, plus initial fees for administration and bank charges.

 Saying all of that, our initial inquiries had shown us that the price range was always going to be iffy in the area in which we currently live. It's not just the fact that it is an up-and-coming area, rather it is one of the places to live outside of the city and one which has seen house prices more than double in two years, so we knew our work was going to be cut out for us. Knowing this, we had already started looking into other nearby areas such as Karawaci, Alam Sutera, BSD and Tangerang.

the greater Karawaci area

Needless to say after 8 months we were no closer to finding anything. We did consider a 'compact' house but once we saw a builders mock-up of a couple of rooms we both agreed it would have to be a bloody small cat that got swung around in it.

All of this until last week when a chance viewing of a website announced a new development about to be built in Karawaci. Not only was the price within our budget, Rp 866,000,000, the deposit was only 20% meaning that we had enough cash in the bank to do this.

the development brochure

You know those moments? The ones where you experience, feelings. Maybe the raising of the neck hairs when you sense trouble or, maybe for no apparent reason, a warm feeling of good fortune. Armed with the latter, and with only a small photo of an artists impression, we headed for Karawaci and the Binong 1 Residence development.

the design we chose

We knew we were going to have to make some compromises. There were 3 bedrooms but only two bathrooms, obviously a small price to pay. And there was no additional +1's for the maid. However there was extra room at the back of the property if we wanted to develop or add anything later. Finally, the big difference between this and another that was on display was that the kitchen was inside the house. As weird as that may seem, a significant number of properties situate the kitchen outside!

I'll leave this first post with some pictures of the model we saw and the land on which our house is about to be built

the eventual development