8 Buying a New House in Malaysia

Recently, I just purchased the second properties of my life, a town house.

It's the best birthday gift from dad ever!

That's the show unit!

Well. that's the backyard. Next time I can play with dog dog there already!

It's a spontaneous decision. I've decided to pay the lot booking fee to reserve my future house in one day time.

It was a cozy Sunday. After accompanying family to view a few show units for my sister, I've 'accidentally' fall in love with the townhouse in Odora Parkhomes, Sierra 16.

After discussed with dad about my decision, we paid the booking fees the next day. I still remembered I was super occupied with my Master degree work completion and thesis writing. Without considering much, I just paid few k. *PK JOR LAH*

The procedures to buy a house is not easy. You have to go through developer, lawyers, bankers and etc.

The procedures of buying a house are summarized as below:
1) Pay booking fees to reserve the desired unit
2) You have to approach the bankers (preferable panel banks) to apply for different loan packages

To apply for house loan, you have to prepare some documents such as:

• photocopy of IC
  
• 3 months pay slips
  
• 6 months bank statements showing salary
  
• lot/house booking receipt
• EA form
• Penyata Kira-kira (can obtain from LHDN)
• degree certificate (if you are applying Islamic package)
  

3) You have to contact the lawyer (preferable panel legal firms) to make appointment to sign SAP
4) Pay the remaining of 10% down-payment
5) Check loan offer letter and do the amendments accordingly to your requirements
5) Sign the loan offer letter with respective banker
6) Sign the loan agreement with respective lawyer
7) Urge the lawyer to prepare your documents so that bank can issue money to the developer on time, to avoid late penalty (usually is 10% of loan amount per annum)

You may apply loan packages with different bank to get the best deal. If I'm not mistaken, they get 0.6% commission of your loan amount. Hence, they are willingly to assist you anytime anywhere.

I've checked the packages with a few panel banks (e.g., Maybank, Alliance, RHB, Hong Leong)

Among these banks, Hong Leong provides the best service (in terms of follow-up services and explanations ) to customers (in my case). The other bankers like to procrastinate and always forget their promise. The RHB one always requires this and that documents. The Maybank one always FFK. Finally, I get Alliance as it offers the best fully-flexi package.

Today, majority of the purchasers are getting fully-flexi loan as it offers full flexibility to them.
Let say the loan amount is RM400k. You deposit RM100k into your flexi account. The bank will set off the interest and recalculate the interest based on the balance (i.e., 400k-100k = 300k). In such a case, the bank will charge interest on RM300k instead of RM400k. Thus, if you are paying more each month, you might settle the loan in an earlier time.

It's advisable to relocate your fixed deposit (FD) to your flexi loan account as the highest interest for FD is 3.1% but bank is charging you BLR-2.4 (i.e., 6.6-2.4=4.2%). It's better to set off the 4.2% rather than earning only 3.1%.

Below are the offered packages by different banks (loan amount : RM400k):

	Alliance	RHB	Maybank	Hong Leong
Nature of Package	Islamic fully- flexi	Semi-flexi	Semi-flexi	Fully-flexi
Withdrawer from the account	No charges	RM50 per withdrawer	RM25 per withdrawer	RM50 per withdrawer
Account maintenance fees	Waived	No	No	RM10
Account Upfront payment	Waived	No	No	RM200
Tenure	40	40	40	30
Interest rate	BLR – 2.4	BLR – 2.4	BLR-2.5 (1styear) BLR-2.45 (2nd and 3rd year) BLR-2.4 (4th year onwards) (For Premises Under construction)	BLR-2.4
Ceiling Rate	9.9	N/A	10.6	N/A
Cheque book + ATM	Yes	No (proceed to counter to withdraw money)	No (proceed to counter to withdraw money) Min :1k	Yes

Hmm... I'm still in the midst of settling my house loan. Hopefully by end of next month, everything will be completed.

If you would like to know more about the loan packages or procedures to buy a property in Malaysia, feel free to contact me.

Nao, I'm a house slave! ;)