MoneySmart Travel Insurance Lucky Draw Winners 2023
June 28, 2023
Every house purchase starts with the usual house hunt, on an average, it takes about 5-8 viewings to finally find your ideal home.
The Journey to hunting and buying your ideal resale condo.
“Ever wonder what is the buying process?”
You can use sites like 99.co and propertyguru to browse listings. 
You can also use an agent to locate suitable properties for you
Resale private property needs to be inspected very thoroughly before you decide to buy it. You want to check for defects and maintenance problems.
Look out not only for defects in the building, such as ceilings, walls, doors and windows, but also fittings and installations such as air con units, cabinets, stoves and so on.
Negotiate the price 
Pricing for private properties tends to be quite a bit trickier than it is for HDB flats.
owners are always going to list their properties at a higher price. So do your research on past transactions of similar properties in the area you’re looking at, and then negotiate.
If you’re buying an older or landed property, you might want to get some valuations done on it so you can be sure you’re not getting ripped off. you can use SRX X value for a start its free.
2) Secure the Option to Purchase (OTP)
Resale private property is sold using a Option to Purchase (OTP), its not standard, and its subjected to approval between buyer and seller.
1% + 4% or 1% + 9%. can even be more. 
That means the seller is free to write their own contract, or use their agent’s otp.
By the way, before procuring an OTP, make sure you check your ABSD liabilities.
If you’re a Singaporean who already owns at least one residential property, you’ll have to pay ABSD. All PRs and foreigners are liable to pay ABSD as well.
You can read more about the stamp duty rates here.
If you’re not a Singapore citizen but are looking to buy landed property, you’ll also need to get approval from the LDAU Land Dealings Approval Unit,
To obtain the OTP, you will pay an option fee, typically 1% of the purchase price, payable in cash.
Once you’ve paid the option fee, the seller is obligated to not allowed to sell the property for a specified duration, usually 2 weeks.
You need to engaged a lawyer at this point, who will make sure you exercise the option in a timely fashion.
It’s possible to get your lawyer to coordinate the sale of a current property with the purchase of a new one in order to reduce or remove ABSD liabilities.
Propertywiki tip : if you are selling your current property and buying a new one, u need to ensure there’s 5 weeks apart between the sale completion and the purchase completion.
Click here to read part 2.