Property Malaysia

Recently, we heard about our very own international Hollywood star, Datuk Michelle Yeoh, bought her own private island in Terengganu. It seems that owning your own island, whether with a nice, cosy mansion or undeveloped tropical paradise, is the ultimate sign of affluency among the super-rich. Marlon Brando owned his own French Polynesian atoll called Tetiaroa, Johnny Depp had a small piece on the Bahamas. I once watched an episode of Cribs of MTV where Richard Branson showed his island somewhere in the South Pacific.

So, how much will an island in one of the top holiday spots in the world set you back? According to Fortune magazine (Oct. 24, No, 18), here are some prime examples:

Magic Island, Bora Bora
Price: USD$18 million (RM67 million)
For a little under the cost of a small Hollywood movie, you get TWO islands 10 minutes away from the Bora Bora airport. The larger island has a working cistern system and solar power as well as 3 small but luxurious cottages built from tropical hardwood. The smaller island is undeveloped. At low tide, you can wade across the shallow reef.

Saratoga Island, New York
Price: USD$1.9 million (RM7 million)
If you want to own your personal island but yet want to live in New York, this is it. It’s 36 acres right in the middle of the Hudson River. Comes with private airstrip, a rustic log cabin and plenty of fishing.

Trapp’s Caye, Belize
Price: USD$2.9 million (RM10.8 million)
This one is completely undeveloped, perfect if you like to rough it out Survivor-style. It’s covered with coconut trees and surrounded by corals. Nearby is a marine park that offers one of the only places in the world where you can swim with sharks.

Peter Island, Nova Scotia
Price: USD$225,000 (RM837,000)
2.5 acres of pine and fir trees, a beautiful 2 bedroom and 1 bathroom, a working solar energy system, and a small motorboat to transport you to the mainland. Surprisingly enough, this looks like the bargain of the lot!

Guanaja Rock, Honduras
Price: USD$1.7 million (RM6.3 million)
This Caribbean hideaway is a eco-haven – there is a coral reef frequented by grouper, moray eels, and the occasional hammerhead sharks. There’s a five bedroom, five bath villa built directly on the rock face.

Ile Chantesmesle, France
Price: USD$3.9 million (RM14.5 million)
In Paris, USD$3million will ‘barely buy you something you can be proud to show your mother-in-law”. Comes with 2 Victorian mansions. Cheap, no?

Tessera Island, Venice
Price: USD$4.5 million (RM16.7 million)
Set in the Venetian lagoon, this last one has a magnificent palazzo surrounded by groves of fruit trees and a vineyard capable of producing about 500 bottles of your own private-label wine. House comes with a boathouse and water taxi. Unfortunately, lagoon water is quite fetid.

This is the continuation of the previous posting on safety in and around construction. At the break-neck speed the city and our country is developing, there are construction sites all over the country. Like it or not, dangers from construction sites affect us even without us knowing. You are advised to read the earlier post here.

In the second part of our installment, we list out more safety points when you are near construction sites.

Whenever you see trailers on the road transporting construction materials like concrete precast drains or, steel bars or girders, always give way and do not follow closely. If you need to overtake, stay two lanes away. We know this sounds like basic driving advice, but every week we see all these horrifying accidents on the road and in the papers involving these long, dangerous vehicles. Most of the time, it’s the innocent motorists and passers-by that pay the price. We once knew this contractor that send out heavy steel materials every night from Johor Bahru to Kuala Lumpur via trailers. The journey takes more than 8 hours because the heavy trailers travel very slowly in the dead of the night. And more often than not, the poor drivers work for days with minimal rest and sleep, so…

Whenever there is building work going on, there is also a threat of dengue. Even if your neighbour is doing a small renovation work or a huge highrise construction, as long as there is stagnant water, mosquitoes will breed. In large construction sites where workers stay in kongsi, dengue is quite common, and most of the time unaccounted for. If at any time, you feel that mosquitoes are breeding in a site near your house or office, alert the Department of Health or the local council.

Recently another case made the front page of a local newspaper, where some shopowners were complaining about the tower crane from a nearby high rise construction site swings over their premises. While the JKKP investigates the matter, at any time should you never walk or pass under a moving crane, be it a tower crane or a mobile crane. If a case like this one occurs (radius of tower crane exceeds limit of construction site), alert the local council.

You can read the first installment here.

The other day we noticed this advertisement here:

If you can’t see it clearly, it’s actually IJM Properties advertising their recently launched PJ8 office suites and serviced apartments in Petaling Jaya. You can read a short write up here.

We applaud IJM Properties for moving into new areas of advertising such as Google Adsense. Adsense is a program for websites to display advertisement (link ads and picture ads) that are relevant to the content of the webpage to reach out the desired market segment. So, naturally, the PJ8 advertisement will appear in property websites like this one.

Instead of relying on traditional advertising mediums like billboards and print ads only, developers should also explore the possibility of advertising on the Internet, where the exposure in far greater at a fraction of the cost.

For further reading on IJM Properties, you might want to check out this posting, too.

Recently there was a front page incident which a person was killed by a falling piece of steel mould from a highrise construction site (you can read our posting here). There are construction sites all over the country, and with a heavy concentration in the city, and sometimes they pose a hazard to members of the public.

While the pointers below are not related to the incident highlighted above, members of the public are encouraged to note them for safety.

Avoid parking you car next to a construction site. Especially if it is a high-rise construction site, near to the road. There are usually warning signs posted around the hoarding, but due to the scarcity of parking, people usually ignore them. Any falling materials or debris will damage your vehicle. And construction sites constantly have heavy vehicles like concrete trucks, dump trucks and trailers going in and out, increasing the chances of your vehicle being hit by them.

Do not enter a construction. It is a regulation that those without a green card by CIDB or a pass from NIOSH cannot enter a construction site. If a raid takes place, you be apprehended. While most of the time (and at most sites) this ruling is not always strictly enforced, it is also for your own safety to stay outside the hoarding. For property sales launches where you need to enter the site to view their show unit, there is a legal grey area here. In these cases, it is best to be careful and follow the signs set up by the developer. Do NOT enter any restricted areas.

If you have to enter an actual construction site for a particular reason (for example if you are a reporter), insist the contractor provide you with basic Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) – which, in this case, means a safety helmet, safety boots and safety vest (if necessary). Also insist a qualified personal follows you wherever you go, and as far as possible, stay on ground level and do NOT go up the building under construction. And keep your visit as short as possible.

A note on safety helmets – they actually have a warranty period (usually 10 years). Always insist on a new one. It basically protects you from falling small objects, like pebbles and stones. It does NOT protect you from anything bigger. If say a hammer or a brick falls from the 10th floor on you, it will most likely still kill you.

Watch out for the second part of this series coming soon.

We’ve noticed this new condo project on Jalan Yap Kwan Seng for a long time now, situated right at the junction with Jalan Tun Razak. There is a huge billboard announcing the project name and contact number of the place, but work hasn’t started yet (from what we can see).

According to a report in the Edge, the developer, Bluestone Group Malaysia (BGM) has announced that sales for the luxury condominium has reached 65% since the launch in October.

The Edge also reports:

Taragon YKS, located in nearb KLCC, is a 12 1/2-storey condominium development that comprises 32 standard units, four sub penthouses and four penthouses.

Sited on a freehold land, it is going for RM378 per sq ft with the standard units ranging between 1,767 and 1,895 sq ft and four sub penthouses and four penthouses with built-up areas of 2,196-2,405 sq ft and 3,121-3,210 sq ft, respectively.

While some people may view the KLCC luxury condo market as getting overcrowded, the developer still feels the project will continue to sell well. Construction will commence this month, having been awarded to Solid Gold Venture Sdn Bhd, and is expected to be completed in July 2007. BGM has also appointed Evan V Horsnell as the construction managers.

The people behind BGM has local and international expertise in construction. Other than Taragon Yap Kwan Seng, they are also developing Taragon Puteri Cheras, a mixed development of 141 units of 3 and 4-storey of townhouses in Cheras.

More info can be obtained from their website at here.

We got this in our mailbox. And we live like REALLY far from this place. We haven’t seen the place yet, but we tried to gather some info on the place, and it looks promising (if you are looking to stay in that area, that is). We’ll do a full review once we have a chance to view this place, but until then, we can provide the basic info for reference.

This first phase has two types of landed properties on offer:

single storey linkhouse (22’ x 75’)
4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms

Double storey linkhouse (18’ x 60’)
4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms

At the centre of the development is what is touted to be the first and largest lake garden in Banting town, 9.5 acres in all.

Anyway, this weekend, they are having a launch party (with a fast food chain providing lunch), at the site. The developer is giving out lots of goodies for buyers this weekend, like free legal fees, and RM1000 downpayment (only).

Lion, as you know are old timers in developers, now starting again in property after the financial crisis. If anyone who’s planning to go there this weekend, don’t forget to let us know how you think…

When talking about buying residential homes in Shah Alam, one tend to think of places like Kota Kemuning or Bukit Rimau, or the small growth area around the large stadiums. But a lot of people don’t realize that there have been some nice housing areas that have been launched within the last few years. An associate of ours bought a great linkhouse in the area a few years back, we liked the place a lot.

(Location map will be uploaded soon, thanks for being patient!)

Gadang has launched a mid-priced apartment in Section 27 (also called Taman Bunga Negara), a place more known for roundabouts and factories like Canon, Sharp and Shin-Etsu. Sri Ixora, as it is called (isn’t there another condo somewhere in the city with the same name…?). Being at the edge of Shah Alam gives accessibility to USJ, Putra Heights, Puchong, the NKVE, LDP and other parts of the huge city of Shah Alam.

For a mid-price apartment, this place offers plenty of facilities like swimming pool, parking space (it is after all, a residential apartment), shops, security, and function rooms. At the moment, the developers are actually throwing in some goodies for the moment like free legal and S&P documentation, and full financing (these items came with lots of asterisks ***, so…). Please check with the developer for more info on these offers.

There are two types of units basically, 773sq.ft and 800sq.ft, not giving much of choice for buyers, but they make up for it in other departments (more on that later). The layout for both types are a little unconventional, but I’m guessing some buyers may not mind too much the small quirky nooks and crannies.

This is a mid-priced apartment, so it’s obviously not to be compared to higher priced condominiums and apartments in other ‘hot’ areas like Puchong or Petaling Jaya. For some people, living in Shah Alam or buying property there represents a change mindset for a lot of people more accustomed to more densely or more favourably populated areas. As a plus, Shah Alam is relatively peaceful and more properly planned than other neighbouring districts (massive factory lots notwithstanding), and at the moment its still quite low density.

The other thing that goes will for this place is of course its affordability. Buyers should also note that the City Council of Shah Alam has some restrictions on certain types of businesses, so you may have to travel a little distance to the commercial districts of Puchong or Subang.

Gadang has previous experience as a contractor, and in recent years have moved to property development just like many of their peers. They have developed earlier projects in Puchong and Segambut.

While this may be old news, Property Malaysia wishes to extend our deepest condolences to families, friends and associates of Dr Liew Boon-Horng, who was killed on Friday December 30, 2005.

The car he was in was hit by a falling steel mould from a condominium-cum-office-block construction site onto the street, his wife Joanne, who was seated behind the driver, suffered head injuries while the driver, only identified as Harun, in his 40s, had injuries to the head and left shoulder.

Picture courtesy of the Star online

Property Malaysia mourns the loss of a bright, young Malaysian talent, who is also a rising corporate figure.

We have spend many years in the construction industry, and have seen many deaths occur in and near work sites. Mostly are construction personnels, a few are innocent passerbys being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Once again, our condolences to the family.

Seri Maya is a condo development along Jalan Jelatek, a short distance off Jalan Ampang. There are existing mid-rise condos from an earlier launch, and the Savanna show village is just next to it (visitors please note, there are no parking spots available for the sales office).

Earlier, the developer had launched Havana, and now the second and similar Savanna has been launched. Savanna doesn’t have a KLCC view like Havana (we’ll have to say that it’s really a miniscule, partially hazy view), but they have an ‘Ampang View’ (we believe they are referring to the Ampang Jaya side, not the city centre version of Ampang), ‘Setapak View’ and ‘Genting View’ (again, depending on the haze). The construction of both high rise condos (about 35 floors) are very close to the existing mid-rise condos.

A big selling point for Savanna and Seri Maya is the Setiawangsa LRT station just across the road (In fact, there are like 4 stations within the small area around the place). That alone can sway a lot of buyers. But Seri Maya has plenty of other good points going for it, other than the good location. Its freehold, and it’s near the city, although the Jelatek area can get congested at peak hours. It’s also right next to the kampong area, although it does add to the rustic feel. Kampung Warisan next to it further up the road. At the back is some existing flats.

There are 14 units per floor, 4 or 5 units on each wing, with a central lift core. The units range from about 1300 to 1800 sq.ft. and have either 3 or 3+1 bedrooms. The interesting concept of the mid-sized units are that the bedrooms are separated away from the living and dining area by the kitchen and yard, it looks like its on a separate wing of the house. All units have a ‘lanai’ concept instead of a balcony.

The developer has put in some delicate touches to the design, which really something that Tan & Tan are renowned for. We liked the design of the toilets and living area, and they make the most of the mid-sized space, without sacrificing space in the smaller rooms. Overall, the design is different from most of the other condos on offer in the area, it presents a good alternative for those looking for a different kind of layout. In terms of quality finishes, the specs provided are a good in respect to the price. In our experience, this developer gives good quality workmanship.

Seri Maya is in actual fact a huge development, totaling about 1400 units altogether. For facilities, there is a linear park, children playground, many landscaped parks scattered throughout the development, swimming pools, a small commercial area and a village square (we think its some sort of a community centre).

Tan & Tan Developments Bhd, under the larger IGB company, are an established property development corporation focusing on more upmarket projects, and have a good reputation and track record.