Property Malaysia

One of the readers requested for a review of this place, and as usual we’re happy to oblige. This place has been on sale for more than a year now, but up to now, we’ve not had an opportunity to view the place. Part of the reason is that this place is actually quite well hidden from the well traveled roads around Ampang, which actually works to its advantage, but well get to that part soon enough.

Mutiara Upper East Ampang is located in the Ampang Hilir area, in essence bordering on Desa Pandan. If you’re having problems finding the place, just ask around for the Raintree Club (a stone’s throw away) and the Selangor Polo & Equestrian Club, just next to this condo site. The area is rather quiet and far off from the busy thoroughfare; the site itself is surrounded by some old lowrise apartments and other condos. But all in all, there aren’t that many condos in the area, Mutiara Upper East is probably the only new one being built at the moment.

Being near the country club, Polo club and the RSGC probably helps the marketing of this place quite a lot, plus that ‘KLCC view’ thing that some people find so fascinating. Plus, surrounding the condo on a bigger radius are lots of old ‘rich man’ bungalows that signify the ‘old money’ of Ampang Hilir.

We were quite impressed with the place. Firstly, its quite lowrise, 312 units, in two blocks, each block consisting of 23 floors only. That’s one good point over those towering KLCC condos with lots of units per floor.

The site itself is a little odd in shape, it has a long and narrow entrance road where they have built the parking structure, and the residential blocks are set further in from the main road. The building façade is a little unspectacular, two blocks of rectangular glass walls.

The internal design of the units, well there are many to choose from. There are a few variations of a standard unit and also a few types of duplex penthouses. At the time we viewed this place, there were about a third of the units left, mostly standard units. Wait, there’s another type with very limited numbers – it’s something called a ‘bungalowminium‘. Yes, that’s right – another new ‘word‘ to add to our list of developer-created buzzwords for marketing. I’m assuming it means ‘bungalow condominium’ (and not ‘bungalow minimum’…!). What it really is in reality is actually a condo unit on the lowest floor with a larger build-up, about 2,800sq.ft. It isn’t really big compared to some offered by their competitors (usually 4,000 to 5,000sq.ft), but it does add to the choices available here (although again, very few units here, and besides, they’re all sold out).

We won’t go in detail into the internal layout, but the standard units range from 1,700sq.ft to 2,100sq.ft with at least 3+1 rooms and a balcony. The layout is a slightly too conservative for us, in essence not much different from the 900sq.ft. mid-cost apartments (living and dining on one side, rooms and kitchen on the other), except with larger areas and higher specs. Some innovative design could have made a huge difference.

On the whole, prices start from RM462k to about RM2mil, which works out to be about RM260psf to about RM330psf. This is competitively priced, but in the area there aren’t too many competitors to compare with.

The facilities provided are a little above average, with an impressive ‘grand boutique entrance’ (eh?), minimum of 2 free covered parking bays, security, lots of pools and landscaped areas, sports facilities, service shops, etc. In addition to all that, they are throwing in some freebies like air-conditioning to units, broadband connectivity, central vacuum system, central water filtration system, etc.

Overall, we liked it. But some people may not fancy the flats next door, or say it’s really much nearer to Desa Pandan than Ampang…