Property Malaysia

We think the whole issue with this location is that it has a poor rep when compared to their neighbours. Back in the old days, we always knew this place as Batu Tiga, with the landmarks being the Carlsberg factory, the KTM Komuter station and CSR refinery. But the developers have chosen to identify it as Subang Jaya rather than Shah Alam where it is actually located in, probably because ‘Subang Jaya’ sounds a little more appealing than the ‘Shah Alam’, and a whole lot better than ‘Batu Tiga’.

Here’s the part about the poor rep. People tend to think of it as far away or near industrial areas. While it may be true in parts, it’s no more better or worse than a lot of other areas in Puchong or Subang Jaya for that matter. But perception is difficult to change, especially when added with the notoriety of traffic jams (from the Federal Highway-Glenmarie junction) and floods (although this has been mitigated in recent years).

Actually, there have been quite a bit of condo development along this stretch of road, mainly led by this developer. Although it is still far away from connecting with Subang Jaya / USJ to form one continuous suburban development, it would only be a matter of time before that happens.

As we mentioned before for Indarisa, the appeal here is that it’s near enough to many of the major highways like Federal Highway, ELITE, PLUS and KESAS thereby easily connecting it to all the areas in the Klang Valley. Plus it’s really near Shah Alam, Subang and Klang, so it can be considered quite central, but not really central if you know what we mean.

The location is opposite the CSR factory, also opposite the completed Crosshill Indarisa condominium, which is also brought to you by the same team. Next to Subang Andaman is Puri Aiyu, another apartment by Crosshill, but that one has been completed for sometime. While Indarisa is more of a affordable condo, they’ve upped the ante and price here to accomodate a more luxurious feel to it. Looking at the name, you can guess that they are going for a tropical design feel (although for some other projects, judging the name alone can be wrong). They’ve hired an Australian landscape designer for the job, and the results in the brochures looks quite impressive. There’s this glass pavilion thing for yoga/pilates/gawking floating in the swimming pool with a beautiful translucent pitched roof, giving it a little rustic feel, although it probably looks a lot better at night with controlled lighting rather than the blinding glare and heat of Malaysian daytime.

There’s also a lot of shady palm trees and landscaped plots, all in line with the aforementioned tropical theme.

There are two identical towers going up midrise, all the units have a similar looking facade with balcony railing, some look over the pool and common facilities. Basically there are 3 typical units available. ranging from 758 to 1,149sq.ft. Larger penthouses are also available, up to a size of 3,611sq.ft. The smallest unit has 2 rooms, while the larger two types have 4 bedrooms, something unusual for apartments this size. What this means is the rooms including the masterbedrooms are generally smaller, so don’t expect to fit a king size bed plus have lots of moving space. We didn’t get to see the layout for the penthouses so we can’t comment on them.

The units are priced starting from RM260psf. It’s a little pricey for this location, but they are going for the landscaping and concept to sell the product. Repsonse to the earlier Indarisa seems adequate, and have probably encouraged the developers to go for this concept and pricing.

We don’t really like the area here, for that price there are a lot of condos in Subang competing for your attention, and in Shah Alam proper there are many landed homes recently launched that matches this pricing. So it’s a matter of choice really, but we have to say the landscaping looks out of the ordinary. The ELITE highway runs behind the condo, so with busy roads around the condo, noise could be a problem. Also we wished they could have gone for a more elaborate facade, a little plain for that kind of condo…