Property Malaysia

Selamat Hari Merdeka, and have a good weekend. For our muslim readers, selamat berpuasa too.

We’ll be taking a well deserved break lepak-king and eating.

Slow day for Property Malaysia today… one review in the works.

Let’s just hope global warming won’t make the water level in the lake rise any further.

The Japanese city dwellers are well known for squeezing into small homes due to shortage of land and exorbitant real estate prices. But this doesn’t mean the homes are always dull and simple. There are many wonderfully designed homes that are really innovative. This one is a corner unit by Yashuhiro Yamashita.

You can see more interesting Japanese architecture here.

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While Batu Caves will invariably be known for the limestone hills and the famous temple there, it has slowly been making itself known in in the property market. It’s probably inevitable in hindsight, the Klang Valley has been expanding in all directions to cope with the growing demand for real estate. While the limestone hills are still imposing, development is slowly creeping nearer towards it, and around it. While it was previous unthinkable to have a commercial centre right next to the rockface, it has happened and people have pretty much gotten used to it.

For some years the demand have been for commercial areas and cheap housing, now the need to higher priced condomimium is beginning to show, as seen from some of the recent launches in the area. Dolomite has a pretty good location for their new condo - its just next to the MRR2 (it will be easily be recognizable on the highway), near the new KTM Komuter station, and they also have a great view of the limestone rockface behind them. In fact they’ve used them heavily in their marketing material, nicely done instead of the usual stock photographs we usually see.

Park Avenue consists of a shopping mall on the ground floor, a few levels of parking for tenants, a podium level of the common facilities and about 20 levels of units. Due to the soil condition here, and perhaps the proximity to the hills and highway, they do not have the option to have a basement parking, so the parking takes up about 6 levels above ground, giving the condo more imposing height. Actually, looking at the artist’s impression of the condo, we can’t help to think that it could have looked a lot better with some tweaks, it kinda looks odd with the lift motor room fins and the colour scheme. Talking about the colour scheme, its orangey colour just doesn’t go with the tropical green paradise theme… maybe they should have gone contemporary… it maybe overused, but there’s a reason why its popular.

There are basically two types of standard units available here, a a smaller unit at 1,177sq.ft. with 3+1 rooms or the larger 4+1 room version with a more spacious 1,440sq.ft. build up. The layout desgin is quite adequate. There are no balconies, and they use window space generously to maximize light into the living and masterbedroom. This lents to the dominant feature of the facade from the outside.

There are 474 units here, so we are talking about quite a high density of units here, and this is more so when you consider the volume of traffic from the retail outlets on the ground floor. Units are priced starting from RM233,500 which works out to be about RM200 onwards. Pricing structure isn’t expensive considering it is freehold, but not competitive enough to attract investors who are not actively looking in this area.

In terms of facilities they have substantial to offer, and each unit comes with 2 parking bays.

Some of you may remember a post some time back about the smallest house in Toronto here on this website, which we also thought was the smallest house in the world, but now we found an even smaller house.

Despite looking like an outhouse, it actually is a proper dwelling unit. Albeit VERY small.

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Its been some years since Bandar Sri Damansara was first launched, most of the homes there have been occupied close to a decade now. At that time, Sri Damansara was an ideal place to have a large-scale mixed development - it was between Kepong and Sg. Buloh, and it was just bordering the limits of the then existing suburbs of Damansara and Bandar Utama. Sri Damansara at that time had its own residential and commercial areas, but of course was not in the same scale of the newer developments that appeared later.

In the interim years from then til now, lots of newer developments (both big and small) have sprouted out in this vicinity like Desa Park City, Sunway SPK, Damansara Damai and Damansara Perdana. Some people have named this area as the North PJ growth area.

Sutera Damansara is a relatively small development located just behind Damansara Damai. On one side, it borders Bandar Sri Damansara, and to the south, a river divides it from Kota Damansara. There is no access from KD, the but you either enter the area via Bandar Sri Damansara (although there is some issues with this planned connecting road) or the main entrance off the Jalan Sg. Buloh. The land for this project is jointly developed by Permodalan Negeri Selangor Bhd and OSK Property Holdings Bhd, and is made up of two separate plots of land. Together they form a rather sizable site, and the pilot phase launched now is called Sutera Ria, which are 22′ x 75′ linkhomes. Future phases will include semi-D and mega-link homes (”mega link”?), and also low to medium cost apartments. There is also a planned commercial area with shops and offices.

They have released a limited number of first phase units, all being the aforementioned 22′ x 75′ linkhomes. They are two storey designs but the corner units come with a third storey.

The typical unit has a standard rectangular footprint, 2,305sq.ft. build up and comes with 3+1 rooms. The facade looks a little untidy, with a lot going on below the pitched roof. Perhaps the window hoods and porch roof were pitched to match the main roof instead of having it RC flat it would have suited us more. But being the first launch in a new area, we did not expect radical design for a mid-level unit, perhaps they may emphasize more on concept design for later higher end units.

But having said that, they are setting the price bar quite high, at RM433,350 for a typical unit. This is a leasehold piece of land, and prices will undoubtedly increase with each passing phase. Pretty steep for us.

A moot point of the project is the proposed landscaped park with a recreational lake and jogging track. The project is also marketed as a gated and guarded development. Currently their sales office is located at Wisma Atria in Damansara Jaya.

OSK is well known name in the local investment banking scene, although this is the first time we have seen them involved directly in developing a project.

Would we buy it? It’s pretty expensive, for an area that isn’t directly connected to the main road. As we mentioned earlier, too, we were disappointed that they didn’t go for a finer overall concept for the landscaping and the look and design of the units. A stunning concept design would have really made this place worth the price, but alas. We doubt there are any chances of a link road to KD in the future, that’ll surely add value to this place. This area going towards PJ has its fair share of hard traffic at peak hours.

Panorama of some KLCC condominiums as seen from the KLCC park. From left - Troika by BRDB, Avare by Magna Prima, The Binjai by KLCC Holdings, Stonor Park by Beneton Properties (with the yellow fins) and Park Seven by SDB Properties. The last building on the right is the ExxonMobil building.

Reader Z has again sent in some great photos of Saujana Residency taken recently. You can read the original review and ongoing comments and discussion here.

There seem to be some progress from the last set of photos (see here).

Last weekend on the way to the property expo we snapped these pics of the Meritz and K Residence opposite KLCC.

As some of you remember, we posted some pics taken in December 2006, more than one and a half years ago here. At that time the Meritz was still undergoing structural work while for K Residence, the architectural facade was half way through.

Contrasting it with the photos taken last week, both buildings were virtually completed, and the facade looks very good on both building.

The original reviews and discussion for the the projects can be found by clicking on these links: the Meritz and K Residence