Property Malaysia

There is a growing property scene in the Jalan Ipoh area, especially for condos, in the last 2 or 3 years. Previously, the areas surrounding Jalan Ipoh are mainly matured landed homes townships, serving as a fringe area for the city.

Obivously a luxury condo won’t do well in this area, even if it is a low density development. What should work well would be an affordable mid rise one, which gives the residents a choice to buy one here for their children or for investment, not far from where they stay.

CP Group launched their Casa Idaman recently, with exactly the above criteria in mind to make it an attractive prospect. They have priced it at RM190psf onwards, this is far more affordable that other established places like Mont’Kiara and Hartamas. On the location, I think you can’t escape the fact that this is Jalan Ipoh. Surrounding the condo are schools and matured landed development, an army camp, and lots quite aged commercial area. But we were quite pleased with Casa Idaman on the whole.

There are two similar blocks with 304 units each, the two blocks going up to 14 levels, and with two levels of parking on the ground. There are only three types of units available, at 1,007sq.ft., 1,062sq.ft. and 1,181sq.ft. There are no duplex units, and no penthouses either. Type A, the largest unit type, has 4 bedrooms, while the other two types have 3 rooms. The design of the units are quite traditional, and all units come with balconies. From what we understand, the units either face KLCC or Batu Caves.

Aside from the main building tower, there is an annexe for common facilities, like the pool, gym and shops.

The maintenance fee is set at 15sen psf, and they are offering 2 covered parking bays with every unit. Please check with the sales personnel for the latest info.

We like this place. For us, Jalan Ipoh is a great place to stay, mainly for its proximity to KL (only 6km to KLCC) and it is a haven for local food. While the traffic maybe a problem at peak hours, it no worse than any other areas of the city. This is an affordable condo with commendable facilities that is an exciting addition to the area. Some buyers may be concerned with the power cables nearby.

The developer is a subsidiary of the CP Group, a well-established player that has been around for a while. Their flagship is the C P Tower in Section 16, PJ. Currently they are also working on the RM2bil Queensbay project in Penang.

When you think pre-fab homes, you think of low cost homes built on the fly to save cost and time. But this one defies convention.

In Tomoyuki Sakaguchi’s night photos of suburban Tokyo, familiar landscapes of densely arranged middle-class prefab homes, tightly parked cars, small gardens and anonymous street corners are somehow rendered strangely unfamiliar under the artificial glow of street lights.

Click here to see the interesting photos.

In case you’re wondering, the ‘PT’ in the refers to the lot number given by the Land Office, or Pejabat Tanah (hence the prefix PT). PT19 Residency is a bungalow project located in Bandar Bukit Puchong, right next to the just completed Heron Residency. This phase, by the same developer as the condo, was initially envisioned as a very limited bungalow launch to complement the mid-rise Heron. As we recall during our visit to Heron’s launch in 1995, there was shown only to be 6 units.

While in the interim years, they seem to have acquired more land and have expanded the number of bungalows to first 30, and now they’ve scaled down to 24 numbers only. According to the developers, they have basically provided more garden space to each unit to make to more exclusive, in a manner of speaking.

But enough of the history. Although located beside the older phase of Bandar Bukit Puchong, it is not part of Bukit Hitam’s development. It is beside the LDP, almost to the toll leading to Cyberjaya / Seri Kembangan. Most of the surrounding area here is made of kampung, interspersed by some new linkhouse developments that have come up in recent years.

The 24 units are arranged on two sides of single road, on a very narrow strip of land that looks like about 50m to us. There is a sole entrance and exit, and at the other end there is a small landscaped park. On first impression, the homes look small. This is derived mainly that the footprint is limited to an almost square plot of 45’ x 50’, which only about half of normal plot size for bungalows. Working with the zero lot boundary concept, each unit has 10’ garden space at one side of the house only, and at the back of the house. But the ground floor doesn’t occupy entire footprint, about half of it is used for the driveway, and a small patio to make the garden space larger.

This concept lends a strange effect on the front of the house – the wall of the house (i.e. the dining room) is very close to the road, separated by the drainage reserve and green area. Assuming that the road reserve here is 50’, the distance is still quite near, and that is also no fencing of any kind to act as a sound or safety barrier. But anyway.

For two and a half storey (we’re taking the ground floor to be half a storey), the build-up is 3,529sq.ft.(3,588sq.ft. for some units). This means a rather small living and dining at the ground floor. The first and second floor are almost similar, all in all there are 4 + 1 rooms. First floor has a family area, the second floor has a reading area with a large balcony.

We didn’t really fancy the façade design, with the heavy-handed use of the small glass window. But small footprint presents the biggest problem for us. For us, its not entirely comfortable living so close to the open road, gated homes or not. Working with this limitations, one has to ask whether a small square bungalow which looks more suited to Singapore or Hong Kong was the best development option here. The other concern we have is the ventilation of these units, with such close quarters build. Plus, the strip of bungalows is walled by two condominiums on two sides, blocking natural airflow.

Price starts from about RM650k to RM1.2million.

If you think your apartment is getting too small, and need more space, here’s a ingenious way to add an additional room.

Its actually a sculpture project and it looks really awesome.

Taken from here.

A few years ago, when you mention the Saujana area, people would most likely first think of Hyatt Saujana, that hotel on the road leading towards the old Subang Airport. In recent years, this area has undergone rapid development, both as a golf resort-centric area, and a luxury home centre that is built around the greenery of the courses. As we mentioned in our earlier review of the nearby Amaya Saujana, the area is still quite low density, considering it is mainly the domain of golf courses there. More recently, there have been quite a number of bungalow projects and also the very prestigious Serai Saujana, while across the road, Sime Darby Properties has been slowly developing their Ara Damansara township.

Both Amaya and Hijauan Saujana can be seen as competing developments, as they were launched within a few months of each other, and in terms of pricing, it can be said to be almost similar. But one look at the overall scheme, the both developments are quite different in concept. Hijauan Saujana, while is considered to be part of the Saujana area, it is actually located on the other side of the NKVE. In order to get here, you need to turn off the old airport road, go through Saujana, and go through a viaduct below the highway. At the moment there is one one lane open, but when in operation there will be two lanes open.

Access then, not so straightforward. While it is located next to the existing landed homes on the Subang side, there won’t be an access road opened that direction. So the condo is sort of caught in a tight spot, right there next to the NKVE.

The land is quite large at 5.5 acres, but because of its triangular shape, with the entrance at the narrow tip, it is limits the possibilities of design in a sense. What they have done is have two long and narrow blocks of units along the border, while the bulk of the space in the center is used for common facilities. This design gives a very interesting block layout - the block is only one unit wide, and each set of double lifts service only two units per floor. This means each unit will have a higher degree of privacy compared to other condos, and you will also enjoy two sides of view for your home, and with the added bonus of double ventilation (not exactly cross ventilation, though).

The northern block has up to 10 units per floor, while the southern block has up to 8, all blocks has up to 11 levels of unit. On the ground floor, in addition to the carparking bays, there is this unique feature not seen anywhere else - each unit gets a small store room. Yep, that’s right, all lined up side by side. We can see the some practicality in it (you don’t have to bring up unnecessary stuff all the way up to your unit) but overall we reckon the space could have been used in a better way. After all the units here are quite big, and storage space may not be an issue, compared to, say, a 700sq.ft. apartment.

Units are either garden view or green view. The standard unit ranges from 1,722sq.ft and 1,830sq.ft, and are quite similar in design. They adhere to a quite elongated ‘L’ layout, mainly due to how the block is set out. There are executive penthouse units available, which are duplexes, and have an additional roof garden level. The typical units have at least 3+1 rooms, and all rooms come with attached bath.

As for facilities, they actually have a large area allocated, but due to the triangular shape, the pool is not very large. But they make up for it with a tennis court, lots of landscaped areas, and a clubhouse with the usual facilities.

On first impressions, we didn’t quite like the facade of the building, it had a look more suited to a low rise building, plus the color of pastel light green-white was an odd choice. But maybe they were going for the ‘golf’ theme there. At 200 units, it isn’t high density, but the location, as we mentioned, may work against its favour. But there aren’t many other condos around here, and they may do well to target the Japanese expatriate market due to the proximity to the international school (the show units were decorated to strains of Japanese flavour).

Price is from about RM600k to RM1.8m. We think it may not be so accessible. But then again this is Saujana. The developer has just complete another project further down the road, Maplewoods, which is an upmarket bungalow development.

£100million penthouse.

Hyde Park, London.

£6,000 per square foot.

Private wine-tasting facility.

One awesome view.

Read it here.

The area leading to the old Subang Airport has seen some accelerated development ever since the KLIA took over as the main international airport. In the mid nineties, Peremba were one of the earliest to develop the area between Glenmarie and the Hyatt Saujana along old airport road. The area is still quite low density, considering it is mainly the domain of golf courses there. More recently, there have been quite a number of bungalow projects and also the very prestigious Serai Saujana, while across the road, Sime Darby Properties has been slowly developing their Ara Damansara township.

Malton will be launching a condo project right along the old airport road, quite near the interchange leading to Ara Damansara. With a sizable land made available to them, they are able to have an interestingly design condominium in this rather quiet neighbourhood.

Amaya Saujana is a three blocks of mid-rise condominiums in a sparse piece of land. Each block is almost similar with 10 storeys, the low density being a strong feature here, although we suspect the height restriction due to the proximity to the airport is also taken into account. At the moment they are launching two of the three blocks. All unit face north (towards the old airport road and Ara Damansara) or south towards the Saujana Resort. The southwards units at Block A are the most favorable, as they also face the pool and have also been the most popular.

Speaking of the pool, we were quite impressed by it, and with the facilities in general. About half the available land is used for landscaping and facilities, given it a lush garden feel. Generally the sports and recreation facilities provided here are better than the average, we feel this adds quite a bit to the attraction of the property.

Back to the units. The designers have taken the simple route – there are only two types of units, one at 1,569sq.ft and there’s also a larger 1,808sq.ft. Some blocks have penthouses. Each block has two symmetrical wings, totaling to 10 units per floor. Type A, the one at 1,569sq.ft, are the end units beside which face either east (very good) or west (not so good). The good thing is that these units are stand alone, in the sense that they don’t share any party wall with any other units. Type B (1,808sq.ft.) are corner units with a so-called ‘semi-D’ design.

Both types of units have 3+1 rooms, all rooms have attached baths. We like the large yard area.

Now we come to the price. Not cheap. Type A (1,569sq.ft.) sells from RM501k onwards (from RM319psf) while Type B (1,808sq.ft.) retails from RM605k upwards (from RM334k). If you are looking at a unit at mid height level, it will probably set you back in the region or RM700k to RM800k.

Well, let’s look at the things that we like first. The low density is obviously a plus factor, as with the location. We also like the landscaped design as mentioned earlier. On the flipside, the price is not accessible to most people, and they could have offered more types of layout design encompassing a larger range of build-up. With only two types of layout, they tend to be more conservative to reach a wider appeal.

At the moment, there are not many condos in this area, the more established ones are the older condo developed by Saujana.

Happy New Year and happy holidays, everyone!

Drive safely and enjoy yourselves.

Kiaraville has made good its promise to provide world-class sculpture in their development when they unveiled Eng Tay’s masterpiece recently.

New York-based Malaysian artist and sculptor Eng Tay gestured frantically as a crane hoisted each of his million Ringgit, half-ton bronze scupltures into position at the Kiaraville condomininium entrance in Kuala Lumpur.

After two hours of hoisting and manoeuvring in the afternoon sun, the two bronze musicians from Eng Tay’s Companion and Solo III series were finally in place at the Mont’ Kiara residential enclave.

Watching closely was Kiaraville developer and Ireka Corp Bhd group managing director Datuk Lai Siew Wah who applauded Eng Tay for successfully handing over the largest sculptures ever created by the artist.

A full write-up is found here.

This emphasis on the artistic element is part of the development team’s effort to set apart Kiaraville from the competition. The original review for Kiaraville (in August 2005) is found here.

Some of you have noticed that there’s been a slight change in the content of the this blog starting sometime towards the end of last month. We’ve done away with a lot of other stuff like property related news and the ilk and are only concentrating on the stuff that matters - reviews, progress photos, and developer / project related stuff.

January is the first full month of this in action, we’ll see how it goes in the short term. There were 4 reviews in January, and one carried over from December. As always, the reviews page has been updated.

Vistaria Residences, Bandar Puchong Jaya

Garnet, Putra Heights (Putra Avenue)
Villa Manja, Damansara
Twins, Damansara Heights
Dhyan Puri