Real Estate Tips #13: Changes in house design over the past 10 years

Some of you might find this interesting, here's some of the changes:

(1) Single carporch to twin or even triple carporch
- Most families now own more than one cars, in order to cater to these needs, all developers now opt to build more spacious carporch.

(2)Traditional kitchen to Wet & Dry kitchen
- Many would use the dry kitchen for display purpose, where the actual cooking is done in wet kitchen.

(3)Cement/parquet flooring to tiled/timber strips flooring
- Many finds cement/parquet floorings to be difficult to maintain. Most developers have now switched to using ceramic tiles or timber strips for the floor to enhance the look and to enable easier maintenance on the floor.

(4)Open drainage to covered drainage system
- The streetscape have become much more neat using the covered drainage system though i am still feeling rather skeptical on the long term maintenance of these system.

(5)Hanging cable to underground cable
- Also to make the streetscape looks more pleasant, many developers have also started to use underground cable rather than to let the cables hanging all around the housing estates posts.

(6)More toilets/washrooms
- To add more privacy and conveniency to the occupants, some innovative developers have added more toilets to the house. For a double storey terrace house, it used to have only 3 toilets, 2 in the first floor, 1 in the groundfloor. We now see some 4 rooms houses came with 4 attached toilets.

(7)Gated and guarded community
- A new concept living style which capitalise on the security and sense of community. Some even provides clubhouse with facilities such as swimming pool, tennis court and etc, which you can only find in condomiums previously.

(8)Streetscape
- Besides the underground cable and covered drainage, the developer now place more emphasis on the "make-up" on the streetscape, e.g. with more greenery , lakes and parks.

(9)More accessories
- Things like ceiling height wall tiles, auto-gates points, tiled carporch and tinted windows, aluminium framed doors and windows have also given to the house buyers by some developers.

(10)Roofing system
- Cool-roof system which are meant to maintain and lower room temperature as compared to the conventional ones, in view of reducing power consumption.

(11) Sheer wall
- A new technique in constructing walls which enables more space created within the house.

(12) Higher floor to ceiling height
- To enable better ventilation

(13) Wider main entrance gate
- To allow easier car access

(14) Columnless carporch
- To allow full utilisation of the carporch

Developers are no longer selling house, they are now selling lifestyles.