Real Estate Tips #16: Are you planning to visit a mapex/property exhibition? Here's what you should do.

Before you go, you should :

(1) Determine your purpose.
Are you looking for a house at a particular locality? Are you searching for a shophouse for investment purchase? Are you looking at a single or double storey terrace house? How many rooms i needed? Too many questions? Well, to make things simpler, just answer the following questions:
- What's the locality you wanted?
- What's the type of house you wanted, single/double house, or apartment?
- What's the value added facility you wanted? Security features, larger carporch or etc?

(2) Determine your budget.
What sort of initial outlay can you fork up? If you are looking for a residential property, you should be looking at minimum 10% outlay, as for commercial property, you need to have minimum 20% of the value of the property. You may notice many developers now are coming out with an easy entry package which may need as low as RM1000 as initial outlay to buy their product/houses. Don't feel skeptical about it, because these are genuine package. Besides the first payment of the property, there are also some incidental costs such as legal costs, stamping and etc, this will amount to another 5% roughly.

Besides initial outlay, the bank's installment comes into the picture. As a rule of thumb, the monthly installment should not be more than 1/3 of your monthly income, or not more than 40$ of your monthly net disposable income.

Now that you have determined a purpose and budget, you will then be more focus as you step into the exhibition hall. Here's what you should do as you arrive:

(1) Stay Calm
You will be surrounded and flooded by flyers, brochures and sales person. Just stay calm and accepting flyers and put it aside, as you can read it later when you are back home.

(2) Plan your trip
Look for an exhibition hall map, if any, and decide a logical track where you won't repeat the same booths again and again and get lost. Go for a quick one round to have a feel of what's available there generally and take note on those comes within your purpose and budget as targeted booths.

(3) Visit the targeted booths
Now is time to go to the targeted booths , and here's what you can do there:
- Look through the master plan of the project, and its adjacent development
- See the model house
- Obtained detailed brochure, which entails design of the house, price, package, built-up area, land size, actually location and etc.
- Ask the sales person should you have any question, don't be shy, they are more than happy to answer to your questions.
- Register with the developer if you want more information to be sent to you in future
- Check the developer's background with the sales personnels
- Find out who are the bank panels, some banks may offered special rate for particular product for this developer
- NEVER BUY ON IMPULSE, i've met plenty of first-time house buyers who regretted purchasing their first house, don't go and become one of them.


(4) Visit the bank's booths
- After knowing what you might want to buy, now it's time to chat with the bank officer to see your financial standing, whether or not you are eligible and affordable to purchase the property you wanted.
- The more financial information you give to the bank's officer the better, i.e. monthly income, commitments such as car loans and etc.
- The bank's officers can normally calculate your monthly installment on the spot.
- Don't get confused over the different package offered by different banks, just obtain the brochures/flyers and study them when you are back home later.
- Here's some questions you might want to ask the bank's officers:
(a) What's the rates offered?
(b) What's the installment payment i need to make?
(c) How long can i borrow?
(d) What's the margin i can borrow?
(e) What's the incidental cost involved?
(f) How much do i have to pay the MRTA? How do I make myself covered in the "correct" way? Please refer to my previous articles on the MRTA insurance.
(g) Can i make prepayment? What's the cost involved?
(h) What's the penalty if i switch the loan? How long are you going to bind me?

Always remember, getting information from the property exhibition is only a first stage of purchasing a property, you should then pay a site visit to gather more information, such as actual showhouse, construction stage, orientation, road's level and etc.