ryooki

Hi dmay, Can you share what is the wood-grain laminate used for your kitchen? It looked really good! Thanks

Yah I know cabinet doors can use ABS trimmings. What I mean is the skeleton of the cabinets.

Hi All, Is it normal to see "black lines" along the edges of the laminates on the cabinets? I'm told that this is normal; especially for cabinet "skeletons", not the cabinet doors which can be fixed with ABS trimming, Aluminium trimming or painting over.. Can share (with pics please) what can be done to eliminate these? These can be quite an eyesore if you have white laminates and see the edges black black. Thanks!

after looking at Adrian's work at Skywire's place, we have decided to engage Adrian to do up our place.

Please send me Henry's contact as well. Thanks!

Hi Anarchy, I have PMed you.. No lah.. I am just wondering if the 2 FSM that you consulted is the same as mine.. hopefully not.. <fingers crossed>

Umm.. u mind sharing who say no good and who say can rectify? I scared also leh.. the FSM who will be auditing my unit is not the same FSM that I consulted to survey!!

We haven't start sourcing for IDs/Contractors yet.. have been reading the renoblogs.. I do know who NOT to engage though.. Anarchy, Yes, we have a balcony.. will be leveling it and make it our kids' play area. When kids out-grow the play area and move to the study room for computer games, we will think again lor. HPS-wise, don't know yet. Bigeyedfish Thanks for the heads-up!! Can you share your quotes with me? So that I can have some idea on the pricing.

Good morning! No lah.. Anarchy.. dun say that.. We are 2nd time buying.. Just sold off our flat at Admiralty.. The flat we bought has its valuation done in Oct 09 last year.. hence the valuation not very high.. We won't be doing flooring also.. Definitely doing the 2 bathrooms, add more storage, some kitchen, master bedroom and studyroom..

We paid $398K + $38K COV. 136sqm. 6th floor. Wah little_fish, your COV very low leh!! Envy.. Ours originally asked for $35K, when we offer them $35K, they changed their mind and insisted $40K. So we settled on $38K lor.. Considering the overall price paid, think still quite OK bah.. Our budget for reno also quite tight.. hoping to do $25K for minimal reno..

Yup, we did get a FSM to "survey" the unit before we put our deposit. But it's a different FSM to do the Full house audit as this FSM do house survey quite expensive and we dunno how many times we will require his service..

Oh you're from Yishun previously? Yah.. Sembawang food really not fantastic.. Matured estates' food is much better! Will you be doing reno on your new place? Care to share contacts? We are doing basic reno (see what FSM says first)..

Nope, not 332. Oh I went to 50X to see as well.. but prefer the 33X one coz' it's bigger.

Ours is at 33X 1st appt at beginning of Apr.. Now busy reading forum for renovation firm reviews. You planning to overhaul your unit or just basic reno?

We also just bought an EA @ sembawang!!

Hi all, For the home owners who used the same agent to do both the Selling of their old flat and Buying of their new flat, how much (in %) commission did you give to the agent? Thanks.

Of course everyone wants a good agent. But the thing is whether giving the 2% means getting a good agent? I am not saying that my agent is not doing a good job in selling my flat as the deed has not yet been done. So do you mean to say that in my attempt to bargain on the commission prior to the selling of my flat will make the agent not do a good job in selling?

Hi Chronograph Glad know that you managed to bargained for your agent's commission. How did your agent react when you raised up the topic on commission bargaining? Was he unhappy? And how many % did you give in the end?

Nope, no documents have been signed. As for paying more for the requested COV, I need to rephrase.. The owner was asking for $35k COV, and later when we expressed our interest, he upped the COV by $3k. We accepted the request as we really liked the flat and we felt we probably wouldn't be able to get another flat to our liking anytime soon. We will probably bring up the topic soon since there has been no detailed discussion on comm with the agent..

Coz we didn't think through the possible scenarios and discuss the commission payout for each scenario. It's like you are already sitting the dentist's chair with your mouth wide open and at his/her mercy, then the dentist informs you that you have 5 cavaties instead of the 2 cavaties and hence you need to fork out extra $$ to do the fillings.. would you have thought of that happening in the beginning?

Hi All, When do you think is a good time to bargain on commission? Given that no documents were signed on Exclusivity as well as Commission rates. I do understand that the norm nowadays is 1% for Buyer Agent and 2% for Seller Agent. However, if the Buyer Agent is unable to secure a good price on our behalf (i.e. bargain on the COV), are we obligated to pay the 1%? We have given our word (no signed documents) that if the agent can help us source a unit, we will let him represent us on the selling of our unit. This is effectively giving him the 1% and 2% of the sales proceeds amounting to more than $10K. We have already made an offer on the unit that the agent has helped us find, but the price was at the full valuation plus the full requested COV and an additional $2k. As we really liked the unit, we agreed to the price, but now thinking back, we begin to wonder if the agent has done his job to help us bargain. I know if we are unhappy about the agent's performance, we can let other agent represent us in the selling of our unit but we do not want to resort to that. Also we are worried about being saboed by the agent as well. So am I stuck with giving all the 1% + 2% commission though I felt he could have done a better job? Thanks.