www.shaproperty.com

Sep 16, 2007

Expat couple go hunting for home amid soaring rents. Their verdict?

'It's just insane'

By Melissa Sim

STANDING in the yellow-tiled kitchen of a corner terrace house in Upper Bukit Timah Road, the Olivrys thought their arduous search for a home had finally ended.

They had just signed a letter of intent and handed over a cheque for a month's rent to two property agents.

Walking through the unit, they excitedly went through curtain choices and colour schemes for the walls.

But their happiness was shortlived.

As the couple stepped out of the lush, palm-tree filled garden, a Caucasian man walked in.

Another potential tenant perhaps, thought American housewife Laura Thornton-Olivry, shrugging it off. It was 10am.

True enough, the agents called back three hours later. Instead of the agreed $4,300 rent, the unit was now going for $2,000 more.

The Olivrys, both in their 30s, were furious. Refusing to enter into a bidding war, they called the agent for an apartment in Upper East Coast Road that they had viewed earlier.

Good news, it was still available.

At 2pm, with their nine-month-old baby in tow, they zipped across the island and reached the condominium.

The moment they walked through the door, deja vu set in: 'Sorry, it's going for $2,000 more now.'

A livid Mrs Thornton-Olivry asked: 'Couldn't you have picked up the phone to tell us before we came here?'

'Sorry,' came the nonchalant reply from the agent.

In a market of rapidly rising rents, trying to find a dream home can be a nightmare. In July, their landlord raised the rent of their 1,800 sq ft Jervois Road apartment from $2,400 to $7,200.

'The rent went up three times; that's just insane,' said Mr Nicolas Olivry, who is French and runs his own marketing business here.

The hunt then began: At 7pm every night, he would sit at his desk and go through the newspaper classifieds, with highlighter pens in hand.

Pink for the good apartments. Blue for the average ones.

Then it was another hour of non-stop calling to arrange viewings for the next day. The pair checked out apartments separately so they could cover more, Mr Olivry squeezing the viewings into his work schedule and his wife, in between baby feeds and baby naps.

This went on for the better part of a month.

It became even more stressful when their Filipino maid went home and baby Luca had to join his mother in the search.

They covered nearly 15 apartments a week together.

Racing against time to find a home before their lease ended this month, the Olivrys found that they had to lower their expectations and raise their budget.

Their $3,200 budget had to climb up to $4,200 before they were shown anything near decent, they said. They were prepared to live farther from town but wanted the same living space as in their previous apartment.

Things were different in 2002. Mrs Thornton-Olivry found her first home in Singapore - a shophouse in Everton Road - during a four-hour transit in Singapore then.

She was on her way from Timor Leste to Bangkok. The 3,500 sq ft house was beautifully furnished and the rent was $4,500 a month.

'It was the sort featured in magazines,' she said wistfully.

Five years on and she had to settle for an unfurnished apartment that was half the size, in much poorer condition and in a less central location - for the same amount of money.

Some of the apartments she saw had peeling paint and shabby kitchen equipment. One even had what Mrs Thornton-Olivry described as a 'burner' in place of a proper stove.

And if quality apartments were a rare find, well-informed housing agents were even harder to come by.

Mr Olivry said agents were often clueless about the homes they were marketing, unable to answer basic questions such as the colour of floor tiles or the number of bathrooms.

Some marketed homes which they had not even seen.

Once, he ended up seeing the same unit twice because the second agent would not tell him the unit number until he got to the condominium.

They found their present apartment - about the same size as their previous one - in Tanjong Rhu through the classifieds three weeks ago.

But Mrs Thornton-Olivry has had to say goodbye to her morning jogs in the Botanic Gardens, a 'mothers club' which meets in the Bukit Timah area and the convenience of walking to Tanglin Mall for groceries.

'Am I happy?'

She paused.

'It's not as nice. But it's okay.'

simlinoi@sph.com.sg