Ranting about housing

I want to rant - it's so hard to grow our family when faced with an housing problem!

See, we originally bought this three-room flat in 2009 as we didn't need a bigger place then. And we were buying within our means. We thought, hey, next time we could always upgrade right. After a few years, we would have enough savings to get a bigger place and rent this one out to help pay for the second one. When our kids are grown and have left this nest, we could move back to our matrimonial home, perhaps retiring with some passive income from renting out the bigger place. Nice, right?

And then the cooling measures were dropped on us. Tmd.

Implications - if we get a second place, we will face additional stamp duty and a hefty downpayment cos we have an outstanding loan. Not going to bother explaining here - go google ABSD and loan-to-value ratio. We have to get rid of our little flat to avoid the additional stamp duty and to get a bigger loan from the bank. But that means we'll lose our matrimonial flat! Sentiments at play here...

But we do need a bigger place. Now with only ZK, it's fine. But when number two comes along, we'll need full-time help. Really, you can't expect me to push a stroller and drag a toddler up and down Taman Warna on my own! Nononono! So the desk will have to shift from the little room to the living room to make space for the full-timer. The mess, I can bear. But I also have to bear with sharing a toilet with a non-husband person; another of my OCDs - that, I hope to endure for as short a time as possible!

And, we were thinking of having three or four kids. But I seriously doubt ZK's room could take more than two kids. Yes, I grew up in a three-room flat with two siblings and five of us shared one room at one point cos we rented out the other room. But this is another generation, and I want our kids to live more comfortably. So no, I don't think we can have three kids here, not to mention four.

Conclusion - we need a bigger place and soon!

But no money :(

Mum has an idea - transfer the flat to them so that we could keep it in the family. The profit from selling it wouldn't help much anyway.. Then no more additional stamp duty and we could get 80% loan yeah! But we will still need to borrow cash to pay off the mortgage for the flat - in-laws couldn't get bank loan - and to pay for the downpayment of our new place cos our savings are quite depleted after Kellogg.

So we're now checking with HDB on the transfer, looking at showflats here and there, and getting AIP for bank loan. With any luck, by the middle of this year, we would be chest deep in debt hoho!

We're looking at new developments so the earliest we could move should be 2016 or so; getting a resale apartment means incurring reno costs which will require yet more cash. We've discussed and decided that we will have another baby in the next couple of years, move to a bigger place, then see if we could have one more. I hope we can have number three!

miso: Siao, make number two first!