Race to Clinch the Sales

Buying a house is so complicated for peasants. Now to find a financing institution that wouldn't bleed us dry before we sold the house or paid up the loan. The things is, I know next to nothing about housing loans and the options we have in Singapore.

25 or 30 years?
SIBOR or SOR?
1 month or 3 months? Damn no fixed interest available.
What's refinancing? Always see this word but never understood it.
Which bank?

好乱啊!

How to decide when I don't even know the difference between SIBOR and SOR @_@ At least I can say I have heard of SIBOR before, thanks to the SIBOR rigging scandal!

And feels sian to have to look up the loan packages one by one! Wait, agent to the rescue! X sent us a compilation. Super useful :D Typically, the first 3 years have lower interest rates. We could refinance to another bank with a lower interest rate later.


22/3
Decided to go for 3-month SIBOR. UOB, Stanchart and Maybank have this package. Since we use UOB's credit card more and I will prefer to support a local bank, we decided on UOB. Since we don't know any banker, we let X do the honours.

We didn't know any lawyer either, so we let X recommend one. Didn't know need to engage a lawyer's services for buying a property? o_O Do they cost a bomb? Haiz cost a bomb also must engage one lor.


23/3
UOB just yanked their SIBOR rate package on Friday! Only Stanchart and Maybank remains in the race. Again, we don't know any banker, so X used her contacts again.

Maybank's banker responded 2hrs later favorably. Maybank is the front-runner now!


24/3
Stanchart's package is the same as Maybank, so we are going to reward the hardworking banker for working on a Sunday. Maybank, it is.

Gosh, I never thought I would do business with a Malaysian bank. Coz Malaysia boleh mah, if you know what I mean. And Brother just cancelled their credit card. So fast need to resume ties with them.

Received the sales & purchase agreement from developer's lawyer in the afternoon. Hand-delivered wor. So serious sia. Cannot say lost in the mail or some lame excuse.

At night, time to fill in the bank loan application form. As advised by X, it's better not to have so many credit cards as it may have a negative impact on the loan application. We cancelled our non-essential credit cards, which are not many... But sure glad we did, as the loan application form is now easier to fill in with less details! And can copy some information from the UOB form.

But still, I hate forms. Still need to login to HDB to get a printout declaring that we do not own any HDB?!