Off plan apartment purchase and build in Jakarta

Off plan apartment purchase and build in Jakarta

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Jakarta

Original Poster:

566 posts

141 months

Wednesday 4th March 2015
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Having read Gruffy's complete thread on how to build a cracking apartment in a tiny space I figured it was time to start my story here.
Aptly, I'm at the very start of this one. Never done this before and in a foreign country to boot.
The Indonesian Rupiah is fairly weak at the moment and whilst I'm away at work the wife decided to start looking at some off plan apartments in the city.
It's very difficult for me to get a mortgage here due to me being an expat, however for off plan, the developers usually allow you to fund the 'mortgage' through them. Basically you have to drop a reasonable deposit and then pay off the remainder in 3 years in this instance.

Purchase price of the property is just under 2 Billion Rupiah - 1,980,000,000 this is regardless of cash, 1 year or 3 years payment.
This equates to 98k GBP or $151k, I get paid in USD so this will largely be commentated on in USD.

We have booked one of the largest sizes available which is a 65sqm apartment and a 15sqm balcony which in the literature somehow gives a total area of 96sqm.
Two bedrooms on the 9th floor. High enough so that mosquito's don't get into the room.
The South elevation overlooks the local zoo and the Northern the city, ours has the Northern view.

Apparently latest news is that the construction starts this week and it will take 2 years to complete. With the inevitable delays, I suspect the payments to the developer will be coming to a close around the same time as it gets completed.

Location is pretty good, it's on the South side of the outer toll road which has lots of office buildings, both already in use and also being built.
The apartment is being purchased as an investment, either for rental or to flip after a couple of years if the value goes up.

I'm expecting a stressful journey, my wife will handle most of the business side and developer conversations. I'm assuming for now that I'm just the cash cow. Hopefully I'll get a lot more involved when it comes to the fitting out of the place.

Anyway, booking fee of 10 million IDR paid last week ($800), 20% deposit is due of 396 million IDR ($30.5k) of which I've sent $19k to the wife already. The rest will be sent shortly.

This is the grotto

I'll do some research on how to host images and then post here. Thumbsnap won't work due to security levels on the work laptop.

Wish me luck,
Phil

Edited by Jakarta on Wednesday 4th March 23:49

phumy

5,671 posts

236 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
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I work in construction at the moment in Indonesia and to be honest you will have to watch whoever does your internal build like hawks as they just do not understand the word or the meaning of "Quality".... I build power plants and the big stuff can be passed off with lower quality but places like admin buildings and control rooms cannot. At our place they had to do everything minimum twice to even get an acceptable standard. Good luck and let us know whan you start to tear out your hair.

Jakarta

Original Poster:

566 posts

141 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
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Cheers Phumy, having been in these kinds of apartments before (I lasted 9 months living in a similar one) I have seen the preference for low quality. Simple stuff like low ratio of cement in the render so when you bump into a corner it just falls off.
I'm not sure at present what we get with it in regards to the fixtures and fittings. Although I don't hold out much hope for them to be particularly good.
Are you in Jakarta? If so you'll find me in the Eastern Promise if I'm not away working.

Gingerbread Man

9,171 posts

212 months

Friday 6th March 2015
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It says 2 bedrooms but I'm sure I can see three, or is one the 'workroom' or similar?

Jakarta

Original Poster:

566 posts

141 months

Monday 9th March 2015
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That would be the maid's quarters. Believe it or not, even when living in a shoebox people here still have live in staff.
We've now upgraded to a larger 2 bedroom option which also doesn't have the maid's room.
Obviously an increase in price, we're now up to 2,350,000,000 IDR or about $180k.
Rumour has it that once completed it may have increased in value between 50-100%. That would be rather nice if it does happen.
Took a look around the new Ikea that we have here. Some fairly clever stuff going on, they have displays of a typical tiny apartment, be it 35 or 50 sqm to give you an idea of how compact they can make it.
We won't be quite so restricted but good to see it can be made into a comfortable living space.
First deposit of $20k made today. Another one next month.
The developers are very flexible on payment terms. Just to give us more monthly float in our pocket we've agreed to pay $2,500 per month and then at the end of each year a balloon payment to bring it up to the expected annual payment. Then there is also a closing balloon payment to make at the end of the 3 years.


Here is the new one at 115 sqm that you may notice doesn't come with a maid's room even though it's bigger.

Show units get built in the next couple of weeks. Once I get a feel for the real size instead of numbers on a paper chit it may start to seem a bit more real.


Edited by Jakarta on Monday 9th March 06:31