Pitfalls of buying a house
24/05/2007 The Malay Mail By Sharif Haron News editor

A LEGAL battle is brewing, and it’s over the right to use a road in Sungai Buloh.

It started when a group of terraced and semi-detached house residents complained that they were denied access to the road, when it should have been a public road. The local authority later attested to their claim.

The second group in the same housing project, who are detached house owners, believe the road is meant for their exclusive use as they had signed an agreement to that effect with the developer. They now plan to take both the local authority and developer to court.

Surely, there will be more twists and turns to the saga of Jalan Seroja 1/1 in the coming weeks, and The Malay Mail will try its best to update readers on the issue.

Honestly, I have no opinion regarding their dispute. Hopefully, everything will end well for all residents.

But what I want to touch on is how some developers have, intentionally or otherwise, given misleading information on their projects to prospective buyers.

At times, I feel they are guilty of going overboard with their advertising hype. Yet sometimes I feel some of them are genuinely unaware of the difference between a bungalow and a double-storey house, or between a link house and a terraced house.

I remember listening to this superlative-filled radio commercial on a new housing project that was shaping up on a hilly area. It sounded as if the project was located in the cool British countryside whereas it was actually in Malaysia where the daytime temperature seldom drops below 30 degrees Celsius.

In another case. my neighbour of three years said he bought a property in a new residential estate by mistake — he thought it was not far from the town centre.

The neighbour said the project’s location map appeared to suggest that his new house would be 3km from the town’s outskirts. He discovered later, that it was 30km away.

By the way, have you come across a developer who would voluntarily inform a prospective buyer that there would be a 10-metre-high retainer wall in front of that new house? Or that a sewerage pond or affluent treatment plant will be built next to the houses?

The moral of the story is, if you are considering buying a new house, you must check everything before signing the sales and purchase agreement. Don’t take the developer’s word as gospel truth. Otherwise you may regret it.

Just consider this. There was this big billboard put up by a developer in Bangi some time last year (It has since been taken down, as the units are nearing completion) to announce the new project. It’s headline screamed “Banglo Berkembar Dua Tingkat” (Double storey semi-detached bungalow).