House hunting complete (we hope)

The last two days have been quite busy viewing properties in some of the most central districts in the City. In total we viewed 11 properties and were scheduled to view 15 but once we found our dream home we were done.
Singapore housing is quite different than what we are accustomed to in the States. Most Singaporeans live in housing developments subsidized by the government, called HDBs, and are typically high rise buildings, although some of the earlier HDB buildings are smaller low rise buildings. With all of the expats here the demand is high for in city living so developers have created very large high rise condominium resorts to house everyone. Most come with full facilities like swimming pool, childrens pool, BBQ area, playground and fitness center.
We also looked at a few semi detached homes or cluster homes (read town or row houses) but they tended to a bit farther out and without facilities so we have opted for condo living. I have to say though that it won't be hard. The place we have selected is brand new, we will be the first tenant in the unit. The development itself is so in demand right now the entire 250+ units sold out in under 36 hours! Our unit is four bedrooms with a wet and dry kitchen ( I had no idea what that was but it's basically two kitchens, one that you can seal off by glass doors to do your aromatic cooking that you don't want permeating the whole house). The master bedroom is very large and Dannette will have a spacious bedroom with attached bath. Halie and the fourth bedroom will have the third hall bath to share. It also comes with a maids room just off the kitchen/ laundry area. We need to await final word on which of the two available units we get but our preference is the one on the 33rd floor that you will see in the pics.  As each unit is individually owned it comes down to which owner is willing to meet the corporate leasing terms including price.

View from 24th story Gym and Sky Deck

Pool Area

Children's Pool

Great Room that opens to kitchen

Full Kitchen (Dry)

Master Suite with peekaboo window to tub. Tub offers a stunning view!

View from one of the balconies at the unit

I thought you also might enjoy some of John's wit and analysis of our first few days here.  I close with a snippet of an email John sent out  to some people about S'pore:

"I can tell you a couple things about being in singapore for the few days i've been here.
1) It's humid like you can't believe. imagine the devil in a sauna in August, smoking a cigarette...

2) Car washes actually have people that wash cars.  it looks like everyone has a job no matter how menial.

3) Cleanest metropolis you can imagine, haven't seen a police officer yet and people spend alot of time outside.

4) People eat and shop like crazy, tomorrow i'm going to take some pictures of the shopping malls they are outrageously high end.

5) i'm going to lose ALOT of weight, ordering from the menu is an adventure.  Yesterday I ordered pineapple fried rice, hoping! I say again HOPING to get some fried rice that tasted like pineapple.  It had shrimp, squid, some brown meat that i have no clue what it was and cuttle fish.  Now i'm scared to order by menu, we were all freaked yesterday of what we had for lunch so we ate pancakes for dinner last night roflmao.  I better get used to asian food or ill be 130lbs when i get back, ive already lost a good amount of weight.

6) Holy Mother of God the housing that they are showing us is unreal.  We saw a property today that rents for 16k SGD a month that's about 14k USD.  The basement parking facility was literally cleaner than a doctors office in the states. It had 9 cars (yes I counted) in the basement, with no car costing less than 80k USD, mind you the cost to buy a car in singapore is is 5x+ more than in the US.  So the yellow 224k Lamborghini Galardo in the basement cost close to 800k in SGD.

7) But the place we chose is its worth 4.5 million dollars (us), we haven't locked it down but we hope the paperwork moves quickly and we can be in it in 2 weeks.  Living in this hotel like living facility really sucks.  The Condo is called Sky 11 and I attached some pictures to show everyone because, the Stubblefields will never again, more than likely, live somewhere worth 4.5 million dollars ever again.
 
Hope you all are well!  We continue to miss you all!