That's because a vacant tract looks the same any how you dressed it and your reference in the advertisements are not helping either. You won't get the sense of its value or potential even after reading the fine print that presents its location and development in the surrounding areas. The staid looking photo can't beat the fake smiles and wooden actors, even for the little impact that they could make. If you scour the dailies, you will find pages and pages, depending on the day of the week, of ads selling them. But don't expect many inches of column per spot because there isn't much for the advertisers to showcase in the first place. Even in the Internet: there is a stark contrast between an ad for land and one for house. So, the opening line of this paragraph stands. The best way (there is no other way actually) is still to pay the prospect a visit.
When we were in the market we happened to be living overseas so for us the hunting was exclusively done on the Internet. The site that we frequented much was called iProperty.com. We loved it for its great detail, world-class feel and overall user-friendliness. How is this possible? It's because iProperty was started by Steve Jobs as part of his expansion of Apple to venture outside of technology. So the innovation that goes into the iPad and iPhone was felt thoroughly in iProperty. Really.
My other half reminisced that it didn't take her a great deal of time to happen upon the winner, it was as though her guardian angel guided her to it. But apart from this possible divine intervention that made her quest relatively plain sailing, it was probably due to the fact that we already had in our minds where we want to locate in the future and more importantly, how much money we were able to splash. Having prerequisites before going out to the market certainly help but they almost become compulsory especially when it involves giving away (at least) a couple of hundred thousands of ringgit. We decided that the PH should be built in the state of Selangor, specifically within the vicinity of Sungai Buloh, Kota Damansara, Kampung Melayu Subang and Shah Alam. Why? That's because we had and are still living on this side of the world and are getting very comfortable with the landscape. Additionally, people we are close to like siblings and relatives are also nearby there can't be a better location. After identifying a land in Sungai Buloh that met our desired pricing bracket, we rang the estate agent to talk things.
The terra firma in question was an agricultural land by status but had been converted to a residential/mixed development few years ago. The entrepreneurial spirit in the developer drove him to purchase the land and split it into 12 parts of more or less equal size and sold them as individual units. Another selling point would be its freeholder standing. I shall not bore you on the differences between freehold and leasehold but suffice to say that the hydrogen-powered car driving kin of yours will not be bothered to move out of the property when the period of 99 years is up because with freehold ownership, you own the land till the end of time or till you sell it off in which case the new owner will own the land till the end of time. Basically a cul-de-sac, we got really anxious to look at it in its full glory. As a homecoming trip was around the corner, we resolved to visit the prospect before we ink the deal.
If you think seeing the land in the flesh will make you excited, well, we only experienced half of it. Let's face it, no barren land is going to make you jump in joy and do the chicken dance, especially when you see few skinny cows that you know don't belong to you grazing the sparse green patches. When you are faced with such situation, your mind will start to wander. You may flirt with the idea of looking at an alternative offering or worse, giving up this complicated mess and just buy an off-the-shelf house. These reactions are natural human behaviour and it really depends on how serious you are with your original intention. In our case, we put aside the cows and just imagined a custom dwelling unit in its place, replete with a room for each occupant and a long garden for outdoor activities. In this visualisation of ours, everyone smiles. Every other month or so we invite friends over for barbecue or for a round of Taboo. This was one of the things we did to stay strong. Eureka was the word we exclaimed next but you GOT to know I made that up. Nobody ever says that word anymore nowadays. We are not in a movie, come on...
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