In October, our contract for the apartment will expire. We have been talking for a while now about what to do when it's due, mostly because it is known that rent can increase significantly after two years. By significantly, it can be easily 20-30% increase. Most people move to another place to avoid paying a higher rent.
This year however, it seems the market dynamic is different. A lot of new condos are available but with the latest government control over immigration, there are not enough foreigners to rent them. Thus, a lot of apartments are empty and rents are stable if not decreasing. Up until yesterday we were talking how to renegotiate our contract to ensure minimum the same rent, ideally even lower. If some of our colleagues managed to renegotiate down, why not us?
Then, there was this sign on one of the houses on Marymount Terrace that I saw during the week, stating: 'reserved for future development'
I realized that most of the houses in the street are now unoccupied. In the past six months, pretty much since Oskar was born, people must have left their house.
Why?
We googled and discovered the reason: the North South Expressway.
A brand new expressway is being built. Major construction work is scheduled as of 2015, but some has already started. That explains all the construction noise across the street while I was on maternity leave.
Searching further we found the detailed map of the new expressway and something scary came up:
A ramp! One of the access to the underground tunnel of the expressway will be pretty much right under our nose!!!
In the near future, those lovely houses will be replaced by a construction site and later on by an expressway tunnel.
We can expect lot's of noise and dust from the construction which we could choose to watch from our VIP seats... or not.
In 24 hours, we found out that we will have to leave our apartment and find a new place.
It sucks :(
This year however, it seems the market dynamic is different. A lot of new condos are available but with the latest government control over immigration, there are not enough foreigners to rent them. Thus, a lot of apartments are empty and rents are stable if not decreasing. Up until yesterday we were talking how to renegotiate our contract to ensure minimum the same rent, ideally even lower. If some of our colleagues managed to renegotiate down, why not us?
Then, there was this sign on one of the houses on Marymount Terrace that I saw during the week, stating: 'reserved for future development'
Why?
We googled and discovered the reason: the North South Expressway.
A brand new expressway is being built. Major construction work is scheduled as of 2015, but some has already started. That explains all the construction noise across the street while I was on maternity leave.
Searching further we found the detailed map of the new expressway and something scary came up:
In the near future, those lovely houses will be replaced by a construction site and later on by an expressway tunnel.
We can expect lot's of noise and dust from the construction which we could choose to watch from our VIP seats... or not.
In 24 hours, we found out that we will have to leave our apartment and find a new place.
It sucks :(
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