general updates as at 25/4/15

time to update our beloved residents concerning the happening in Vista Condo...

1) the job for replacing the faulty under ground conceal main pipe at blk k parking area already completed, it took abt one week to finish, now we are monitoring the water flow rate at the main drain besides the blk k, the full payment will be made only after we are sure that the job is indeed done properly.

2) new office clerk Ishak has reported to work, he is replacing the the previous clerk Ah Lai, hope he is an efficient worker, just for resident's info, another veteran staff Mr Rahman's role is building supervisor, so most of the time he will check on our common area, attends to residents' complaint, also to monitor the work of other vendor like guards, housekeeping staffs, renovators, etc.

3) we have sent the letters to all the unit owner of the foreigners hostel to ask them not to convert their unit to be hostel and if they insist then new rate of service charge RM500 will be imposed starting May 2015, so far some of them responded & still negotiating of moving out the tenants but most of them just don't bother, well, let's see how it goes in May....

4) some residents suggested in the previous posts that should put the defaulters' unit number & outstanding amount at the notice board (or other places which many peoples will pass by), we thought this this is workable idea, so from next month onward, defaulters' detail will be up at the notice board at every middle of the month, hope this will create some pressure for them to pay SC promptly.

thanks.

challenges of prolonging Vista Condo life span (part 2)

last article we mentioned abt if based on our regular monthly collection on the SC (Service Charge), as long as we can maintain 85% collection rate, then we should have enough fund to maintain our existing facilities, even to upgrade it, but for those major items like building repainting, water tanks replacement, lifts upgrade, major PBA & sewerage pipe replacement then gov't financial aid is definitely needed, for most of the cases, state gov't will absorb 80% & residents will bear the 20% of the total cost, for Vista Condo we are consider fortunate as state gov't recognise s as LMC (low medium cost) apartment which open door for us to approach state gov't for help :)

our challenge now is how to get ourselves ready for the 20% whenever gov't is willing to fund the 80%. 2 years ago when state gov't approved our request to upgrade blk k lift, where we need to deposit abt RM34k as 20% so that the upgrade work can be commenced, it also took us awhile to gather enough money for that purpose, so this time when gov't willing to absorb the 80% of the total cost for 10 water tanks replacement, we can't produce the 20% which is RM81K, so the project has been delayed until now :(

the water tank vendor is kind enough to let us trade in our existing water tanks with high price at 40K, even willing to channel in the money in advance so that our side only need to contribute RM41K to get the project started, but sad to say, we don't even have 41K at the moment but only 20K.

well, we believe in another 2 months' time we will have that 41K, but now what interest us more is, how abt future project? as we are planning to get gov't to help on main pipe replacement, building repainting, blk j lift upgrade, etc. we should always have the money ready to pay the 20% when gov't is ready to bear the 80%.

if possible, we would like to suggest in the coming AGM to collect RM10 every month from each unit as Vista new sinking fund (the old sinking fund still pending on further legal action), but pls understand this is jz a suggestion, we can't proceed with this without residents' approval.

we will like to see every month to collect abt RM2750 as Vista have 275 unit & deposit into sinking fund account, then in a year's time should have RM33000, 2 years is RM66000, 3 years RM99000, if FD rate is 4% then after 3 years the figure should hit RM100000 :)

the whole purpose is so that when gov't say yes to our future request for building repainting, or blk j lifts upgrade, or other major project few years from now, we can deposit our 20% straight away & the new project can start immediately, and our residents can enjoy it's benefit without the unnecessary delay.

what do u think?

thanks.

challenges of prolonging vista condo life span (part 1)

we always told each others (haha! most of us in our 40s already) our generation are consider very fortunate, as many of us are capable to purchase an apartment in Penang, because many graduates who although have worked for few years, but still can't afford to buy an apartment due to the skyrocketing of property value in the past few years, now in Penang, a 700sqft apartment (like Vista Condo) with reasonable facility worth easily 280k, imagine those days when most of us purchased the property in late 1990s' until late 2000s', only cost abt 100k.

while federal govt & state govt busy introducing some cooling measure trying to control property value (such as increase real property gain tax, stricter loan condition, affordable housing, etc), we still don't expect property value will drop, especially those in range of 250k to 400k may still increase in the much slower pace, perhaps the high end one like more than 600k will have little bit problem to push their unit, anyhow price won't drop, unless the bubble burst in future, which is quite unlikely....

latest statistic shows that Penang will see increase of population 100,000 person per year, which needs abt new 25,000 house in every year, this speak of house/apartment still in demand, especially those in 250k to 400k are in shortage, so for Vista Condo, your unit still sell-able in future, as long as our facilities still in good shape.

so now the challenge is, how to maintain the facilities in good shape in order to make Vista Condo remain attractive in the market? basically for condo living, some critical area need to pay more attention to, for market value and also residents' living, the lifts, the water tanks, various pumps, major electrical items found in the switch rooms.....

Vista Condo as a 20 years old apartments, understandably that many facilities have reached the end of life span, so we are slowly replacing these facilities, in the past few years, 2 lifts in blk k have been upgraded, 2 swimming pool pump & filter replaced, 1 residential pump also changed, some important but no so critical items like gutters, underground pipes also replaced in some area...

at the moment if based on our monthly collection of Service Charge, as we find way to maintain it at 85% collection rate, then we still able to replace the aging facilities, but for the future replacement of the more major items such as water tanks, lifts at blk j, bomba & residential pumps, bomba pipes, PBA common pipes, then govt's help is needed, but as their financial help only 80%, our future challenge will be how to produce the 20% even when the govt has agree to contribute 80%.

this is the situation we are facing now, the gov't willing to bear 80% of the water tanks project, which is abt 320K, residents suppose to contribute the 20% or 81k, but as the vendor is kind enough to absorb our existing tanks at 40K, but we still can't produce the remaining 41K to order the get the project started, and it's delay until today....

we will share more next week on few options to tackle this, pls also contribute your opinions so that hopefully at the end we will be able to start the govt funded-projects as soon as possible whenever govt's fund is available, for other project as well.

thanks.

some updates on the foreigner hostel

before we share some updates on the hostel issue, we also wish to inform our beloved residents that the yr2015 insurance premium is RM215.30 & quit rent is RM9.60, pls do kindly proceed payment at the management office so that we can settle with insurance agent as early as possible :)

yes concerning the foreigner's factory hostel, last month we saw another 2 unit have jz moved in, so now the total is 12 units officially, what a frustration we have!!!

we have got the landlords' number from the management office & called them personally, there are few numbers can't get through, and one wrong number too. But we managed to talk to some of them, only one landlord give the positive response that he will try to ask the agent to move out the foreigners but ask for more time, but another few landlords display some uncooperative attitude, but we have made it clear to them that our residents have passed the resolution in EGM to increase their service charge (SC) to RM500 per month if they continue to keep the foreigner factory workers in their unit.

this coming week the management office will send the notice to the landlords informing them their SC will increase to RM500 effective May'15, we expect some big hoohaa from them after they receive the notice, but since they have chosen to ignore the verbal warning through phone calls so we got to send them some official notice, in fact we have also talked to lawyer & MPPP concerning this.

actually it's offense of the law by converting residential unit into hostel, for which we also will send the list of hostel detail to MPPP soon for them to act, in short, we try to corner these unit from whatever angle which is available, and hope that the landlord will have common sense to stop renting their unit to the foreigner workers.

we are collecting more quotations for the lift T&G scanner system, once our finance is more ready then the system will be installed in our 4 lifts, for which the access card would not be issued to the hostels, this is another way of discouraging these units to be turned into hostels.

do share with if you guys have good ideas to tackle this problem, thanks.