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.