How to evaluate a property remotely before buying or renting

Showflats are all closed right now, so there’s nothing to see besides plants dying in the sales gallery window. And with the Covid-19 circuit breaker turning in-person property viewings* into an illegal activity, buyers who might be evaluating a potential property purchase will need to get creative (moving house is still allowed, by the way).

You might ask “am I really going to know whether it’s the right home just by sitting at my desk?” Well, our answer is a definite yes.

[For property viewing tips, read this article.]

How to evaluate property without viewing it in-person?

Not only is it easy, evaluating your property this way can give you a more balanced view. It’s amazing how much better our brain works when there isn’t a salesperson going full throttle at 200-words-per-minute. It just requires some note-taking, and your smartphone/laptop/desktop:

• Comb through the properties available near to your must-have amenity
• Do a quick verification of distances
• Compare prices
• Complement your property research with Google Street View
• Check the mortgage estimates on your property
• Check the URA Master Plan

Note: You don’t need a laptop or desktop to do the following

Everything mentioned below can be done on your smartphone. For ease of use, however, we suggest downloading the free 99.co app, instead of doing the following in your phone’s browser. It’s a lot easier as the app is optimised for mobile use.

Step 1. Comb through the properties available near to your must-have amenity

A good place to start is to look up the various amenities you need, like schools, malls, MRT stations, hospitals, or just your office address (if you want to work nearby) that attracted you to your shortlisted home in the first place.

To make it simple for you, the 99.co engine allows you to search for nearby properties through specific amenities. For example, say you want to find properties near St. Patrick’s Secondary School.

You can simply type the school name in the 99.co home page or app search bar:

And we’ll find you the closest properties to St. Patrick’s Secondary School:

Browse the different properties which are close to key amenities, and compare these to your intended property.

To make it a fair comparison, set the filters to match the property you’re interested in (e.g. if your intended property is a three-bedroom unit, compare between others of similar size to get a clearer assessment).

You may find that some options are closer than the unit you’re interested in. You might also find that other units are bigger or cheaper than your intended property, for a comparable price (a real possibility for resale units, as new developments are always priced higher).

Step 2. Do a quick verification of distances

Sometimes its hard to tell the exact travel time between your intended properties, and the alternatives; especially if the common point of reference isn’t a general one (i.e. many listings will state the distance to the MRT station, but you have to check the distance to your office, childcare centre, parents, and so forth by yourself).

We’ve done some of the work for you: if you just click on the development’s name on 99.co, our review page lists the main distances that many reviews leave out; like the time to the airport or Raffles Place and the public transport fare it costs to get there:

Step 3. Compare prices

How do you make sure your intended property is fairly priced? Turns out that you don’t have to be a property expert to do this. Simply head to the 99.co page to check out other transactions in the development you’re looking at, as well as other developments nearby. Note that the price range of transactions in the past 12 months, on a per-square-foot basis, is clearly indicated:

Note that clicking on the surrounding developments will also allow you to check their prices. In general, you want to look at the prices for at least five to 10 nearby developments, on both total price and price-per-square foot basis.

A difference in price of more than 20% from your intended property (higher or lower) is worth checking out: sometimes the reason is just the age of the project (freehold units almost always cost more, as do new launches). If the property you’re looking at is more expensive than a similar sized unit at a comparable nearby project, you’ll want to question if the asking price for your shortlisted home is too much.

(If you’re paying too little, also try to find out why; sometimes it’s just due to the seller’s financial situation, but it can also be due to a lot of new launches in the same area, which can lead to keen competition in for buyers the long run when you eventually decide to sell).

Note that if you click on the development name, you can see more details – such as a breakdown of costing for the units, with the lowest and highest prices:

This being said, note that price estimates should not be taken as a given if there are less than five transactions within the development in the past year. For instance, if the development has only seen two resale transactions, and one is a low floor unit, the price per square foot will skew downward and could be misleading).

So, for developments with few recorded sales in the past 12 months, consider using the surrounding developments as a gauge instead. Just bear in mind that newer private homes are almost always priced higher; about 15-20% more.

Step 4. Complement your property research with Google Street View

Google Street View can reveal things you didn’t quite expect about the property, by allowing you to check out the roads and surroundings. It’s especially useful right now, when we can’t go out of the house.

Here’s an example: we’re looking at the roads and surroundings near Park Avenue Clemenceau Suites, to get a sense of what other amenities are around. By coincidence, this image also revealed the potential traffic in the area:

There’s a big difference between using a two dimensional map and actually seeing the street view (it’s more intuitive for us to navigate by familiar landmarks, you’ll often have better familiarity with the area in Street View).

You can also try to manually navigate to the nearest MRT stations and schools via Street View, to get a sense of what the trip will be like. You can also pick up other details, such as whether the walk will be mostly sheltered, and how many road crossings are required (useful if you have young children or elderly family members).

Step 5. Check the mortgage estimates on your property

You need to make sure you can get a bank loan / afford your intended property. To do that, use the 99.co calculator:

For quick reference, note that the first five per cent of the property must be paid in cash, and the next 20 per cent can come from CPF (for a minimum of 25 per cent down payment, as shown above).

Make sure you can handle the initial five per cent in cash, as you can’t borrow to cover this amount.

The home loan repayment (the circle on the right) cannot exceed 60 per cent of your monthly income, inclusive of other debts like personal loans, car loans, etc. If it would go past this, you need to either increase the loan tenure, or make a bigger down payment.

When researching your intended property, we suggest that you keep it to:

• No more than five to seven times your annual household income
• Repayments that won’t take you beyond 40 per cent of your monthly household income, inclusive of your other debt obligations

Step 6. Check the URA Master Plan

Visit the URA website and check out the latest version of the Master Plan, for wherever your property is located. You can also look up our earlier guide on how to use the Master Plan.

Note that, because this is public information, many properties in a particular area would have priced in upcoming and future developments, such as yet-to-be-completed malls and MRT stations. The Master Plan is important for revealing things like:

• How dense or packed the area will be (look at the Gross Plot Ratios)
• How the surrounding amenities may change in coming years, hence a property’s potential value upside
• Zoning: when an area no longer has any empty land zoned as residential, for instance, the existing residential properties tend exhibit better price and rental resilience from scarcity value

By following the steps above, you can get incredible amounts of detail on your intended property even without viewing the home and the area in person.

Thanks to this amazing internet, and the abundance of free property related tools, you can continue to shortlist and study your intended homes even during the circuit breaker.

In fact, it may be a good idea to use the above method, even if you were free to walk around without a mask in the future, because you’ll pick up things that you otherwise wouldn’t. None of the above costs you anything, so it’s worth trying before making the biggest purchase in your life.

 

Which property have you got your eye on? Voice your thoughts in our comments section or on our Facebook community page.

Looking for a property? Find the home of your dreams today on Singapore’s largest property portal 99.co! You can also access a wide range of tools to calculate your down payments and loan repayments, to make an informed purchase.

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