the troubadour

Singaporeans have always liked Melaka so could be aimed at them. Any impressions with regards to the quality of new builds in gated communities?

the troubadour

Just went back and checked the date. 2012. I guess the situation has moved on over those two years.

Bluenose1

We eventually moved here in March 2013. What made me arrive at that decision? Not what, but who! My wife as she was born in Melaka and most of her (rather large) family and extended family live in and around Melaka. That, plus the fact she owns some land and we are in the process of building our own house (Plans have, eventually and after more than a year of working on it) been submitted for approval (2 weeks ago).

A lot depends on where you look to determine what is on offer! As I mentioned, the vast majority of the new build in and around the city are linked houses, which will not appeal to everyone and almost certainly NOT the typical ex-pat. The house we are renting until our own is built, is a linked house - my wife's family own 5 of the 7 in our 'link'. My sister-in-law lives in the house immediately next to ours. the other 4 are all rented out.

Most of the gated communities are in the outlying districts, such as Cheng, Ayer Keroh, Durian Tinggal, Alor Gajah etc, so anything up to 30 to 45 minutes drive from the centre, but still part of Melaka state. There are very few, if any, gated communities in the near vicinity of the city centre, which is what may give the impression of there being few and far between. For example, the main stretch of road running away from the City along by the sea (which incidentally has actually been reclaimed from the sea) has a lot of new build in terms of shoplots and linked houses, but no gated/guarded estates.

bakedbean

Could it be that some (a lot?) of the properties are under the Million threshold?

Bluenose1

Certainly most of the linked houses are under. But then around 1/3 of those are Malay only, so that would preclude any foreigners from buying, and these are discounted (anywhere between about 15% and 30%). In a lot of the areas where they have linked houses, they also have semi-detached and the occasional detached. Semis and detached are probably in the RM750K - RM1.3/1.5M bracket. None of these have much land either.

Bluenose1

Hi Peter. Is your visit to Melaka still on (arriving 3rd)? I have sent a couple of PMs recently but have not yet seen a reply.

Moonbeamzz

Hi Bluenose1, yes we are still visiting Melaka and have pm'd you. Had some communication problems but resolved now.
Cheers
Peter

the troubadour

Do give an account of impressions and opinions Moonbeamzz on Melaka. Do you feel it doable for you?

Moonbeamzz

Will do troubadour, will write up a post when we get back home.
Cheers
Peter

Moonbeamzz

Hi Troubadour, please find a post on Melaka and Malaysia in general based on our trip in Jun/Jul.

1.Kuching - we went here for a week at the start of our holiday, out of curiosity. Found it to be quite clean, well laid out and easy to get around. Quite a small city and quite modern in places. Found prices very cheap for most things in comparison to mainland Malaysia though not sure about either real estate or cars. Enjoyed our stay but unless you are into trekking/hiking or lots of outdoors stuff in general you may start to twiddle your thumbs a bit.

2. Melaka. Originally planned to stay for 6 nights and ended up extending. Was very fortunate to catch up with Bluenose1 whom we went out for dinner with at a seafood restaurant at Klebang, he was a real mine of information regarding life in Melaka and gave us plenty of insights. Melaka itself is a very historical city with heaps of tourists over the weekend and Jonkers St ( probably the tourist hub) is absolutely packed on Friday and Saturday night. Traffic is also very heavy over the weekend due to the tourist influx. More expensive than Kuching but much less so than Kuala Lumpur. Went out to Ayer Keroh for a look as we had read lots of expats live there, well they may but we didn't see any and in any case we got lost (bugger) and didn't get to see the country club estates we had heard about. Having said that though we found Ayer Keroh very green and leafy and if we lived in Melaka that is an area we would look at. Felt very safe in Melaka (as we did throughout our stay in Malaysia), enjoyed a couple of pleasant walks along the river which is well paved (forgot to mention Kuching also has a very pleasant paved walk along the river one of its inner city features in fact) with a couple of good bars/restaurants. Found Melaka to be a comfortable city, as for living there well to be honest am not sure. Didn't strike us as ÿes" this is the place for us nor did we write it off. Would we visit again, yes we would, are we jumping over ourselves to go back, no we are not and that probably sums it up for us. Each to their own, vising and viewing Melaka was the overall purpose of our trip to Malaysia to see if we felt it was a place to live, we enjoyed it, we felt comfortable there but weren't out singing and dancing in the streets saying yep the search is over this is the place for us.

3. From Melaka off to Kuantan, a 6 hour bus trip where at times you just shut your eyes and say I have had a good life if this is it well so be it. Anyway we got to Kuantan where they have a brand new sentral bus terminal some way out of town (much further than Melaka Sentral) so it needs a cab/bus or whatever to get into town and unless you are a real masochist you are not going to walk it well not if you have luggage anyway. Found Kuantan to be a happy pleasant and very polite place. Not as advanced as the west coast and very noticeable Muslim influence, realise Islam is the national religion but it is quite noticeable in Kuantan. They have a very picturesque mosque which I wandered up to and as it was Ramadan and prayers were starting it was quite busy but no one seemed to mind me wandering around. Went to a couple of beaches and they are the best I have seen in Malaysia certainly put Batu feringhi in Penang to shame. Found Kuantan pleasant put it in the category of been there, seen it, enjoyed it, don't see any need to rush back.

4. Kuala Lumpur. Big city, been there a few times before (first time in 1974), good for shopping, lots of roadworks going on which makes getting around tricky, Bukit Bintang remains a zoo etc. Good place as a final stay, we were there 4 nights and I like to think the missus boosted the local economy via her energetic approach to shopping.

All in all we were in Malaysia for a month and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, certainly beats the hell out of freezing your buns off during winter here in Oz. Plan to return for a similar if not longer stay next year but will almost certainly go back to Penang.

Feel free to ask any questions or PM me if you wish.

Cheers
Peter

bakedbean

in fact, excellent post, great info.

Think I'm going to start off a topic on Kuantan and copy and paste your info into that..... hope you don't mind. It's great info for anyone visiting there or maybe thinking of living there.

Moonbeamzz

Thank you bakedbean, could you advise how to edit a post as I would like to improve the spacing (hence readability) and punctuation in my post above.

christmasoompa

You can only edit a post within a couple of hours after posting - after that you need to ask a mod to do it for you.

I'll add some spacing in to it now for you, HTH.

the troubadour

Many thanks Peter for your very informed thoughts and impressions. I first visited KL in 76 so not long behind you. Looks like Penang may win out.

I have deleted a long post and will send it via pm when a little more time.