The recent news about the affordability of HDB homes got me thinking about the time when I too was newly married and looking to get my first home. It was a pivotal time in my life as the choice of home would determine the path I took towards financial freedom.

Like many others before my time, I had gone through different periods of the housing bust and boom times. Even as my parents benefitted from upgrading, my elder sibling had to wait close to 2 years for his HDB flat and that was considered good during times when average waiting time for new HDB flat was about 3-5 years. This resulted in many couples married by only staying together 3-5 years after they have had registered their marriage with the Registar of Marriages.

I was fortunate in that my home search was sometime in 2000 when the market was still slowly recovering from the excesses of the Asian financial crisis and the dot-com bubble was starting to unravel. Thus, I managed to get my home at a reasonable price. Continue reading →

_{»crosslinked«}