HOME SWEET HOME

At last something is happening towards buying a property in Bangalore.... :)

From years we brothers have been trying to buy a immovable property - site or house - in Bangalore. And now it has almost become true. It all started around 6-8 months back when we were at the heights of searching for a house to shift to Bangalore South. After almost 16 years we shifted back to Bangalore South from Bangalore North. This change was triggered because of my father's retirement and also due to other personal reasons. Before shifting actually happened, we were trying our best to buy a home or to buy a site and then build a home. But bad luck or whatever you call it (I call it good luck), we couldn't buy either of them. So ultimately we settled for a rented duplex house. The house is quite beautiful. But the quench for our own home didn't stop. Instead it increased 10 folds or even 20 folds. But our lives had become busy after moving to this new place. By being closer once again to our relatives my family and I had found our long lost joy. So we couldn't spend enough time in the search.

A couple of months back, my brother saw an advertisement in a daily and we rushed to see this new apartment that is being built near Kanakapura Road. The apartment is from HM group and is beautiful. When we approached the concerned people from the HM group, we were taken to a model apartment. And guess what, it was a first love to all of us - my brother, SIL, nephew and to me. On one side, we could oversee the swimming pool from the veranda and from the other side we could see the vast stretch of land covered with trees, smaller buildings and other things!! And as I said earlier the apartment was a first love to all of us, and we at once decided to buy it. Initially my brother and I were against buying an apartment. Our argument was- "Even if you own one, an apartment doesn't give you the satisfaction of actually owning something completely to yourself. Because you are actually sharing the same piece of land with 100 other people". Anyway,  we had softened over the last few months. Probably we had got desperate after searching for more than a year and not finding even a single home or site within our budget or satisfaction matching all our criteria. That evening we collected as much information as possible about the apartment from the manager and left for home. We were all kind of happy, kind of satisfied that at last we have actually decided to buy something.. something that we all kinda liked in the first look itself.

A couple of weeks later my brother and I decided to take a second look at the same apartment but at different time of the day - noon - and the Sun was burning like hell. In the last 2 weeks my brother had enquired about the possibility of loans from a few banks. We had also shortlisted 2 banks for the same. But we hadn't realized that this second look would actually make such an impact on us! It completely changed our perspective about buying the apartment. The model apartment which we had seen the last time was all fully furnished (model, you see, so it should look beautiful, even though the furniture was no good and we couldn't open or close any of the cabinets). We decided to see the same apartment once again. And this time we also decided to see another apartment without any furniture. So when we saw these for the second time and got the quotation for the apartment, we realized that it would cost us a whooping 60-65 lakh Indian rupees. That was too much of a price for us. We gave the manager some reasons and took leave of him and went back to our home. On the way home, I all of a sudden realized that instead of paying so much money to an apartment which cannot be extended or modified later in life, why not invest on a site and build our own home? Moreover ours is a joint-family. So there is every possibility of family growing bigger over the coming few years. And at the same time I remembered that we had discussed about a site in Bangalore nearer to our current home and according to our estimate at that time (6 to 8 months back), it would cost around 30 lakh Indian rupees to buy the site and then build a duplex 3 bed-room home which would cost us anywhere between 20 -25 lakh Indian rupees. Compared to the total cost of the apartment, we would have saved anywhere between 5 - 10 lakh Indian rupees. Moreover, we also can extend, modify our home in future. Not only that we could BUILD it the way we want. When I informed about my idea, my brother immediately called up the site owner and inquired if the site was already sold to somebody or if it was still available for sale. The owner said it is still available, and we told him that we are interested to buy it and this time we would go for it no matter how difficult we might feel to arrange the cost of the site.

I proposed this idea in front my family - my parents, brother, & SIL. The very initial question we all had was, which bank to approach and how much loan should we take? What is our repayment capacity... and even before we finished finding answers to all these questions, we had started dreaming about our new home. A home that would be planned in the dreams and shall be built for the future of our dreams. And today, I met 2 people - one from the bank and the other one a lawyer. After the initial verification, I was told by the lawyer that all the documents are correct and only one more document is missing which I/we have to get it asap. The bank guy seems to be a nice chap but kinda over enthusiastic. And I guess it is for our good (or may be even to meet the monthly target ;) or probably because of high respect for another person a relative of ours through whom we had approached this bank guy). The bank guy helped me fill up the application form.

Like the saying goes "Fortune favors the brave", this month bank is giving loans at 8% interest rate (for the first year) and from next month onwards it might increase to 9%. So we all are trying our best to get the things done ASAP... so that we can become the legal owners of the site and can construct our HOME SWEET HOME.

Wish me good luck :)