My New Flat: Getting the Keys

Last November, I received the notification to resubmit the HLE application. You can read more about it here :) 

Anyway, I was long ago informed that the house will be ready earliest by 1st quarter of 2014 and latest by March 2015. If  I'm not wrong, the day I gave the first 5% they did reminded me of the completion month of my house. You can always login to my Hdb Page to check the status of your new flat. They keep the completion date up to date and it's faster as compare to receiving snail mails from HDB. Do keep the earliest date of completion in mind so that you can do the necessary arrangement to submit the marriage cert. 

We resubmitted our HLE in November and within 1 week it was approved. From then on, I'll on and off login to my hdb page to check whether any appointment time has been fixed for keys collection.

One fine day in mid December, I logged in and noticed the change of status :) We were probably the last batch to collect the keys for our block. Btw, our block was the first to be completed among the others. 

Our appointment was on the first Monday of 2014! 

Not long later, we received the appointment date and some other documents to bring on the keys collection day via snail mail.

The documents to bring are just mainly what they issue you and also your NRIC. They have also enclosed a step by step guide as to what to do on the actual day, not forgetting information regarding the House Protection Scheme(HPS) and also the fire insurance which you have to know before collecting your keys. It's always good to read up :)

One of the information which I've retrieved from the stack of  documents they gave, I find it quite useful for thoes collecting their keys soon in the near future, is the additional amount to pay via cash/cpf other than the remaining 5% of the house.

No idea if it's the same for 5 room flat, but this is a good reference if you are wondering whether you have enough money in your CPF account to pay for the 5% deposit + additional stuff.

On 6th Jan 2014, we reached there 1 hour earlier than the scheduled time. We are supposed to purchase the Etiqa Insurance before we get the queue number. The Etiqa Insurance booth is located at the 3rd floor if I never remember wrongly. It's on the same level as the resale flat counters :)

We chose the basic fire insurance which costs us $6.98 for 5 years. We decided on the basic schemeinstead of the premium because the price difference is pretty big. The premium insurance for 5 years costs around $320 and everything has to be paid by cash. If it were to be paid by CPF, we would have taken the premium scheme instead of the basic scheme.

Oh btw, you need not take a queue number while you are at the Etiqa Insurance counter. You will have to drop the appointment letter send by HDB into their tray and they will call for your name. Quite a fast progress but do be there 1 hour earlier than your appointment time, just in case there's many others in front of you at the counter getting the insurance too. Some people have like tonnes of question for the person.

We went down to took our queue number then and wait for our number to be flashed on the screen. Same procedure as when you wait to select your flat. Probably not so kan cheong, but more of excited! 

We were being called in, in less than 10 minutes of waiting. There were lots of documents to be signed. Most of it were related to, how much are they deducting from your cpf(usually is they will sweep all you have), then they will re-caculate the monthly repayment amount and how many years of loan you wish to take up. 

The whole process took around 1 hour +. It wasn't a short process at all. Half way through, Derp has to went up to pay the first month of conservancy fees. 

We were under the AHG scheme. By right we were supposed to submit our ROM cert but we gave them quite a early notice(As soon as we resubmit our HLE) to defer our submission. Everything went on smoothly, we just had to sign a agreement with them to submit the marriage cert by a certain date.

If you are not under AHG, you can defer up to more than half a year. What I'm trying to say is, do let them know early your customary wedding will be on which date and you have already booked the banquet table.They are pretty flexible about it. As long you let them know before you go down collect your keys, they are definitely good with it. 

Don't be too last minute because you might risk not getting your keys on your key collection date. We did witness one such incident when we were getting our keys. The couple do not have any proof that they are getting married, not even a receipt from bridal studio hence the HDB personnel can't help them but to give them 3 months to submit the cert. 

We finally got our keys after 1 hour there. We had to count and account for the number of keys issued. 

The keys pouch given by them.

All the different keys.

We ate our lunch at toa payoh hub and went down straight to our new house. :) 

Mum has prepared pineapple for us to roll and also some other stuff for praying purposes. 

All the stuffs prepared by Mum. Thanks Mum! :) We took the joss stick to pray around the house for good health and 平平安安 to stay inside. 

My living room. I'm loving the full length windows. 

The master bedroom. 

First #OOTD in the house at the master bed room. 

Our master bed room toilet. 

Another shot of me at the kitchen area just next to the service yard. I was on phone with my dad to update him about my keys collection lol. 

Generally, the house is brightly lit and cooling because our units aren't the ones that get the direct sun. Not forgetting the facility and amenities nearby which makes us more than satisfied(that's why we insisted to choose that project among the others), and there's news of building a small mall just directly next to our hdb flat, We're looking forward to it. 

Ending this post with this photo taken by my dearest mum..

The proud owners of the new flat. 

Will be back soon with more updates regarding defects checking and soon enough, renovation!