skyvers

For my case, my lawyer advise me to hold back some money for the removal of items remaining in the flat in the case where we are unable to do an inspection. So what I did was to list down the possible items still in the house ( based on the last time I viewed the flat) i.e dining table, sofa beds. Town council provides free removal of bulky items ( up to 3 pcs per mth). Officially any additional items will be chargeable at $25/pc. So i listed down 11 items and then subtract the 3 items and my lawyer wrote a letter to the sellers' lawyer to hold $200 ( 8pcsX$25) back in the payment because we are unable to do the final inspection. However there is no guarantee that the sellers will agree to this request but my lawyer say we can hold the payment of the outstanding property tax ( in my case, $90) at the very least. Later on my contractor friend told me that actually when the workers are there to remove the bulky furniture, we can actually pay that extra $20-30 and they will clear everything for you. Luckily after the letter was faxed over, the sellers'agent panicked and quickly arrange for the inspection so that completion can go on. Another option that have come across my mind was to get my agent to do the inspection for us and if when we get the keys, the flat is not vacant, my agent must be responsible to remove all items inside. This is because my agent was also at fault for failure to inform me that he couldn't contact the seller's agent the day before the final inspection. He assumed that the inspection will still go through. Anyway postponement of completion date should really be the last resort. It is a lose-lose situation for buyer. You get your flat later and might incurred admin charges for reissue of cashier order too.

According to Option To Purchase, Clause 19, Delivery of possession. 19.1 States that the flat is to be sold with vacant possession on completion. (if buyer is unable to confirm vacant possession then this clause is violated). 19.2 States that Seller must allow the Buyer to conduct a final inspection of the Flat on or before the Completion Date. (If this is also not carried out, then the seller have violated this clause too) Therefore I think the buyer should still inspect to confirm vacant possession unless prior agreement to keep some of the furniture.

Oops. Sorry for the late reply. Let me share my experience I managed to visit my house on the 7th March to let my contractor to take a look at my place to kickstart our renovation discussion after much coordination between my agent and seller agent. Seller agent insists that no black and white for 2 inspections so cannot guarantee this first visit until very late. When we go to the house, it was the owner's friend who open the door for us and he told us that the seller agent never give clear info to him on when we are coming over. Since we still manage to view the house in time, it's still acceptable. More bad experience followed. After that we arrange for second inspection to be the night before the completion date. Time and date was confirmed between my agent and the seller agent. However when both my agent and I went over for inspection, no one was there!! Worse still, we try to contact the seller agent but to no avail. Then I decided that I will call my lawyer to call off the completion since i didn't do the second inspection( during the 1st inspection, all the furniture are still around). At the same time, my agent will try to contact the seller agent. My lawyer advises me that to try not to postpone the completion because of charges that might be incurred for reissue of cashier order at a later date. Luckily my agent manage to contact the seller agent to arrange for an inspection during lunchtime. I did went down during lunch since it quite near my workplace to check that everything is fine before asking the lawyer to proceed with completion at 320pm. The owner's son was there to open the door and he told us that the agent never inform him about the inspection the night before . This seller agent really took the money and bochup siah. I must say that I am really quite frustated by all this unpleasant incidents.Well.. At least I got the keys already;) Almost postponed completion but luckily didn't. As for the early second appointment date, we have an agreement with the sellers to set the completion date 6 weeks from 1st appointment because they requested for delay of 1st appointment. By right my first appointment should be 1 month earlier.

Wow. Thanks for all the advice and sharing of your experiences. Definitely helped in framing my expectations regarding the final inspection. I guess that buyers are always at the losing end. Moral of the story is to always get any "black and white" whenever possible. For my case, seller requested for delay in 1st appt date and we agreed on goodwill. They again requested for later completion date and allow us to start renovation early. But we didn't want to start until we get the keys so we requested that we can bring ID down to take measurements before the completion date. We agreed on goodwill. And the seller "supposedly agreed" to our request but no black and white. But now the seller agent told us that owner never agree on anything and told us to use the floorplan for renovation. All we wanted was to take some simple measurements which are not in the HDB floorplan so that we can kickstart our discussion with our ID. I don't think it's unreasonable since the sellers seems to have vacated the flat already. Feel quite sad that all our goodwill were being taken advantage of. With sellers of such integrity, I fear that more surprises awaits when i do my final inspection. Furthermore my sellers are PRs who are revoking their PR statuses and going back to their country so if there is anything wrong with the flat, it would be almost impossible to find them after the completion date.Therefore I ask if there is any other benchmark other than "black and white" inventory list that would be reasonable for me to assess the condition of the flat during the final inspection. I guess that I got my answer alr: no "black and white"=just hope for the best:(

I have bought a resale flat in Feb this year and the completion date is at end of March. The HDB have already approved the resale application and told us to inspect the flat prior to the completion date. What do we look out for during the inspection? HDB's website stated at the completion date "The buyer confirms that the flat has been vacated and its condition is acceptable". How do we determine that its condition is acceptable? What is deemed acceptable by the seller might not be acceptable to me. Do I use the valuation report as the benchmark for assessing the condition? It has been quite a few months ago since we last viewed the flat. Our concern is that since the owners already shifting out, they will not take good care of this current flat. In the event that the condition now is much worse than the time when we last viewed the flat, what can we do? Have anyone encounter similar situations before? Would appreciate any advice or comments regarding the above. Thanks:)