Not taking it sitting down
NST 27/2/2005 By Ahirudin Attan

WHEN YOUR BLOOD pressure starts to be of concern to your wellness, they tell you to stop smoking, to eat less of what you love most and more of what you don’t care about, and start working out.

If yours isn't a chronic case, these tips should be good enough to keep the doctor away as long as you don't get yourself too worked up. Problem is, in this day and age, and in this country and city, there are lots of things that get you really worked up.

Like buying a new house... or rather, trying to move into the house you rightly thought you have bought — because you have paid the hefty downpayment and the bank is thanking you each month for the payments — only to be told by the developer that they have problems with the Certificate of Fitness (CF), that they can't afford to reimburse you the full 10 per cent of what they said they would in the event of late delivery, and that they really can't entertain your claims for sloppy workmanship because times are hard and if you insist then they'd have to see you in court.

Well, if times are hard as claimed by such a major developer as the one that is building the sprawling housing estate in Puchong where we "bought" our corner-lot terrace from, imagine how long-suffering housebuyers like us are faring.

But then again, we should consider ourselves lucky. A couple who bought a corner lot near ours live in a rented house while waiting to move into their new home that hasn't got a CF but has got lots of defects. Since paying the downpayment three years ago, they have added two more kids to their family and are today paying the rent as well as the instalment for the house (they thought) they'd bought.

The developer gives them the same line each time: that times are hard for them and that house buyers should have a heart and absorb some of the costs. To those thinking of dragging the developer to court, think again as they stand to lose as much as the developer.

If the developer goes down, everyone goes down with them: the housing project will be abandoned, buyers don't get to move into their new houses, and banks will be saddled with bad debts, thousands of foreigners will lose jobs and become wayward.

If the developer is a public-listed company, as in the case of this particular developer, the implications are greater: share prices will plunge, inflicting untold sufferings not only on institutional investors but also on many poor, small-time retail players. At the end of the day, the Composite Index could drop below this or that psychological level, all because of some house-buyer's rash and selfish act.

My mother-in-law never owned a house — she brought up her five kids in rented homes — and therefore does not care about the problems the developers claim they are facing, or will face if we take all the actions open to us as house-buyers, as provided for under the purchase agreement (and every agreement earned the developer's lawyers a couple of thousands of ringgit).

"We were supposed to move in last year. You promised that we could move in last year," she went on and on one morning on the phone with a representative of the developer.

This time she was told the developer had submitted the application for CF (the temporary CF expired last October) but the council was sitting on it.

She called up the Subang Jaya Municipal Council to verify the claims by the developer. By the time she got the right department and the right person, she was asked for "too many details" not just on the house but the zone, the lot, this and that. Not good, I muttered, and told her to let me take it from there. I know dealing with the developer will not be the best thing for my B.P. but taking it sitting down while they take all sorts of liberties at your expense is definitely worse.