Buying a piece of land?

Salam n g'day everyone...

we'll let's get straight to the piece now shall we..
let's see; buying a piece of land...sound straightforward enough; but only before you consider the real purpose of doing this, what shall we do with our little investment...or divestment one might ponder..

as is central to the theme of the blog..hehe..we'll talk about buying a piece of land for the purpose of house construction. (at this stage I'm putting some sortof disclaimer here...this might only apply to buying a land in Selangor, Malaysia.. other places might be a bit different). Also please bare in mind that I'm not a subject matter aspect in either house construction or land property investment, I'm just here to share my experiences; so expect mistakes aplenty in my writings!!

There are a few important aspects that need careful evaluation before we buy a piece of vacant lot, here's some of them

• Land title - this is perhaps the most important aspect of consideration. land title in Malaysia can basically be categorized into industrial, agricultural and residential land titles. it's important if we're building a house that we're buying the one gazetted for residential building. Agricultural land are normally cheaper...but they have a catch. they normally need to be converted into residential land title and this may take a few years (and some money!!) to be converted
• Residential land title have different types as well - they can be listed as freehold or leasehold. As a general rule the better one to buy are freehold as for leasehold they're normally limited to 99 years
• Buying a land for construction also will of course follow the golden role in property investment...location, location, location
• This is somewhat related to location but also important is the land elevation and flatness.  This will impact the construction later on as the need to build retaining wall will definitely increase the construction pricing.
• Finally, infrastructure readiness. Are there access road? if they are, is it paved? what about water and electricity? also plumbing?

So there you go folks. There are many things to consider when buying the land.. which is why i feel that doing house construction is just like managing the projects at work..

On a final note, the above list are not meant to be exhaustive, rather just as a set of basic rules that i believe would be useful.

By way of (urgh, writing a blog is not easy) AAMMJ