173 Chin Swee Road

The Landmark Tower - 37 stories tall

It is time to tell you a little bit more about Ana and Simon’s new home for a year. The address was already provided to you the last time. The building where they now live is a condominium from the 1980s - More specific from 1986 – actually it’s newer that their apartment in Munich (1983), but for Singapore standards that is already old school. It was built on the other side of a Singapore park that includes a hill which somewhat blocks the view downtown. 

 However, they were pretty lucky that the apartment in question is located on the 29^th floor. Thus, they overlook the hill and have a pretty good view to the Central Business District (CBD) overlooking Chinatown and also having a glimpse of Sentosa Island – Singapore’s getaway island with resorts and amusement parks. 

Sunset over Sentosa

View direction CBD

So the Landmark Tower has really two sides. On the one hand, it offers the “relevant” amenities to qualify as a condominium, i.e. a pool (quite nice, 25 yards long), some sports facilities (a squash court, ping pong, a basketball court) and a barbeque pitch. Also, it comes with a doormen and a lobby that reminds you of a hotel. On the other hand, it is from the 1980s and unfortunately, not much renovation has been done ever since. One can be pretty sure that the building was initially highly popular with the expat communities but over the years, many of them have moved to newer condos (resort looking), giving way to “the locals”. So it is quite a diverse place and Ana and Simon have already met their Chinese neighbors :-) and other American and European expats. They rented the apartment directly from the owner and furnished. Renting from the owner saved them the agent fee which was nice. However, having said that not much has been done in the building since the 1980s, Ana and Simon have all that they need: One large living room (similar to size as the one in Munich for those who know the Munich apartment – for everyone who was wondering about a visit – we do have space :-)). a bedroom with a built-in closet, of course, they also have a bathroom. The balcony hosts their kitchen as well as the laundry machine – but no worries (it is covered), and they enjoy their dinners (when they eat at home) with a wonderful view of downtown. 

Chinatown at night - on the left, you can see the equivalent of the London Eye in Singapore

The pool, looked at from 29 stories up

After a few weeks living here, Ana and Simon are quite happy. A metro station is a ten minute walk away (or one bus stop) that brings Ana in two stops to work and Simon in 6 stops to INSEAD. As mentioned before, Chinatown is very close and in general, living here actually facilitates not being sucked into the “MBA student bubble”. What is that, you may ask? Well, more about INSEAD, the start of Simon’s studies and Ana’s time at Mercer in another blog. 

They certainly hope that you enjoy the pictures of their new home :-)

Many hugs from Singapore

Ana and Simon

Arrival and apartment hunting

Arrival and apartment hunting

After a trip that felt like 26 hours (Ana and Simon started at 8.15pm, arrived around 10.30 pm the next day – however, 7 hours were due to time difference), they arrived at Singapore’s Changi Airport – boy, welcome to an efficient country! Even though Emirates did not give them emigration cards to fill out in the plane, the whole immigration process (including writing down the details) took 10 minutes. They were not tested for cigarettes, chewing gum or other “sinful drugs” – Singapore is actually much more relaxed about many things than it has the reputation for. So they approached the baggage claim, already thinking about the nice hotel bed and waited for the luggage. Unfortunately, one suitcase didn’t make it all the way and that was especially painful in two ways: One, Ana and Simon had to spend about 45 minutes longer in the airport (approaching midnight) to fill in a claims form and do all the administration and two, it was actually the suitcase that they had readily packed for the first few days, i.e. with all the toiletries and a well-thought-through set of clothes to walk around Singapore. Oh well, they had safely arrived, healthy and just tired so they got to the hotel – home for the first three nights. Fortunately, Mercer paid for the Intercontinental and Ana and Simon fell into a deep sleep – welcome in Singapore!

Instead of sleeping in, they got up at 7am because Friday was fully planned. Ana and Simon started the day with doing organizational stuff: Ana went to the Mercer office to get the process going with her employment pass (the legal document that lets her stay for one year), Simon met colleagues from Oliver Wyman (that provide him with some infrastructure and also, Mercer and Oliver Wyman share the same building). It was 10 am when they started to do “their things”. They were very quick at obtaining a cell phone, an MRT (=subway = metro) card and even opening a bank account. So they were all ready for apartment hunting. From Germany, Simon had scheduled viewings with several agents and apartment owners so Ana and Simon could already start looking at the first apartment around lunchtime. While this blog is not going to describe each and every apartment that they saw, let’s say that apartment hunting in Singapore is painful. It is VERY pricey, for everyone in Germany: Munich is a joke in comparison. The rents for comparable apartments are easily twice as high. Then, the market is also divided into “condominiums” (meaning “nice” apartment blocks primarily targeted at foreigners / expats) and “HDB” (buildings provided by the Housing Development Board which promotes ownership of apartments for Singaporeans). Condominiums, if they are newer, were totally out of their budget – starting at € 2,500 for the most affordable ones. “Affordable apartments” means older ones and then they are actually not that nice any more. While you can rent HDB apartments, they usually also have some pitfalls or disadvantages – one agent (who was super nice, very friendly and by far the most service oriented) showed them five apartments on Friday that were all good in a way but always had a problem: not (supposedly “yet”) being furnished, unclear ownership, a hallway full of Indians that would stare at us, dirty common areas, etc. The last visit ended at 10.30 pm and Ana and Simon were both disillusioned and exhausted after 7 apartment visits. Simon checked more offers on the internet, went to bed at 1am and woke up at 4am, very nervous whether or not they would actually be able to find an apartment. Ana and Simon would check more apartments from 5am onwards and they found the “Fata Morgana” of all apartments. An apartment that appeared at the high end of their budget (but not over it), in a Condominium block from the 80s and the name – priceless: Spanish Village! Should this be their new home? They tried to get in touch with the listed agent and by getting in touch, it actually meant stalking her: E-Mails, SMS, calls. No success. They checked out the area by themselves and it seemed very nice. But you know, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. They haven’t heard from that agent until today.

This would have been at Spanish Village.Please note that the building Galicia would have been the common area with the pool!

To make a long story short: They looked at six more apartments on Saturday and then, they had run out of affordable options. Ana and Simon needed to get a decision done as Monday would be the first day of school / work and it was not likely to find something when all of that started. So they had to pick one of the 13 that they saw and there were some good ones – don’t be mislead – just not the “perfect one”. So they ended up going for the second one that they saw (which also means Ana and Simon could have saved a lot of time but you always need to see the market before making such a decision). It had some advantages over the others and now, their new home is as follows:

Ana Prado Gonzalez & Simon Oertel
173 Chin Swee Road
#29-03, Landmark Tower
169878 Singapore



You can already look up the location on Google Maps. The next blog will have more details on the apartment.