Housing dilemma

We resumed our home search this weekend and saw 6 apartments on Sunday alone.

Asking prices ranged from $520K for a freehold unit at Ballota Park to $1.7mil for an astonishing beautiful 3 bedroom sea view unit at Makena along Meyer road.

Your dad liked the one in Bedok Court. Asking price is $680k. It's huge, has 3 bedrooms, a huge courtyard, 2 balconies and full facilities. But it's also more than 20 years old, in original condition and on a 99 year lease. Even if we could negotiate it down to $600k, cough up the 20% for downpayment, we still need to find another $60-100K to make the place liveable.

So how?

I came up with an idea that'll "bring the house down" literally. Can we extend our living space by building a 4th floor on top of your grandparents 3 storey terrace house? That way, we'd get space for another 2 bedrooms and maybe also a roof terrace (hopefully lightning proof) for BBQs and it wouldn't cost us more than $100k to do that.

How's that?