A quick update on my iskandar adventure, for those who may be thinking along the same lines...

As mentioned earlier, I decided to buy Orchid View because I wanted to make a MRT bet (its right next to the purported location of the MRT) and it was literally 1/3 the price of new launches in the vicinity on a psf basis.

I didn't think I'd lose too much on the price of the house, since I was buying at 1/3 the price of condos around me. But after hearing horror stories about rental, or the lack thereof, I told my agent, "Am ok to wait a couple of months, but am only worried that my unit is vacant for 3 to 6 months."

My agent responded, "Honestly, I cannot promise I can get you a tenant within a year."

Ok, so that didn't help my confidence much. But it is what it is, worst case I get a holiday home, I thought.

So, anyways, I started my renovation, trying to keep things as cheap as I could, since I thought I may not get rental for a year or more.

Which is easier said than done when the wife is making the renovation decisions. I managed to dodge putting in the false ceiling [lighting points are expensive!], new toilets ["let's buy a nice dressing table instead" -- which comes free with the bedroom set], and tiles [super expensive, so I distracted the wife by putting her to work to optimize the lights with the furniture].

Via these shenanigans, I managed to completely renovate my 1500 sq ft place quite nicely for RM35k, including all the furniture.

Happily, we went up to the place to stay for the weekend. By this time, I had gotten a Malaysian phone card (internet!) and discovered a gem of a website called "johorkaki.com" which gave us a lot of nice food places to explore.

First night we were there, we switched on all the lights, intending to take photos to send to agents for marketing. Once we turned on all the lights, the house shorted. Actually, the whole floor shorted. So I walked out amongst my bewildered neighbours, acting like I didn't know what happened.

That night I learned I had quite a few Singaporean neighbours. One rented out his HDB flat and rented an apartment there. Another was a rich fella - him and his family owned 10+ units at Orchid View because he felt it was the best way to effect a "shenzhen effect" bet.

Anyways, my place shorted because there was water leakage, which seeped into my electrical box. So we spent RM1k plus repairing that. Then the aircon broke down, so that was another RM3.5k. Then the built in heater malfunctioned, and we had to pay RM250. And when we thought we got everything figured out, the bathtub leaked. So another RM250.

Lesson learned - when buying old condo units in Msia, never buy as-is !

When all this was finally done, we put the unit out for rental via a couple of agents... and surprise of surprises, got 3 viewings within a week. Apparently, August is a pretty good time because the international schools are just starting the semester and my agent said that they were getting a good number of enquiries for units near the Woodlands checkpoint, and in Nusajaya (near to Educity).

In a bittersweet development, within 2 weeks of putting the unit out for rental, we managed to lock in a tenant for RM3k a month, and get this - on a 2-yr corporate lease. Sweet in that it extinguished my biggest risk, but bitter in that we were starting to quite enjoy our JB holiday home !

So for the maths whizzes amongst us, key numbers are as follows:
1) Purchase price: RM510k
2) Transaction cost (legal/stamp duty/loan docs etc): RM40k
3) Renovation : RM45k

Total cost: RM595k

Monthly considerations
1) Rental: RM3k
2) minus Maintenance + mortgage = RM2.5k
3) Nett CF = RM500