Apartment Hunt - Day 3 (and change)

Connie had gotten in touch with an old college friend who is soon moving to Singapore to get married after finishing a business school degree in China.  Her fiance is in Singapore and his mother is in real estate, so he has kindly offered to look for apartments for us and serve as our agent.  We saw five places with him on Saturday and one more today:

Tiong Bahru MRT

Central Green - We saw two units in this condo.  It may have been the weather that day or something in the air, but for some reason the neighborhood and the condominium gave us the hibby jibbies.  The units were big enough, the buildings really close to the MRT, the facilities seemed adequate; maybe the place felt a bit run-down, but I can't point to a real issue that caused us to not give these apartments any consideration.

LUNCH: In-between viewings we had lunch at Vivocity (a huge mall in the South where you can catch the train to Sentosa Island) at the chain restaurant Soup Restaurant.  Great steamed chicken with ginger sauce...

HarbourFront MRT

Harbour Light - We saw two units in this condo as well.  Again, very close to MRT and shopping (Vivocity mall where we just came out of lunch), just like we asked.  This condo was on a major road canopied with overground train tracks.  So busy and noisy, but on the other side it was facing Mount Faber, the local big hill, and a hiking destination.  The units were a bit dated but not bad and a good size.  The facilities int he condo were limited to a small pool and a gym, I think.  I actually liked this place, but it didn't seem very child-friendly and there were little things wrong in the apartments that gave us the excuse to cross these out and keep going.

Buona Vista MRT

One North Residence - The condo was really nice.  Great facilities - it had one of those playground caves with bubble domes for kids to pretend they are moles peering up at gushing parents.  But it was too far from MRT, rooms were tiny, and it had no real maid's room.  On of these "new constructions" we're growing to hate.

So some doable places, but no bull's eyes yet.  

The next day we met our new amateur realtor friend again to see a place in a condo 7 mins walking distance from work:

Raffles Place MRT

The Sail - this is a swanky new building and the apartment we saw was on the 50th floor with amazing views of the bay.  If I were single or without a kid, this place would be it.   But it was not a 3BR, did not have maid's room, and was a bit too modern feeling for my taste.