When the lease for their apartment was coming to an end, Rose Kowald and her husband wanted to find a more spacious home to live in. Read on and learn how the couple found their perfect home in Novena through 99.co.
How did you know about 99.co?
When we first arrived to Singapore from Bangkok, we got our previous place through an agent as we were unsure about Singapore rental procedures. Having stayed here for over 2 years, we were confident in searching for a new place on our own. Eventually, we found PropertyGuru and 99.co when browsing on Google.
What are your favourite features of 99.co?
I love the support services 99.co offers. Initially, when my enquiries were not responded to, I asked the 99.co Support Team for help through the app. I didn’t expect them to reply as I just wanted to check if the chat function was working. To my surprise, they actually replied promptly and even helped to alert the agent (representing the rentals we were interested in) to contact me back. They even followed up to check if the agent did call me. The whole experience left a really good impression!
The 99.co portal itself is also very user friendly. I love the chat function as when I make an enquiry, it links up the property with the respective agent. Hence, I know which agent is representing which property and can easily navigate through them. Whereas with PropertyGuru, I get confused over which agent represents which units.
99.co is also better as their listings are of good quality. I am a very visual person, so I naturally steer towards listings that have photos of the actual unit in them, and not just generic ones. I’m glad that 99.co’s listings have excellent pictures to give me better options to choose from.
In addition, we were searching for a partially furnished unit as we preferred to furnish the apartment ourselves. What helped was that each listing in 99.co shows the amenities that comes with the apartment: such as air conditioning, oven, etc, which made our search easier. Once we moved in, we bought a bed, table and, sofa on our own.
Did you go through a tenant’s agent or a landlord’s agent directly?
We were more familiar with the renting process and didn’t want to spend 1 month rental for the agent’s commission anymore, like we did the previous time. Furthermore, as 99.co is easy to use with all available filter options, we did not need to seek an agent’s help to search for us.
What was your order of search when looking for rental properties?
Two important factors were the price bracket, and the location. It’s easy to search on 99.co using the filter options to do so. We first looked for units that were near the MRT on the green or red line, as my husband’s office is at Raffles Place. Then, we look at the amenities around the rental unit. For us, distance to the supermarket is a major factor. At Pastoral View, the nearest Cold Storage is at Novena Square, which is less than 10 minutes walk away.
How did you make your decision in the end? What information did you use to guide your decision?
Our perfect home ticks the box for everything that we need. This 2 bedroom apartment is within our budget of $3,000 per month, and has a convenient location. My gynaecologist is at Mount Elizabeth hospital, which is just behind our apartment.
How likely are you to refer your friends to 99.co? (On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being extremely likely)
10! I even posted on Facebook saying that I love the app. To me, it is the best property search portal right now.
About Julene Gatot
Looking to sell your property?
Whether your HDB apartment is reaching the end of its Minimum Occupation Period (MOP) or your condo has crossed its Seller Stamp Duty (SSD) window, it is always good to know how much you can potentially gain if you were to list and sell your property. Not only that, you’ll also need to know whether your gains would allow you to right-size to the dream home in the neighbourhood you and your family have been eyeing.
One easy way is to send us a request for a credible and trusted property consultant to reach out to you.
Alternatively, you can jump onto 99.co’s Property Value Tool to get an estimate for free.
If you’re looking for your dream home, be it as a first-time or seasoned homebuyer or seller – say, to upgrade or right-size – you will find it on Singapore’s fastest-growing property portal 99.co.
Meanwhile, if you have an interesting property-related story to share with us, drop us a message here — and we’ll review it and get back to you.
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