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Four thick sets of paper with lengthy words and about over 100 signatures later, the house is legally ours.

Yup, you are right, the thick sets of papers are the copies of the sales and purchase agreement (SnP) for the house. One set is for the purchaser, one copy for the developer, one copy for the lawyer and another for the bank.

If you are wondering why the need for so many signatures, I’ve included the signatures of the initials on every page of the agreement to signify that you have looked at the page.

According to the lawyer firm, the agreement document is the standard SnP agreement drafted by the Malaysia’s Local Housing Ministry and is customized according to the property purchased and buyer. On top of the page, is the title Schedule G.

The agreement started with all the legal terms, the usual jargons lawyers love to bore you with, so that you will get so confused reading them that you give up and just sign on the dotted line.

After that, is the plan of the whole housing development with the lot numbers, followed by the house layout, architectural designs from the four views - front, back, sides, the dimensions, measurements, the details of purchasers, the details of the house such as address and name of development and details of the developer.

The whole set ended with space for our precious signatures.

 On top of that, we have to sign another four sets of slightly less thick sets of paper for the deed of convenant - the mutual agreement on the common facilities offered as it is a gated community with security features.

Basically, what the deed is all about is that you agree not to be a nuisance to all the other owners or tenants of the houses within the gated community, so as to have a condusive living environment. I shall not bore you with all the naggy terms like no aggressive and noisy behaviour and no littering within the compound.

But, really, I feel that all that the management of the gated community is interested in, is the six months in advanced payments for the maintenance and security service provided to the residents - the guard house, the CCTVs and the high wall with security features.

Make purchasers sign this deed so that they have no problems collecting the fees in the future. Somemore, there’s this clause in there saying that the management reserves the right to change the monthly fees as they like. What a ’save-your-ass’ clause. Somehow, my partner said all the owners can change the management if we are not happy, provided that everyone agrees.

We were at the law firm for a few hours, looking through the agreement and also asking questions. The law jargons did bore me and after reading a few pages, my attention span wavered. Arghhh…. Well… if there’s anything we do not agree to, it is too late now….

Anyway, when I finally took the pen and started signing away, it felt like a signature-signing exercise - practising to perfect my signature. There was a slight sense of jubilation and a sense of achievement after the task has been completed. However, those feelings didn’t last long, at least for me.

Feelings of insecurity on how to finance the house, together with a tinge of regret, replaced the earlier feeling. Maybe I’ll dwelve more into why we were feeling like this, in the next post….