Top-hole Lisa,
Is your trip here paid for by the employer? I.e. a ‘pre-location recce’ of sorts? => Visit the office, meet the colleagues, get a pre-briefing on the assignment, and so on?
Is the employer guiding you to find and enter into a contract for a home here during the trip next month? I ask as one week isn’t long at all even if you know this place. Especially if you haven’t an agent yet. And finding a place next month ready to move right into in September wouldn’t help your cause much either, as IME
property isn’t advertised much before say 6 weeks before availability.
No agent, and finding a place next month for September... that would sound a little like you’re being thrown in at an unnecessarily deep-end.
Put it like this; this was my experience. It used to be ‘the way’ things worked for an expat relo, but of course various offers/packages all vary:
When you are offered the relo, they send you on a pre-relo trip.
- You visit the office, meet the potential colleagues (and get taken out for F+B, part of a bit of a charm offensive), and get some time to wonder around downtown and get a feel for the place.
- If you then agree the relo, the relo contract is signed and a move date given.
- When you move, you used to typically spend a month in a
Serviced Apartment, on T+E/expenses, probably somewhere convenient for work.
- The working spouse is expected to hit the ground running, so will be at it all hours.
- During that time HR nominated a lettings agent for you (at their expense), via whom you went out and viewed candidate properties. The plan was that these properties were either already vacant, or very soon to become vacant, so they’d be vacant at the point you had to vacate the serviced apartment.
- Then you’d move from the serviced apartment to your new home, and hopefully that would coincide closely with your freight arriving from back home.
So main questions I suppose:-
- a) Is HR engaging an agent on your behalf?
- b) Will you be put up in a serviced apartment when you initially
relo here in September?
- c) Is the employer paying the rent as a separate ‘line item’ within the relo package, and will the contract be taken out in their name?
Because:-
a) I think you’d be better off having your own agent, to represent your interests (esp. as a stranger in a strange land)
b) If so, you don’t need to think about entering a contract on your trip, having narrowed down some neighbourhoods, you can use the time to go and visit them and see how you feel about them.
c) The contract in their name protects you from the risk of the landlord messing you about.
You might also want to read this:
http://forum.singaporeexpats.com/viewtopic.php?t=101985
‘GUIDE: Where should I/we consider living?’
and this one might be worth some thought at this stage too...
http://forum.singaporeexpats.com/viewtopic.php?t=103156
‘[FAQ] Relocating? What to Bring To Singapore’
p.s. Welcome to the forum!
