Before taking possession have an EMA LICENCED electrician do a full inspection.
Having recently taken over a SLA house I felt it worth passing on my experience to others considering doing the same.
In the last year or so the contracts between tenant and landlord (SLA) have changed from where previously the SLA would basically pay for any repairs (incl. electrical) to "as is where is" with the exception of roof and external walls. What this means for a new tenant is you could end up footing the bill for a partial or full re-wire if you move in then later find faulty wiring.
These are all old houses by Singapore standards and so is the wiring.
The SLA uses local real estate agents to represent their interests. The agents use their own electrical contractors to complete repairs on their properties. In our case I took my own electrician along to the property to do a safety inspection before taking possession. He found the ground floor was completely new wiring but the top floor was all old original wiring and indicating very low (potentially dangerous) insulation readings even though the agent had insisted the whole house had been re-wired and I was just "...wasting my money" on an electrician.
As a result the agent had to get his electrical contractor back to re-wire the entire top floor.
