1. Take over the lease of one of her co-workers that will run out on December 31 and find a place to live during this period, or
2. Find a place and sign a lease before we move.
She strongly prefers option number 2, so that we don't have to move all our stuff and upset our toddler's routine twice. She's also worried that we won't have much time to look for places anyway once we're there because we're supposed to start working almost immediately. I see her points, but I don't have strong opinions one way or the other.
So, I will try to tap into the collective wisdom here. Is option number 2 realistically doable or would it be a much better idea to do option number 1?
Assuming #2 is doable, we have some idea roughly where we want to live, but would still appreciate any advice you may have. We will both be working in the CBD and we're pretty sure we want to send out son to the Stamford American International School (right next to the Woodleigh MRT). Therefore, we have pretty much ruled out anything west of Orchard Road and north of the Nature Reserve.
We are looking for a 4 bedroom place (1 bedroom for us, 1 for our son, 1 for a maid, 1 for any guests). We're aware of the 3+1 idea, but the +1s seem to be horrifically small and, if I wouldn't feel comfortable living there, I wouldn't want to ask a maid to live there either.
Our son will be roughly 2 years old when we move, so we would like a place where he can meet other kids/we can meet other parents. If we didn't have a kid, both my wife and I would tend to prefer quieter, smaller places (probably landed estates or cluster homes in Singapore real estate parlance). In Oslo, we live in a suburban area in a house with a yard, split into two with another family and we like it quite a bit. However, we also know tons of people already here and don't have to rely on meeting new friends as we will have to in Singapore. A condo probably makes the most amount of sense, but we would prefer a smaller condo or a larger cluster home I guess. Does this seem reasonable?
Ideally, we would prefer something with easy access to the CBD, either right by an MRT station (other than the circle line) or right on a bus line that won't require any transfers. Is either one preferable to the other in Singapore? Can buses be counted on to run on time and not get stuck in traffic?
Based upon all of that, what neighborhoods would you recommend? The ones that seem to fit best (based on reading websites and looking at a map) are Newton/Novena, Serangoon, and the East Coast area. Are there any areas that I left off that we should look at?
Would anyone care to offer up some opinions on each of those areas? I've read the brief description you can usually find on property websites (except that there is essentially nothing on Serangoon), but I'm curious what the more uncensored/less glossy version of a description would look like. For instance, how quiet is the neighborhood? Is it purely residential or a mixture of residential and commercial? Are there restaurants nearby? If so, are they cheap and good/bad, good value, fine dining, etc.? What's the resident breakdown? Mostly locals? Mostly expats? Mostly western expats?
We would greatly appreciate any advice you might be able to provide. In particular, I'm curious about Serangoon because it seems like there is less out there on it than any other neighborhood we're considering. However, because East Coast is huge, any help breaking down the neighborhood into different parts and discussing the differences would also be great.
Sorry for the very long post. The short version is: any help would be greatly appreciated.
