Furnished or unfurnished

[rodskogj]

Hi All,
I am moving to Singapore in January with my wife and 2 y.o. son. What are the views on renting a condo fully furnished vs partly furnished? Furnished is certainly easier when we arrive in Singapore and when we leave again in 3 years - nothing to sell/get rid of. Is this what most people do or is it more cost effective to buy 'cheap' furniture and give it away when we leave?

Oh, and my son is constantly tempted to draw on sofas, so we might need to compensate a landlord if we rent furnished... assuming they expect things returned in thier original condition

Thanks for any advice!

[katbh]

You are in the lucky position of being able to make the choice. If you go for furnished make sure you see pictures first. Some can be horrible.
Also if you go unfurnished you can furnish for bugger all via ebay, gumtree, expat auctions and ikea.
So go for rental area first, find a place you like and work out then if it furnished or unfurnished. Remember that you need it 'party furnished' - that means that it has a kitchen and bathroom!
Not hard to get rid of things when you leave - gumtree and ebay very active here.

[kookaburrah]

When I first arrived, I decided to go the furnished route to save me some trouble. In the course of maybe one year I slowly got rid of everything the landlord put in. The sofa was a synthetic leather you stuck to in the heat, the beds were cheap and the mattresses cheaper, and the dining set was possibly the ugliest I have ever seen.

I'd get a few basics from IKEA/expatauction/wherever, and buy one or two nice pieces, if you know you'll have help shipping them back home when you're done.

[acad]

Hmm..we are also considering this issue, except that we are more inclined to ship the furniture that we have accumulated over the years. If we can save SGD200 per month between furnished and unfurnished, then we are thinking that over 2-3 years the difference is just about make the hassle of moving and packing worthwhile.

[x9200]

One small thing to be aware of: if you check the property web sites you will see that the No of furnished vs unfurnished is different by a factor of 10-20x so going unfurnished reduces your chances to find the right place. But if you give yourself enough time it is actually negligible. We are renting unfurnished for over 5y at this point and no major problem, but if you are time pressed it may be.