Thursday, August 28, 2008

MSL Voted as Best Developer in Setapak

In recent poll in my blog, it show that MSL is the best developer in Setapak which 60% support MSL as the BEST.

The poll results are:-
MSL 60%
Platinum 24%
Sime Prop 12%
UOA 3%

Congratulation to Ir. Tan Ching Meng and BOD of MSL. Major shareholders of MSL are MCL (singapore) 50%, Saujana Group (30%) and Landmarks Group (20%).
Hope that MSL not only best developer in this area but also the most Social Responsible Corporate in Wangsa Maju.

Happy 45th Anniversary Malaysia




Federation of Malaya, Sarawak, Sabah and Singapore formed Malaysia on 16th September, 1963. Later Singapore left to become an independent country. Sarawak and Sabah is a special autonomous state within Malaysia which many parts of the administration are under the jurisdiction of state government.
The highlights of these include separate immigration control, Islam’s status as a national religion being not applicable and the state’s indigenous peoples enjoying the same “special” rights given to the Malay community in West Malaysia.
Sarawak, along with Sabah, also has its own special section in the Federal Constitution. Particular highlights are special declarations towards native customary rights, such as The Land Code of Sarawak and the Forest Ordinance which govern the indigenous peoples and their land rights.
The actual history: http://www.theborneopost.com/?p=23975

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim Win by 15671 Majority

Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim win the Permatang Pauh by-election with a majority of 15671 votes, which is 17% higher than 308 election win by his wife (13388 votes). He will be the opposition leader in Parliment after swearing in soon (hope to be next day), and may become 6th Prime Minister of Malaysia.

Congratulation to Malaysia, after 50 years of independent we are moving towards a more mature democratic country. The formation of 2 party system will definitely benefit Malaysian as a whole.

Pray that our political situation will become more stable, government will become more efficient, transparent, less corruption, citizen friendly, fair to all races, and most importantly the economy will be improving, inflation rate will be lower.

The poll in this blog shows that
55% vote that Anwar will win between 10000-15000 votes
Only 11% said Anwar will win more than 15000 votes

Friday, August 22, 2008

Ex-CID director Wan appointed EC member

Congratulation to Datuk Christopher Wan appointment to EC member. His no nonsense character, clean records during PDRM service will definitely benefiting to Malaysia as a whole.

KUALA LUMPUR: Former Criminal Investigation Department director Datuk Christopher Wan Soo Kee has been appointed a member of the Election Commission, Chief Secretary to the Government Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan announced in a statement yesterday.

Mohd Sidek said the appointment of Wan, 57, had received the consent of the King.

Wan retired from the police force on Jan 9 last year and was reappointed Criminal Investigation Department director on a contract basis for one year, from Jan 10 last year till Jan 9 this year. – Bernama

Thursday, August 21, 2008

A explanation of Parking Woes after JMC Meeting

JMC Chairperson, Mr. Stephen explained:-

Firstly I would like to thank all contributors for their comments on the issue of parking. The JMC welcomes all comments and would like to see if we can improve and fine tune the system while making it a conducive place to reside and own for all owners and residents.

At the very beginning let me explain the basic principles behind the decisions of the JMC with regards to the parking. Firstly, we view that owners and residents have sole exclusive rights to their purchased and allocated lots under their unit within the ambit of the house rules. Secondly, it is also the owners and resident rights to decide who they want to allow to use on their own parking lots subjected to informing beforehand this arrangement to the management and conforming to the house rules. This is to set the records straight that we do not dictate nor have any policies with regards to the owners car lots which is legally their properties under the S&P Agreement.

We will now then address the issue of visitor car park lots which is for visitors of the owners and residents. Originally, the developer has allocated all visitors car lots to be on the ground floor. This was actually a sound idea and you can see this is so because all the intercom phone for visitors to contact the owners was situated on the G floor of each block. With this, the visitor can contact the owner/residents and the owner/resident can unlock the door for their visitor to access. This helps to keep the security tight. Further to that, all the covered parking lots (P1-P4) is supposed to be strictly for owners/residents and this was again why these intercom was not put on these doors of these floors. This again is a sound idea and practised by most high end condominium in Klang Valley with the nearest example, Seri Maya down the road from us.

However somewhere in between, the developer decided to sell off these excess lots in the condo and they put a higher premium on the car parks on G floor. As a result, quite a large number of lots was sold off with some remaining unsold. Then, to compensate for the “loss” of visitor car park, the developer then assigned some car park lots on P1-P4 as visitor car park lot to make up for that numbers. When the JMB was formed, these “assets” were then handed over to us and for us to manage. So, now, on G floor, we have a few lots near the guard house as visitor car park lots and then a few more isolated single lots around the rest of G floor which makes the whole idea of managing a visitor car park lot a real headache. For example, how do a new visitor knows that there are more visitor car park lots on G floor unless he slowly drive around to look for a red car park lot which is a designated visitor car park .

Secondly, once the G floor visitor car park lots are taken up (normally in the evening or the weekend), then, visitors has to park on P1-P4 where designated. This becomes a security nightmare and also a problem for visitor as when they approach the doors on P1-P4, with no intercom and no access cards, and no idea where the next staircase can bring them up to the ground floor – they have no choice but to call the owners to come down and “escort” them up again. This do not befit a decent condo and hence still remain a problem which we inherited from the developer.

The third but very pressing problem which still exist today is the abuse of the parking privileges. Firstly, there are owners/residents who has more cars than their allocated or combined purchased lots. For eg, an owner has two car park lots but has three cars. Therefore, two of his cars are parked legally and the third car is parked illegally within the condo compound. This can be done by declaring the car is staying overnight or he park on a unused owner car park lot. Or he park on someone lot and then when found out, he move that car to another lot. The end results is, all these actions are illegal and not conforming to the house rules. More importantly, it is wrong because, there are people here who paid 15,000 -20,000 MYR for their extra car park and they would feel cheated if this is allowed.

More to this point is, later when the LRT opens up in 2009, we may find people who allow their friends or relatives to park their car within Desa Putra for free to enjoy the facility and access to the LRT station. So, in order to prevent that, we have to come up with policies to address such issues.

Now, in line with this, I have to inform all readers of this blog the situation we are facing now. Firstly, our current maintenance fees is INSUFFICIENT to run the place decently. Our balance sheet for the remaining part of this year will go into deficit (for eg, our current electric bill for the common areas is around 23-25K per month. This constitute around 30% of our collected maintenance fees. Under the new revised electricity tariff , we projected that the bill can go up to 30K in the next invoice, so it will rise to almost 40% of our maintenance fees). As one of the conditions for choosing Burgress Rawson to manage this place, one main consideration was their experience in turning over properties with deficit to a surplus within a few years on their track record. This means, we put the onus on them to help us turn this place firstly doing our best not to increase any maintenance fees for the owners/residents. Therefore, one key option is to generate as much revenue from our “assets” which includes of course the parking lots. By having these additional incomes, we can offset the need to charge a higher fees to the residents or if we do so, we can reduce the quantum needed due to these additional incomes generated. So, for this reason, please view these rental rates of the car park lots as simply means for us to help all owners/residents in meeting our budget and keeping it from going to a deficit.

Therefore in view of that, the JMC has to formulate policies based on these few issues :

1. We have car park abuse problem where people misused or park their cars illegally – this is wrong and not acceptable.
2. We formulate a rental lot program where people can rent the car park legally and therefore do not park illegally or obstruct or cause chaos in the parking lots
3. These rental lots can also then generate income for the building maintenance fees instead of sitting there empty ie maximising the facilities to generate income
4. The JMC also formulate policies where visitors can park for a day visit at the G floor parking lot subjected they leave by 12.30am for security reasons
5. If for some reasons the visitor decided to stay overnight (have too much to drink, too late to drive back), the owner can inform the guard house and the pass can then be changed to an “overnight visitor pass” which then allows the car to park in that visitor lot overnight. This privilege is only for a day. For those cars which do not have it, the car will be clamped after 12.30am.
6. For visitors who comes on a short term visit (for eg, relative visiting, parents visiting etc) – they can apply to the management and the management will allocate them a special car park lot on P1-P4 for that duration of the visit. This will not be charged as the JMC view this as facilities for the convenience of the owners/residents. The maximum duration of stay is up to 2 weeks and if longer for valid reasons, the management office will decide on a case by case basis. Those previous case who has paid 5 ringgit per day will be refunded as we have now fine-tuned this policy.
7.
The JMC views that those parking done for eg if the friend is coming over to park the car at the condo and then going somewhere with the owner/resident to somewhere else (overseas trip for eg) will be viewed as parking with fees. The management office will then charge a sum for that duration with the main intention to simply discourage this practise. However in order to discourage abuse, the fees charged will be higher than the monthly rental fees of that car park lot, so, those who feel they can abuse this will find it pointless financially to do so. However if the owner has an empty second lot, is is up to the owner to allow the friend or visitor to use his extra lot as explained earlier above.
8.
We will “persuade” the cars who are parking outside around the roundabout to take up the offer to rent a car lot and park legally within Desa Putra. This is also in view that DBKL has written to inform us that they will soon tow away cars which are parked around illegally around the roundabout and the access roads as this is their land and secondly, they have received direct complaints from residents who find this parking on both side of the road extremely dangerous. So while the cars are given a grace period to move to somewhere permanently, we formulate the policy to address this issue and the management will issue a special “Merdeka” offer for them to take up the car rental lots inside Desa Putra. Failing which, one of the days after August or towards end of August, they may find their car missing and in the DBKL car compound ground and the hassle to go there to claim back their cars.


Lastly, as I said earlier, we welcome all comments and we will be happy to engage in discussions with you all to explain the policies and decisions made. We aim to be transparent and open, so all minutes, decisions are put up on not just this blog but also on the notice boards. All finance matters, accountings, statements will also be put up openly for all parties to view and make comments (if any). Most importantly is , these policies are not simply to squeeze money from residents or owners but using these assets wisely and in a manner which can help to offset the costs to all residents /owners so that we can try not to increase the fees or to increase a large quantum. So, if these are the avenues which can help generate funds for these purpose , we shall pursue this as a means to be financially prudent as possible for all the residents/owners.

We have a lot of issues which we need to resolve and tackle, given the fact that yesterday JMC meeting dragged until 12am and we still cannot finish all the points raised. So, we have our work cut out for us and we hope the residents/owners will give us the full support to make Desa Putra a better place and also, increase in the value of the property – which is another key point we want Burgress Rawson to do for us all here.
Thank you.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Parking Issue

Despite JMC decided to rent out the car parks to residents but not many residents willing to rent and park their car inside the complex. The monthly fees charged for covered car park is RM100 per month, and non covered is RM80, no deposit required, just need to pay quarterly in advance plus some deposit for access card.
20 parking lot in Ground floor are designated as visitor parking, others (P1-P4) are available for rental which JMC just merely to comply to the original architectural design of Desa Putra Condo which all the visitor parking to be in ground floor for visitor to access to unit through intercom (P1-P4 doesn't have intercom).
In my opinion, charging RM5 per night for visitor parking more than 2 nights (over night) is fair which the rental car park for P1-P4 can be allocated to SHORT TERM RESIDENT(Visitor for condo should means non overnight guests). I guessed by charging a token sum will avoid some unit that has more than 1 car but declare excess driver as visitor which they can park 360 nights (5 nights in their hometown during raya/new year time) a year in visitor parking. These happened daily previously and so many of them. Many owner/resident here own 5 cars, how can anyone control the mess here?
For viewers information, there are many "foreign visitors" come here to stay for 1 month, 2 months and 3 months during summer holiday, some rent more than 1 car, do we charge or we don't? Where can we draw the line? 1 week, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months? If we want to control these then we may need to add 10 security guards (per shift) which will cost us additional RM35000-00 monthly translate into RM80 per owner.
As long as the management is fair to everyone without bias, then I think it is a good decision.
When LRT is in operation, and if the policies are not clear then there will more "visitors" using the facilities of DP at their conveniences, which means they take away owner's rights, owner's privileges, owner's money (owner pay maintenance fees and cost of parking lot) and etc.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

House Rules with regards to Renovation, Delivery and Removal

Page 16, Article 7.0 Renovation, Delivery and Removal

7.1 Working Hours
Renovation, delivery and removal works shall be carried out within the following hours:-
Monday - Saturday 8.00am - 5.00pm On Sundays & public holidays residents shall not carry out renovation, delivery and removal works unless by prior written consent from the Management for cases of emergency.

Due to recent tightened of security and enforcement of house rules (which previously were poorly enforced), we found that some owners/residents were caught into problems when doing delivery outside hours that house rules allowed.

Most house owners/residents never read the house rules, therefore it shall be the JOBS of Management to highlight the critical rules in notice board and other noticeable location. This will avoid many unnecessary argument or even "fighting" with security guards.