Seoulscapade

Sangdo Haemoro: see more on the official Haemoro website here or for Sangdo here. (Last I looked all links to info on the Sangdo home page had been taken away, which makes me suspicious.)

It was time to put up or shut up this week. Our first payment and the signing of the Sangdo Haemoro contract was due within a three day window, or rather three and a half days. It was extended to include Saturday morning due to complaints from people who couldn’t get in during business hours. We were in this group, too.

Sunah had spent her lunchtime Friday at the bank and Gu office, obtaining necessary documents. Prior to that, I’d transferred twenty grand or thereabouts into her account–the first payment. She then transferred that to the appropriate Sangdo Haemoro account and obtained a certificate of proof.

The image above shows the building numbers and color coded buildings indicating apartment types. Our size is the 109 square metres type, of which there are three: the pink, the light blue and the red. Down below I’ve included the design types.

But before getting to them, here’s how the contract and mortgage signing and stamping went. At the showroom it thankfully wasn’t too crowded. We were given our contract folders along with a ticket to wait to see a contract person and mortgage person.

There were five contract types in all, each for a different kind of buyer. Those wanting to purchase on this day, for example, would get a contract with a buy price of around $700,000. Ours wasn’t so much because we bought into it early, and we’ve already paid a couple of 100 thousand.

After a short wait, we saw the contract guy. This part was quick. In the contract there were four or five sections. We only had to sign off on two sections because of unresolved issues. One of the unresolved issues is probably about the option of having balcony extensions or not.

To explain this I’ll show the 109.77 A design. Here’s how the layout looks.

The locations of this kind of apartment are coloured pink in the overhead image below. I quite like these apartments because they are on the corners of the central buildings, facing south-west.

Now, here is the same design in its “default” form, i.e. with balconies. You can see that having balconies can reduce actually living space considerably. Extending floors over balconies is usually an option people go for after construction, but Haemoro’s builders want to make extended floors the standard in all apartments, probably because it’s cheaper that way. They could also save a lot of money building it that way. However, many residences are not in favour. They want the option to decide later.

Personally, I plan to do half and half. We need somewhere decent for our plants and rabbits to live. Balconies are also nice to have for storage.

Anyway, back to the contract signing. The guy explained everything at super speed. Then Sunah used her stamp for signing, which is what Koreans use for official business. (Most people have a special stamp made of their name for such purposes.) Because I couldn’t understand Korean, it was all a blur. It took maybe 10 minutes.

Then we sat and waited to see a banker. Five of them were lined up at paper filled desks at the back of the room. All were constantly busy dealing with buyers. As soon as someone left, we were ushered to a desk.

Without ceremony, we were told that for our contract we could have a mortgage of around 70 million, which covers the first four and a half bulk payments on Haemoro. We then pay the remain few bulk payments ourselves. We could have nominated for the mortgage to take care of payments further ahead but I thought it was better to start now and buy some time to save and live more comfortably now.

Here’s how the guy went about it. Was covering the early lump sum payments how we wanted to do it? Yes. OK, show me your documents. Thank you. Good, now sign this form here, here, here and here. Good. Now, fill this out, here, here and here. Thanks. Sign this form, here, here and here. Great. Give me your stamp and I’ll stamp them. Thank you. Stamp, stamp, stamp and stamp. Thank you. Good bye. Next!

And with that we had a mortgage sorted out in about 15 minutes flat. Sometimes the guy was barely waiting for Sunah to finishing writing before snatching papers away. In fact, he had to give one back because she hadn’t quite completed something. Talk about fast!

I queried Sunah about whether we would have to wait for an approval of some kind. Silly me—of course not. I guess growing up under interminable bureaucratic processes and the anal-retentive inflexibility of Australian ways explains why I asked such a dumb question. The mortgage was ours. Done.

Here is the design for the 109.40 B apartment style:

Most 109 size apartments will be like this, as shown in the location guide below.

Here it is with the balconies still in place.

Finally, here is the 109.72 C style apartment:

Not many apartments will be like this.

Here’s how it’ll look with the balconies in.

After our mortgage was sorted, we went upstairs to look at what options were available. These were wall and floor “under coatings,” a refrigeration system and a ceiling air-con system. We didn’t really need any of them, but we stopped to look at the floor under coating options.

These are a cover that goes on over the cement surfaces of your apartment, before wallpaper and floor coverings are done. They are designed to protect people allergies or skin problems due to the building materials. The first covering system was a coating of charcoal for over a $1000. The second was a coating of mud, which was a bit more expensive at just over $2000. The mud is the kind that you see on jim jil bang (spa) walls.

Sunah liked the mud idea, so we signed up for the mud. With that, it was all finished. Now we just need the apartment built because so far all we own is air.