Plus one room for scale model maid

Photo by full­res

Real estate agents can be arse­holes some­times. A few years ago, being first time home renters, Naomi and I were conned into pay­ing dou­ble com­mis­sion by this chow ah beng of an agent, and last year, we were treated to a siao char bor show by this inde­pen­dent agent who got her hus­band to talk to and abuse me on the phone when I called to ask that the apart­ment be fumi­gated before we moved in (it was infested with ticks from a pre­vi­ous tenant’s dog).

We’ve just started the merry dance of house-hunting again, see­ing as it’s a lit­tle under a year to go before our lease expires, and yes­ter­day was spent por­ing over the Clas­si­fieds and deci­pher­ing real­tor acronyms like IT, CT, SD and 4D.

‘IT’ means ‘inter-terrace’; ‘CT’ means ‘cor­ner ter­race’; ‘SD’ means ‘semi-detached’, and ‘4D’ means ‘houses that only lot­tery win­ners can afford’.

We viewed a few prop­er­ties and began to under­stand what real­tors really mean, when they describe num­bers of bed­rooms in pri­vate dwellings as ‘3+1′ and ‘4+1′.

‘3+1′ means ‘three real bed­rooms and a hole in the wall for your domes­tic helper’, or ‘three real bed­rooms and a hole in the wall for stor­ing your junk and your domes­tic helper’.

When I remarked “wah, so small” on see­ing the five foot by three foot by seven foot hole in a yet to be com­pleted house, the real­tor attend­ing to us, sweat­ing in his shirt and tie, defended its design, say­ing, “but it’s just for your maid”.

Being in a rea­son­ably good mood, I responded, “but our maid is life-sized” to which he pointed out, “but this house is dif­fer­ent, this maid’s room got own toilet”.

The en-suite makes a big dif­fer­ence, I sup­pose. Imag­ine prison cells with­out them. Crap.