Wealthy Women Series I Part 5: How to Buy A House With Only 10% Cash

Despite Zhang Chunchun’s immense wealth from property buying, she did not forget about her brother. Her father, a super stingy man, had trained his children to hate money unknowingly. It was much later that Zhang Chunchun realised the importance of money, but her brother still thought that money was the cause of trouble.

Her brother was in his 30s but still did not own a house. He was happy to live in one of his father’s houses, but Zhang Chunchun wanted him to have financial freedom.

With his limited fund, the houses he could afford were really dilapidated. His sister asked him to trust her, and he did. She found a house that had been unsold for 4 years, and it was just beside a cemetery. The place itself seemed to come from the twilight zone, for the lights were flickering and some of them were spoilt. Even the front gate was super squeaky. The paint was peeling too.

To ensure that the place could be sold, she got her brother to do self-repair and self-painting. She told him to change the light bulbs, even though they belonged to the apartments and not his own place, and got him to repaint and oil the gate, repaint the house, and do up the landscaping. She even called up the credit card company to find out when they settled the bill for the month, just so that he could have another 45 days or more to pay this bill.

The balcony was in a huge mess, but the brother managed to buy plants and made it into a beautiful sight. However, due to limited fund, everything was done by himself.

Just when he thought that things were going well, the bank demanded another 5% cash in order to qualify for the loan. He could not back out now, so he had to raise that fund very quickly. His monthly salary was only 10% of that 5%, so there was no way he could get money.

His sister refused to lend him the money, because if he could get away with this, he would never learn the value of money. Hence, she told him to try Internet Auction. He managed to raise only a little bit of money, and so she suggested to him to sell cylum sticks for a concert.

He listened to her and went to sell at 2pm outside the hall. After 2 hours, he still did not sell a single stick. When she went to check on him, she found out that he was extremely shy and he was hiding in a corner. Since she had already done so much for him, she decided to help him to give him a boost. As the choreographer for S.H.E’s Persian Cat, she decided to dance to that music, wearing a mask so that people would not recognise her. With this gimmick, they managed to sell all the sticks. Of course, this was still not enough.

Next, he spent one hour to learn balloon sculpturing and went to a park to sell to families. In the beginning, the kids grabbed the balloons without paying. So the sister got her child to throw in some money. The mothers on seeing the payment, decided to pay for the balloons and hence the brother managed to sell the balloons and made good money. It was through a lot of hard work that the brother managed to raise the 5%.

With the place all done up and looking good, a buyer came. It turned out that the buyer had seen the place before, and quite liked the place but did not want to buy due to the dilapidated state. With the brother’s work, the buyer now liked the place immensely and hence he sold the house quickly at a good price.

The brother was extremely grateful to her, but told her that one house was enough. He had learnt enough from this house buying experience. It goes to show determination can get anything done.

This is the end of the instalment of Wealthy Women Series I. you may want to check out the previous instalments for Wealthy Women Series 1, on Zhang Chunchun’s background, how she started her property hunt, how to avoid being cheated when it comes to buying property and how to avoid.

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Sarah Tan - SingaporeProfit.com