How we found our giant terrace

When I was looking through flats in Building A, I was scanning over all the floor plans together and several flats with unusually large balconies caught my eye.

It seemed that on just one side of the building complex, the ground floor was wider and huge terrace balconies were built on top of the extended ground floor.

The second floor flats on this side of the building have huge 92sq m (990sq ft) terraces, but if you went one floor higher to the 3rd through fifth floors, you would lose the large balcony and pay 20,000CHF more per level rise.

The flats on that side of the building still had pretty big 29sq m (315sq ft). But who in their right mind would pay thousands more to have so much less space?

Continue reading How we found our giant terrace

Our future home: Part I

Before we decided to put down a reservation on our flat, we visited it to see the floor plan in person and check out the surroundings.

All four sides of the complex were built and all the floors were finished on the other sides. They had just started building up our side of the complex, but luckily for us, our flat is at the lower part of the building so we could walk through it already.

At 39sq m (420sq ft), the living room is huuuge.

Continue reading Our future home: Part I

We (I) make a decision

With the sunshine factor in mind, I realized that I did not necessarily want to live on the dark, busy street sides of Building A, but I was still interested in saving money, so I went to visit the site where Flat B would be built.

Do you see a building in progress? I sure as heck don’t!

It took me awhile to find the site because the Flat B project had not even broken ground. This was kind of surprising and disappointing because we had already visited Flat A and the whole complex was practically raised. Flat B was supposed to be finished by autumn, but it was so far behind that I wondered if it would even get done before 2014 and we wanted to move sooner to start saving money earlier.

While I was searching for the flat I also noticed there was not much in terms of shopping or entertainment nearby. The building site was also next to that big, ugly toll road. The whole place just looked unappealing and as I walked back to the train station, I thought about how long it would take to haul luggage to the train in the rain if we lived here.

Kay was out of the country and said he would leave the decision up to me, but after visiting both sites, my mind was made up. The extra space of a 5.5 room flat was verrry tempting, but we decided to go ahead and buy Flat A! We aren’t planning a family any time soon, so it didn’t make sense to sacrifice on location for space.

Money is important, but it if you have a choice, leave the decision up to location! I was much more excited about all the trains, trams and buses that will take us to our new flat! And location is always that one thing you can’t change later.

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Paying for Sunshine

After reviewing hundreds of neubau flats, I noticed an interesting pricing structure. You pay to be higher up, but you also pay for more sunshine.

It even works similarly with rentals. People pay more money to have a sunnier location and sunshine seems to be very important for the Swiss. How else will you grow your herb garden?

But at times it seems a bit ridiculous.

Continue reading Paying for Sunshine