- Vanessa Tan and Shannon Teo have been living in their 4-room apartment for about ten months.
- They bought the 970-square-foot home in Singapore for $407,000 and designed it in a modern Scandinavian style.
- The couple showed Insider around and shared some of their best tips for managing renovation costs.
It's been about ten months since Vanessa Tan, 28, and Shannon Teo, 31, moved into their four-room Housing Development Board, or HDB, flat in Woodleigh, a neighborhood in the central region of Singapore.
HDB flats are Singapore's public housing and they're home to about 80% of the country's resident population.
The couple's cozy 970-square-foot apartment is their first home together.
But their journey toward homeownership wasn't easy.
Tan and Teo — who both work in consulting — first met when they were studying at university. Like many young Singaporeans who want to settle down, they applied for a build-to-order, or BTO, flat.
BTO flats are new apartments sold by the Housing Development Board on a 99-year lease. As the name suggests, they're built upon order — which means that there's a median waiting period of about three and a half years before the houses are completed.
While a ballot system is used for applicants who want to book a flat, BTOs are often over-subscribed: Last year, there were 117,251 applications for 23,184 apartments.
"We tried for two years. So we balloted for four BTO launches, and then we did one Sale of Balance application before we finally got that Sale of Balance flat," Teo told Insider.
The Sale of Balance Flats (SBF) exercise is where Singaporeans can apply for leftover flats from earlier launches, including those given up by other applicants.
The couple's apartment is part of the new Bidadari housing estate that was launched for sale in November 2016. When the sale of the project first commenced, the starting price of a 4-room flat like theirs was 468,000 Singapore dollars, or about $347,000.
However, since they only bought the home in December 2020, they ended up paying S$550,000 instead. That's because the cost of the apartment fluctuates according to the inflation rates, Tan told Insider.
The couple designed their home in a modern Scandinavian style, with plenty of wood accents.
"We were initially looking at minimalism, but it was too white for us," Tan said. "And then slowly the trend became more like Scandi, so that's when we started looking at colors like white, greys, and wood tones."
The couple started looking for an interior designer, or ID, to help them with their renovation process even before they got the keys to the house.
The two of them knew that they'd be hosting friends and family often, and one of their priorities was to have a big shared living space where everyone could gather and interact.
"Therefore, if you see our living room, there isn't really a TV. It's also kind of expanded — we moved a wall inside just to open up the space," Teo said.
Another requirement that the couple had when looking for an ID was that they wanted someone who would give them feedback on their ideas and suggest alternatives instead of blindly going ahead with whatever they proposed.
"To expand the space, our initial idea was to have glass doors. Most of the IDs that we approached just accepted it and they didn't suggest new stuff until we met our ID — the one we went with in the end — who proposed having the curve wall," Tan said. "We thought that was refreshing."
To make it easier to convey their ideas to their ID, Tan created a mood board to collate photographs of living spaces that inspired her.
"I built a mood board of the different areas, like the living area, the entrance, and stuff like that. And then we went through it together to see whether he liked it or not," Tan said. "So, thankfully, Shannon's on board with whatever I had in mind. We just made a few tweaks here and there."
As first-time homeowners, they weren't sure how much the renovations would cost.
"Our budget was S$30,000 at first, then we found out that was super unrealistic. So we increased it to S$40,000 instead," Teo said. Even then, the two of them realized that their budget was too small for the features they had in mind.
After receiving quotations from IDs in the S$58,000 to S$65,000 range, the pair then decided that S$50,000 would be the highest amount they'd be comfortable spending on their renovation.
"We ended up spending S$53,000," Teo said. The additional S$3000 came in after the renovation was completed, for a tempered glass kitchen backsplash and textured painting on the curved wall.
Even though the pair went slightly over their budget, they were meticulously tracking their expenses in a spreadsheet.
"Sometimes because it's your own home, you'll tend to want to spend more and eventually you lose track of your expenses," Teo said.
Part of the consideration over their budget hinged on the number of years that the couple expect to stay in the house.
"I guess initially it was five to 10 years. But as the whole estate and community started to build up, we found that this location is really convenient," Tan said.
"Even if we want to move out after five years, for example, which was our initial plan, we might not do that in the end," Teo added.
The couple collected the keys in June 2022 and started renovations a month later.
"The renovation was projected to take about two months, so the plan was to complete in August and have the handover by the end of August or early September," Tan said.
But the entire project ended up stretching into September after an almost three-week delay, and the couple only moved in on October 1, she said.
One of the challenges the couple faced was in managing the timeline of the renovation works and coordinating the arrival of their furniture and appliances. Due to the delays, the couple had to reschedule the delivery of their items multiple times.
One thing the couple learned was to compare prices before making any big-ticket purchases.
"When we first went shopping with our ID, we didn't start comparing prices outside yet. We didn't even do our research," Tan said. "At that point in time, in my mind, the assumption was that we were going there to take a look, and we weren't expecting to buy anything on the spot."
The couple did end up spending quite a fair bit of money at the store on lighting and toilet accessories.
"When we got there we were like, okay, since we're here already, we can just settle it. And I believe that our ID gave us a discount of 10% off. But in hindsight, maybe we could have negotiated further to reduce the cost if we knew better," she said.
"We're new to this because we're first-time homeowners, plus we were too excited. So it's a bad combination to go shopping," Teo added.
The couple also created a pie chart of the cost breakdown so they knew how much they spent on each room.
The kitchen was the most expensive, followed by the two bathrooms, per a breakdown that the couple provided. They paid S$12,400 for all the carpentry work in the kitchen — including overhead and floor-standing cabinets, countertops, and a kitchen island. The toilets came up to S$10,110, inclusive of tiling and wet works.
"It was only after making those pie charts that we realized how much we actually spent. Even though we had that whole Excel sheet, we didn't consolidate the cost, so we didn't know what the breakdown was for each section," Tan said.
In hindsight, both of them agree that they should have a stricter budget for their appliances and furniture as well.
"I think that's one part that a lot of the new homeowners might not be aware of. Like they just budget for the renovation and they don't really think about how much the appliances and furniture would cost," Teo said.
The couple shares photos of their space and other snippets of their lives on Instagram, with an account dedicated to their home.
They first found out about the local home and living creator community when they started following a popular Singaporean creator Foong Family Flat, Tan said.
Apart from images of their home, their Instagram posts consist of graphics designed by Tan that detail their renovation expenditure as well as any tips that they picked up along the way.
The couple's home is about a 4-minute walk to the nearest mall, and a 10-minute walk to the nearest subway station, per Google Maps.
The freedom and pride that comes with the journey of building their first home together is unparalleled.
"I really love it because it's our own place and it's something that's nice to look at. Whenever you come home from work you can just lay down and relax," Tan said. "It's also nice to have a space whereby our loved ones can gather to chill and talk."