House Hunting - The Palazzo

Since we were running out of time to find an apartment we continued house-hunting the next weekend and broadened the search to include the major local agents.  We stayed in a hotel in Shatin on Saturday night so we could spend the whole weekend looking.  

One agent strongly recommended 'The Palazzo' (below).  This was built in 2009 with a design concept inspired by Florentine Palaces and feels a bit like 'The Venetian' in Macau.   Like the Venetian, the design, materials and workmanship are all first-rate, and the aesthetic genuinely tasteful.  Or as tasteful as you can be within the constraints of being totally over-the-top and inherently fake.

The marketing material says "The Romans built a great empire some two thousand years ago.  Nowdays, here an extravagant palace, The Palazzo, is where the classics meet".

The Palazzo is famous for its enormous clubhouse, which is truly merits the adjective 'palatial'.

"The Palazzo Derby Clubhouse is covering about 220,000 sq. meters in addition to the area of landscaped garden and costing about 1 billion dollars for construction, is designed by renowned Hirch Bender Associates (L.A.)...  Bliss coheres with lavishness in such a perfect way in The Palazzo".

The indoor pool and roman baths (upper left).

Outdoor swimming pool.  Plenty of statues for those who might miss Parkview.

The ten 50 story towers contain 1,300 apartments.

The views from our favorite apartment on the 50th floor.  Looking across the river...

...and across the racecourse to MaOnShan and Tolo harbour (below).    "The Palazzo is located in the prestigious area...  and has imposing views across Shing Mun River, Tolo Harbour... the backdrop is so immaculate for the eyes to behold."

The clubhouse from above.

  Now you can see the catch.   The development is right next to the motor-way and the clubhouse and gardens are squeezed into a thin strip of land between the motorway and the towers of the older Jubilee Gardens development (which incidentally has no gardens).

Compared with Royal Ascot the podium is narrow and hemmed in by towers so it doesn't catch the breeze.   Overall the air doesn't feel very fresh.    

This reminds me of Disneyland in L.A.

I don't think we are imagining the air quality issues.  Both weekends we went house hunting in Fo Tan Rika and I got sore throats, even though the air is measured to be much better than say, Causeway Bay or Kowloon.

A quick check on the web confirmed that you really dont want your child growing up too close to a motorway if you can avoid it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jan/26/pollution.transportintheuk

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)60037-3/abstract

video:  view from The Palazzo

View of the clubhouse from the other side of the motorway.   A railway depo is underneath.

Although the clubhouse is huge and has kids rooms and bowling alley, there facilities somehow feel crowded.  The main indoor pool is only 20m and 3 lanes, while the outdoor pool was very crowded when we visited.  Basically looks great but not so practical.   So bottom line, although we rather liked the 50F apartment we saw, we ruled out The Palazzo on grounds of air quality and facilities.

So on Sunday, feeling rather desperate, we started visiting the offices of the other local agents.  This is Rika at Ricacorp.

Hannah was very patient and well behaved, although it must have been pretty boring for her.  We tried to reward her in various ways, and not just ice-cream.

We quickly got a bigger an much more reasonably priced selection compared with the apartments we had seen through my company's agent and the Japanese agent Rika had tried.

We wre able to see a selection of the larger flats on the east side of Royal Ascot, which we found to be great but too noisy and too close to the road.

Apartment visit number 25.  Nice and big but too noisy.

Our favorite place was The Grandville which is a lovely recent development up the hill.  It has terrific Feng Shui and just feels really nice to be in.   The clubhouse is very family friendly, has a sensible balance of useful facilities including kids rooms.  It is also on the bus route to Hannah's new school and has shuttle busses to the Fo Tan MTR station and shopping center in Shatin.

This photo above shows the view from The Grandville looking down to Royal Ascott.   Unfortunately the apartments we saw were just a little to small (900 sq ft) for all our stuff,  and while it has are a few larger units in our price range none are currently available.

And the photo below shows a view of The Grandville (the brick colored towers) from the bedroom of the apartment we eventually chose at Royal Ascot.   Rika will be able to gaze longingly out the window at it and plot her move to one of the larger apartments in a years time.

This apartment is on the west side of Royal Ascot so it is further from the motorway and faces away from the noise.   Because it is so high it is  quiet enough to open the windows and a catch a breeze, (although we are still planning to buy air purifiers to scrub the air).  Like all the apartments on this side it is just a little smaller than we'd like (1000 sq ft), but it is 40% cheaper than our current apartment.

View from the living room, looking south past Jubilee Gardens (in scaffolding) and The Palazzo is appropriately peeking 'over the top'.   The green and paved area in front of Jubilee Gardens is the roof of the shopping mall which also serves as a park and picnic area for Royal Ascot residents.   And you can see the 50m pool.

House Hunting

In late July Hannah got accepted to our first choice of school, which we had applied for almost 2 years ago.   This school offers the IB PYP program in English plus Japanese language using the Japanese national curriculum materials.   This is obviously important for us as we may move back to Japan one day.  We also hope it will be a good cultural fit for Hannah's.

And it is located in the New Territories so we will have to move.  

This presented us with a tough choice.   We have been very impressed with the Happy Kids Inspirational School which has been really excellent in many ways.  And we have been very happy living at Parkview.

But the sad fact is that we just can't afford our current lifestyle.   Happy Kids school is twice as expensive as most other international schools in Hong Kong and rents are especially high in the parts of Hong Kong Island near the school.    Parkview is actually quite good value for money all things considered, but it is just too up-market for us.  We hope to cut our total living-costs by at least 25% by moving.

So over the last 2 weeks we have started looking for an apartment near the new school.    Many of the other parents live at a development called Royal Ascot which near the Fo Tan MTR station, and about 15 min by school-bus from the school.  

Royal Ascott is a 15-year old-development of ten 45 story towers next to the Shatin racecourse and above a railway depot.   Like Parkview there is a private communal  podium with amenities like pools, tennis courts, clubhouse with gym and resturants etc.   Underneath the podium is a shopping mall and supermarket and car-parks.

Royal Ascot towers - can you see the tennis courts?   There are so many residents per court that they  run a lottery system for weekend slots.

This is solidly middle class development and most apartments offer 90m2 ft of usable space which is quite large for Hong Kong  (although less than 40% of the size of the average new house in New Zealand).   I am particularly attracted to the 50m outdoor pool and the 25m indoor pool.

Of course, compared with Parkview it is bit of a slum with a sad lack of art museums, statues and artificial waterfalls etc.   But Hannah was happy to find a McDonalds in the mall.   And I was pleased to see a choice of Chinese and Japanese restaurants which are a much more reasonable than Parkview's Ming Yuen and Georges!   At Parkview you always need an 'after dinner mint' to pay the bill.

The view from the inward-facing apartments is pretty depressing.  Like living in a filing cabinet.

But the views from some of the outward-facing apartments are pretty good.  This is from 43rd floor of tower 11 looking north to Tolo Harbour and the new town of Ma On Shan on the right.   

View of Fo Tan and local villages, looking west from the master bedroom of the same apartment.  Fo Tan (on the left) was an industrial center but the factories have long since moved to China, and the old industrial buildings are now known for artists studios.  

Unfortunately the interior of this apartment was really old and the kitchen was falling apart.  So Rika ruled it out.   Generally Rika was shocked and depressed at the standard of finishing, maintenance and general cleanliness of the places we saw.   Well below every-day Japanese standard.  

We did find one apartment that was reasonably well looked after, relatively big and with a nice view across the Fo Tan Racecourse to Ma On Shan (which appropriately enough means 'Saddle Hill').  The catch?   Its right above the 6-lane highway which runs below the east-side of the complex, and is one of the main routes up to China.  So we need to decide whether we can tolerate the noise and pollution.

Rika liked this place and argues helpfully that once you close the windows and turn-up the aged air conditioners it is impossible to hear the traffic noise.  Hmmm.

Of course house hunting is about trade-offs and you never get the perfect apartment, especially at the beginning.