Stay Home Mom Turned Villa Developer, by Zara Zettira ZR
Recently, maybe for the past 4 months, often we heard comments on world economy is bad, property value has dropped everywhere in the world and so has Bali’s properties. How true is that?
Thanks to Zara Zettira ZR to share her experience in her own writing, a true story from a stay home mom who turned herself to a villa developer.
She shared with us the benefits she now feels by investing in Bali, thinking out of the box, she made the right decision even when the whole world thought people will have no interest in investing in Bali anymore.
We are happy to share that Bali market remains great. It's been a god-given-gift to this island of the gods, where nobody could take it away.
Happy Reading!
Carol and I were both stay at home mom live in Ontario, Canada. We had known each other for over 8 years now. Her husband is our family's chiropractic doctor and had tremendously helped me with my back problems after giving birth to my son via c-section. She also became my first and only best friend since i moved to Canada late 1998. That perhaps we shared similar interests in life and I have to say it is our live philosophy that brought us together. We both love and promote healthy all natural living, exercise our body, mind and spirit. Plus as stay home mothers our jobs includes managing family's assets which can be pretty boring with only few good investment options available here. Whereas the bank's savings rates never appeal us to put our money in the account for less than 3% annually. Just does not make any sense and boring.
We both took a girl's trip to Bali few years ago and she fell in love with everything in the island but the traffics. The villa living amazed her as much it amazed my Canadian husband 15 years ago. While my husband and I already started putting our investment in buying lands and building villas, Carol started about 2 years ago, right after our 10 days trip. I guess all the massages, spa treatments and good food really help us to think fresh and came out with fresh new ideas too.
My husband and I started with one villa. The owner was having problem with bank mortgage as the bomb hits Bali twice and hurts the tourism so bad. Our intention to help out was laughed by everybody. Who would invest in the island that just got bombed twice? Prices were low but they said it will just go lower. So it didn't make any sense to invest at that time according to most people including my Mom :) But we did it anyway. Because we can and we do want to help ease the economy problems in a very small way, as much as we could afford.
That first villa then renovated and sold within less than 6 months. We then move on buying lands which owners in need of money. The tourism crisis was still on for the next few years. But we keep doing what we're doing. Personally, for me, I always remember what my dad told me. Invest in land rather than diamonds or anything else. Land never grow, demand will eventually be higher than what's available, since nobody can produce more land. Plus nobody can steal a piece of land as well. :) With that in heart and intention to help a bit in mind also some money in the pocket, we keep building and renting and selling. Each villa built will at least helps 3 Balinese to get a job. That is to look after the villa, maintenance and security. As well as helping builders and their workers.
Having said that, Carol join us with her first purchase of land in Petitenget (gang villa orchid, near Warung Eropa & Warung Bonita) The owner again was in need of money as they plan to move to Ubud area. We decided to build 2 villas on our 6 ares of land resulting with 1 of 2 bedrooms villa and 1 of 3 bedrooms villa besides each other. Carol took some of her investment in stock market for this. She took the chance and follow her heart.
Last year the stock market fell hard. People looses their money and mind. Some that I known of, even tried to suicide after loosing their life time investment over night! But me and Carol celebrating instead. We had followed our heart and we won! Our investment are safe and fruitful. With the tourism back in Bali and US dollar went up, more people came and invest in Bali's property. Stock market had lost their popularity and as for land and homes, like my dad said , it will eventually up in value. It will never disappeared like stocks or bonds or diamond or cash money :):)
Our good intention remains our philosophy till today. We share our profit with our buyers. If the property worth $ 500K in market value, we will sell for 10% less so buyers can virtually get 10% profit instantly when buying (as they bought in 10% less than market value). Other developer might ate us for doing this, but hey... we're just house wife who want to do something good. Good for others and for our family. Best of all, we have fun and will have more fun doing this!
Namaste from Toronto, Canada.
Zara Zettira ZR
Indonesian author/writers live in Canada with her husband, 2 kids and 3 four legged kids :)