What it takes to relocate

$$$ - we haven’t spent anything yet. We have been busy on three fronts – finding an apartment, getting started on our MM2H (Malaysia My 2nd Home) application, and organizing our finances. The organizing finances was the easiest. We have a HSBC account in the US, so we wanted to open up one in Malaysia so we can write checks for our rent rather than withdraw money from an ATM (in my experience ATMs dispense RM50 notes so we could end up with a pile of at least 50 notes). Today to close a small retirement account – I had to fill out, print, and fax a form. The hotel printed, but getting it scanned into a PDF file (so we could have it faxed from the US) was another story. The hotel didn’t have the capacity to scan, nor did a nearby internet café or a nearby travel agency. We checked with HSBC premier – success.

On MM2H one doesn’t need an agent, but I can't imagine applying without one. Our biggest fear is spending hours (and $) getting the documents, trudging to various offices, and then being turned down. We are meeting with an agent tomorrow. She sent a list of what documents we need. Among our "missing" documents are 3 years of tax returns. We called the IRS last night to get a tax transcript. We hope works otherwise we will lean on Brendan to download it from a file on a computer in Indy. The bottom line is that we will buy a color printer that prints and scans as soon as we get settled.

On to the apartment – On Sunday we meet with an agent to look at apartments in a nearby building. To say that the agent was spacey was an understatement – we wondered if he was a licensed real estate broker or simply someone’s second cousin. On this our first outing we learned that leases of less than a year are more expensive and harder to come by – 6 months is the typical minimum (read panic when we have a 90 day social visit visa). Yesterday we went to a building very close to an LRT (metro station) – good facilities and security. We saw a 2 bedroom which had a great tropical view. The price was a bit more than what we wanted to pay, but definitely possible. We were told that we could get a discount, but if we turned it down someone else was ready to take the unit. My reply – “that’s life.” Doug found other listings for the same building – each apartment seems to have its own agent. So we are doing a lot of sitting around and waiting. Tomorrow an agent will take us to see three units. Only one is a 2 bedroom. We probably will rent a 2 bedroom – so anyone who said that they were planning to visit better show up.