New Apartment: Preliminary Contract Signed (Sep. 7, 2026)

During last weekend, there was such a big milestone was establisheda big milestone was reached¹. We've finally made a pre-contractsigned a preliminary contract² for a new apartment. Currently, my family liveslives in³ a 1-bedroom studio, which we call 2-bay room in Koreaone-bedroom unit⁴. The space is only 33 square metersquare meters⁵ that is never enoughwhich is nowhere near enough⁶ for 4 family membersa family of four⁷ to live a normal lifelive comfortably⁶.

Anyway, after searching for 40 apartments and visiting about 20 ones20 of them⁸ in person to look into the inner structure and conditions, my wife an Imy wife and I⁹ eventually made up our mindmade up our minds¹⁰ to select one. First of all, we chose two promising candidates. One is the one that hashad¹¹ already replaced almost all of the interior parts with new ones a five years ago and maintained cleanhas been kept clean since¹². However, they don't still havestill don't have¹³ system air-conditioners. Another has also well kepthas also been well kept¹⁴ for a decade, but there's no footprint of interior replacementshows no sign of any interior renovation¹⁵. Either one has necessity of remodeling construction, not even full operationsEither way, some remodeling would be necessary, though not a full renovation¹⁶.

The first candidate's price was 440M KRW and I thought that was not so propera bit too high¹⁷ because it doesn't have system air conditioners. Therefore I tried to ask for a discount by 10M KRW, but the host denied my suggestion, counter-proposingthe seller declined, countering with¹⁸ a 5M KRW-discount. The other issue was the entering datemove-in date¹⁹, Jan. 10th, 2027. Since our current renting studio contract is expiredlease expires²⁰ on 18-Jan, 2027, that date is not enough for us to prepare and execute the remodeling constructioncarry out the remodeling²¹.

On the other hand, the second candidate accepted my proposal discounting by 10M KRW, and they told us that they could leave untilmove out by²² 18-Dec, 2026 which is sufficient to complete the interior construction. Hence, we determined the pre-contractfinalized the preliminary contract²³ with the second one by sending the pre-contract fee, 5M KRW last Saturday. In this weekThis week²⁴, we're going to make an official contract under the real-estate agent's interventionwith the help of the real-estate agent²⁵. Then, we are going to start the real preparation. I look forward to dreaming how we makecan't wait to start dreaming up ways to make²⁶ my new apartment more clean and beautiful.