Does this living arrangement sound sensible?

[Mummy53757857]

Being posted to Singapore for 3 years and starting to think about where we're going to live. I've visited before and know some of neighbourhoods but DP hasn't. As he's a SAHD I really want to prioritise his and my toddler's preferences and needs. We're both very particular about things like noise, traffic, pollution etc, and when I last visited I only found one area that I really liked (everywhere else felt like living next to motorways), but even that had some downsides. I'm very wary of all the new construction popping up all over. For this reason I'm a bit reluctant to sort out accommodation from the UK - I'd rather we both see properties for ourselves, especially him.

Would it be too crazy to get a serviced apartment/Airbnb for a month while we look for somewhere longer-term? It's so expensive, £2500-3000 minimum, and my company will pay for some of it. It seems like the best idea rather than trying to trawl through propertyguru, but I was wondering what other people's experiences were.

I’d say that’s a sensible and pretty usual approach, and what we did when we moved overseas. When you do find somewhere to live it may take a while to get paperwork sorted and get you in, so plan that into your packing - assuming you aren’t going to have all your stuff with you in temporary accommodation.
Long term it’s a good strategy, but I felt it meant that we couldn’t get things like nursery sorted because we didn’t know where we were going to be.
Singapore is amazing - enjoy!

Sounds like a good strategy to me too. More complicated to start with, but better for a long term solution. Good Luck!

When we moved to Aus we rented a holiday apartment for a month so we could visit rentals in person. We had done a reccie trip six months earlier so had an idea of the areas we liked and positioned ourselves for easy access to those areas by train and car to look around and check out public transport and it was walking distance to DH's new job (which only lasted two weeks but that's a different story!) I am SO glad we did, Sydney real estate agents take creative photography to the next level, rooms that looked huge were average, it was common for carpets and blinds to be totally manky and I refused to go further than the front door a few times due to the smell (we ended up upping our budget even though I had done extensive research).

If you do decide to do the same I would ask about get out clauses, are you actually committed for the full month or will they accept notice. We found a rental before our month were up and were able to negotiate leaving a week early.

That's what we did, 4 weeks in an AirBnB while we looked around and found a place.

Yes definitely do that, isn't that the usual thing to do? Multiple overseas moves, we have always been in a serviced flat for the first month or so while finding a place (and hiring an amah, driver, etc).

Most companies will put you up in a serviced apartment for the first month too, so great idea.

Yes. Do it. If you don't have the resources to go over for a while and do some prebooked viewings I would definitely rent the Airbnb. Having done a few moves with housing provided I would have felt weird renting somewhere based just on stuff from online.

Serviced apartment for the first morning nth is standard, especially if you are shipping your house contents as this will take 4-6 weeks to arrive