Property Agent

I went to Seremban to meet my friend Mr. Yeoh. He is a property agent in Seremban. He has found a new gold mine in selling property for swiftlet farming.

It happened sometime last year when he sold a vacant 4 storey shop to a purchaser from Klang. The purchaser turned the shop into a bird house. After he discovered about swiftlet farming, my friend decided to learn more about swiftlet farming. When I visited him, he told me about swiftlet farming and got me interested. Both of us attended the swiftlet farming seminar together.

After learning more about swiftlet farming, I decided to build my own bird house. However, my friend, Mr. Yeoh went to a different path. Instead of going into swiftlet farming, he started to search for abandon shops for sale and advertised in the newspaper. Due to his knowledge, he managed to sell many shops to interested swiftlet farmers.

Some of his clients are swiftlet farmers and some are swiftlet consultants. Swiftlets consultants bought the shops at cheap price and then sold it at higher price after turning it into a successful bird house.

My friend managed to sell the whole row of abandon shops 1 unit at a time. Purchasers are very funny. When they learn that one for the unit is a bird house they want to buy the unit next to it. My friend manage to sell the whole row of shops to different purchasers and each time the price of the shop went up higher.

My friend made quite a lot of money from sales commissions. While I have spent a lot of money in my bird house and still waiting for the return in a few years time, my friend is putting money into his own pocket.

His idea is to make money first and have his own bird house later.

My Bird House - after 1 week

Just visited my new bird house this afternoon. The brickwalls are completed and plastering work is in progress. Work is progressing as schedule. Meranti planks have not arrived yet.

In order to maintain the front fascia of the building, the front windows which was stolen were replaced with fixed glass painted black inside. There is a layer of brickwall behind the fixed glass for security. The roller shutter is shut with the brickwall behind. Since my bird house uses an open roof entrance, it is very difficult to know that the building is a bird house if you don’t look carefully.

I advise all bird house owners to spend a little more money to make their bird house look nice in order to blend with the surrounding buildings. Don’t forget that you own the bird house for a long term.

My contractor told me that many people came to look at my bird house. These people are mostly bird house owners in the neighbourhood. Trying to learn some design secret I guess.

Learning to design a bird house is very difficult because you can not learn it from the book. If you want to build a bird house you have to steal the design from some existing bird house owner or the best way is to engage a consultant to design it for you. There is also a third method, which is to attend bird house design course. I know that Nest Tech is organizing a bird house design course on 20/12 to 21/12. The fee is very expensive.

Another Swiftlets Eco City

Just received a fax from my friend in Seremban, Negeri Sembilan. He faxed me the brochure of a new swiftlets eco city in Sungai Gadut, Negeri Sembilan. The eco city is built on a 30 acres land with 20 units of 4-storey standalone bird house. Each bird house will have a minimum land size of 1 acre.

Like all swiftlets eco park, it comes with 24/7 security and free maintenance for 2 years. It also provide harvesting and marketing services.

Guess what is the minimum price for 1 unit? It is price from RM750,000 per unit. Do you thing it is expensive? Well, I don't know. Let us breakdown the price and see.

1 acre freehold agriculture land = 43560sf x RM6.00 (est. only) = RM261000

4-storey building (28' x 80') = 8960sf x RM50 (end user price) = RM448000

Total Breakdown Cost = RM709000

Add others like road, drainage, security, the selling price seems reasonable. The selling price is reasonable but is it worth to invest in it? Before you invest in it you must also estimate the number of bird nests that you can get per year. With the estimated number of bird nests then you can calculate the return of your investment. If the estimated return of your investment is less then the bank loan repayment plus some extra pocket money, then it is not a good investment.

If you ask me how to estimate the number of bird nests, I will said that your estimate is as good as mine. So give yourself an estimate of the number of bird nests produce per year put it into the equation and see is the bird house worth investing or not.

At the end of the day if your investment fail, you are the only one to be responsible.

My Bird House

Work started last Thursday to convert my light industry factory into a bird house. The factory is one and a half storey high. The entrance hole and the roving area will be at the 1st floor office area and the nesting area will be at the factory area. Design for the bird house is quite simple because there are not much adjustment that can be done to an existing building. The entrance hole will be an open roof design with water pond at the bottom to catch the rain water. Due to the height of the factory roof the ceiling has to hang down using angle iron welded to the roof trusses.

The major problem at the new bird house is the security issue. The place is very quiet during the night and I heard that one of the bird house nearby was robbed last month. I have plan some features to help preventing robbers from coming into the bird house.

The bird house shall be completed by middle of next month before the Chinese New Year.