Apartment Searching in Singapore

One of my primary tasks these first couple of weeks has been to search for an apartment for us here. Tony's parents are generously hosting us at their home in the meantime.

I'm doing my best to learn the ins and outs of the process for renting here, new terminology, practices, etc. For example (U.S. term vs. Singapore term):

Major appliances = White fixtures
Unfurnished = Partially furnished (i.e., with white fixtures (unfurnished means no furniture OR major appliances))
Nice breeze = Windy (I first read "windy" as negative and then realized that meant there was a good breeze and air circulation ;) which is very important - and rare - in this climate)

Owners, realtors, etc. are also allowed to ask lots of personal information about you that is illegal to ask in the U.S. due to anti-discrimination laws. So I'm commonly asked my nationality, marital status, professional background, whether we have children or pets, and so on when inquiring about a property. I was pretty taken aback by those questions initially, but that's just how it's done.

We just sold our condo in DC - hooray! Settlement was Wednesday. And we plan to rent here as both rental and property sales prices are even higher here than in DC (which are already too high) - plus we don't know how long we'll be here.

The majority of the population lives in high rise apartment buildings. With 4.5 million people living on 271 square miles of land, the only way to house them all is by building up (in case you're wondering, Singapore's land area is smaller than Kansas City, MO and about 4 times the size of the District of Columbia - both of which have much smaller populations).

Anyway, that's a bit about the housing search...I'm heading out shortly with our realtor (people here commonly use realtors to find rentals) for another round of apartment viewings. Wish us luck!