Will you buy an apartment or house?

 

    On 14th Oct, there was a blaze broke out in "Ghost building", Cheng Chung Cheng Building, the 13-story building killed 46 persons and 41 injured. The flame may be started from 2am-midnight and the loud explosions have been heard around 3am. The flames moved quickly and the entire building has been engulfed within an hour. The firefighters were struggling over 4 hours to extinguish the fire until the next morning.

    This aging and weaker structure was originally a commercial shopping mall, with a giant banquet hall, arts theater where many people visited since 1980. But over time, after a fire broke out in 1999, building slowly deterioriting, businesses moving out, and it was partly be abandoned. This building inhabited at least 120 families, mostly elderly people, homeless, low-income people, and tenants. They would like to accumulate their storage, piles of garbage, or heaps of debris outside their home which obstructing the stairwells and the streets.

    This news has spurred broader questions about lax safety in the older apartment in this largest city. There are too many aging structures across the state as a results of weak management and government neglect. Some officials claimed that there are more " high risk" older buildings in the city that they would like to investigate for fire security. Some of them are exposed electricity cables, corroded water pipes, elevators had not been worked for years.

    Some tragedies happened again and again through the news. If you bought an apartment, after one or decades, the building slowly degraded, you need to negotiate with other neighbors if would like to consume some money to repair the facilities. You will easily feel frustrated if some citizens would like to remain the bad situations by saving their money. Therefore I would prefer to buy a house than an apartment. I can repair my house easily if I want to, life will become easier.