KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 21): While the government’s efforts in encouraging home ownership are lauded, real estate consultants feel more can be done to help the people fulfil their dream of owning homes.

Henry Butcher Malaysia CEO Tang Chee Meng said Budget 2017 tabled by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak in Parliament today was in line with the government’s focus to help the lower income group own a home.

“With the introduction of the MyBeautiful New Home scheme and the ‘step-up’ end-financing scheme, it shows that the government is determined to help them own homes. I would say this is a very rakyat-friendly budget, but this budget does not benefit developers,” Tang said.

Besides a lack of incentives to encourage the private sector to build more affordable homes, the government has announced an increase in stamp duty for houses priced at RM1 million and above with effect from Jan 1, 2018. This, he said, will discourage developers from building affordable homes.

On the other hand, he is happy to see more affordable projects being planned but he believes to deliver these projects on time is equally important.

JLL associate director for research and consultancy Veena Loh also lauded the government’s initiative in helping the lower income group to improve their living conditions and to own their own homes.

“However, location will be an issue as currently land prices in prime areas have increased while construction cost is rising which may pose a big challenge in building low-cost homes in urban areas,” she explained.

She added that if low-cost homes are built in locations which are far away from the city or town, it might not achieve its objective of helping the poor as they will be facing problems in getting to their workplace or accessing amenities.

Oregeon Property Consultancy Sdn Bhd managing director Wong Wen Chet noted that most of the prime land that the government owns have high valuations, making it hard to turn them into low-cost housing developments as they could be used for other purposes to create more value,” he said.

He noted that the construction cost for a 1,000 sq ft high-rise residential unit ranges between RM80,000 to RM100,000, so the selling price of PR1MA homes (RM150,000 to RM300,000) and MyBeautiful New Home (RM40,000 to RM50,000) might not be feasible.

Menawhile, KGV International Property Consultants executive director Samuel Tan said Budget 2017 is unexciting for the housing sector apart for housing of the bottom 40% of households with monthly income of RM3,900 and below (B40) and first-time homebuyers.

“Schemes under PPA1M, MyBeautiful New Home, PPR and PR1MA are specifically targeted at the B40 and this should be lauded,” Tan said. 

“However, the proposed ‘step-up’ end-financing scheme is creative and should be extended to houses outside PR1MA as end-financing is a major hindrance in the pursuit of owning a property,” he said. 

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