News by City

The past 12 months have not been easy for the domestic property market. Transactions have declined and new launches have been scaled back. With Budget 2017 set to be tabled on Oct 21, some property players and experts are hoping for measures that will make it easier for first-time homebuyers to buy and help boost the property market. Read on to find out what they hope to see in the budget.

THE slowdown in the property market is not news to developers and the public. But some developers have weathered the headwinds by planning carefully and implementing good strategies. For a glimpse of this, we asked the winners (Top 10) of last year’s The Edge Malaysia Top Property Developers Awards for their views at the start of the evaluation of this year’s Top 10 ranking.

At 10pm on June 23, the polls for the referendum on whether the UK should remain in or leave the European Union (EU) closed. Some nine hours later, the official results were out and the leave camp was declared the winner by a narrow margin.

With an uncertain economy and few signs of the property market bouncing back in the near term, are there still opportunities for investors?

Similarly, signs of oversupply are emerging in the retail sector in major urban areas, particularly in Penang, Johor and the Klang Valley.

Meanwhile, Bank Negara says there is an oversupply of office and retail space. Office space in the Klang Valley recorded a vacancy rate of 20.4% in 2015, compared with the regional average of 6.6% and national level of 16.3%.

AN undersupply of affordable housing, particularly in major urban areas, coupled with an oversupply of office and retail spaces, may lead to deeper imbalances in the property market, says Bank Negara Malaysia in its 2015 annual report, which was released recently. Despite a 35% increase in housing stock since 2005, the gap between the housing stock and the number of households widened from 2.1 million units in 2005 to 2.5 million in 2015. Annual housing completion has declined considerably in the past five years as the number of households continued to grow. There was an estimated average shortage of 85,911 housing units per year between 2011 and 2015.