Friday 29 Mar 2024
By
main news image

KUALA LUMPUR (March 9): The housing situation in Malaysia has attracted the interest of folk across the Causeway.

In an article entitled “Malaysians hit by shortage of affordable housing”, the republic’s The Straits Times (ST) wrote that “With unsold units hitting record highs, the resolve of developers and investors to hold up prices seems to have been broken. For the first time since the 2008 global financial crisis, the overall House Price Index fell on a quarterly basis last year.”

It said only a quarter of houses launched in Malaysia from 2016 to March last year were priced under RM250,000.

This has resulted in a supply mismatch, with demand for affordable housing continuing “to outstrip supply, while property developers now face a glut of higher-priced units that they can't shift”.

Meanwhile, the House Price Index has been “dipping” from 193.1 to 192.1 between the second quarter and third quarter of 2018.

“Last year's overall prices are still expected to be higher than in 2017, when the House Price Index was 187.6. Home prices, however, are expected to fall further this year,” wrote the ST.

RHB property analyst Loong Kok Wen told the Singapore paper that “We expect residential property prices to decline slightly by 1% to 3% in 2019."

“The writing has been on the wall for years now. In 2016, nearly 15,000 homes remained unsold nine months after they were completed” wrote the ST.

“All in all, Malaysian developers are sitting on a whopping RM27.4 billion in completed, but unsold, stock nationwide,” it added.

The publication also touched on efforts made by the new administration at Putrajaya to fix the situation with the launch of the National Housing Policy in January to help homebuyers.

It also wrote that Pakatan Harapan has plans to build 100,000 units of affordable homes capped at RM300,000 each annually.

      Print
      Text Size
      Share