This article first appeared in City & Country, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on December 20, 2021 - December 26, 2021

As businesses resumed operations and economic sectors reopened, Mah Sing Group Bhd founder and group managing director Tan Sri Leong Hoy Kum believes that homebuyers’ purchasing power will gradually improve and there will be pent-up demand for affordably priced properties in strategic locations.

“We always study and align our growth strategy with the ever-changing market conditions by leveraging our 27 years of experience in property development. Understanding the market demand helps us to reaffirm our business strategies and product features, and ensure that these meet the current needs of buyers,” he says.

As at Sept 30, 2021, the group had a land bank of 2,051 acres, with a gross development value (GDV) and unbilled sales of about RM24.98 billion.

“Armed with cash and cash equivalents of about RM807.5 million as at June 30, 2021, we will continue with our selective land banking expansion for continuous growth while maintaining prudent financial management. We are actively scouting for strategic land, mainly in Greater Kuala Lumpur, the Klang Valley, Johor and Penang,” says Leong.

In an email interview, he talks to City & Country about the developer’s achievements over the past year, as well as its strategies, direction and plans.

Tan Sri Leong Hoy Kum: The nation’s overall economy showed signs of recovery in anticipation of a successful vaccination campaign in early 2021. Riding on the momentum, Mah Sing kick-started the year with a strong uptake in sales and aims to achieve a higher sales target of RM1.6 billion this year, with 91% of our products priced below RM700,000 and 51% below RM500,000.

With our effective sales campaign and strong digital sales and marketing efforts, we secured new property sales of about RM1.06 billion in the first eight months of 2021. This was driven by the strong demand for affordably priced products in strategic locations. As such, we are on track to achieve our sales target this year.

We also launched three digital-centric campaigns this year, namely ‘Home with Mah Sing’, ‘Come Home 2 Mah Sing’ and ‘Mah Sing NOW’. These campaigns addressed the underlying concerns of homebuyers by offering various incentives to ease homeownership.

Backed by our healthy balance sheet and gearing up to ride on the recovery of the property market, we successfully acquired two pieces of land in the Klang Valley this year — M Senyum in Bandar Baru Salak Tinggi, Sepang, and M Astra in Setapak, Kuala Lumpur — which will be launched in January and April 2022 respectively. There is a clear indication of strong market interest in these new projects from our registration exercise, and we are optimistic that they will be well received when they are launched.

The continuous commitment to integrating technology into our business processes and utilising digital tools helped to mitigate the business disruption and allowed the continuity of our operation. This ensures that our businesses are running as usual for internal processes while for external stakeholders, they helped to communicate with our homebuyers.

While market sentiment is still affected by the lingering effects of Covid-19 and the tight lending environment, our sales campaigns offer buyers various incentives, as we understand their hurdles in owning a home. This includes easy entry options such as facilitating loan approvals under Maybank Islamic’s HouzKEY financing programme. These carefully designed perks have helped some of our buyers in overcoming their limitations by getting the much-needed boost in securing their ideal home.

Under the present challenging market conditions, it is important for us to stay agile and have a healthy balance sheet. We are firm believers of this approach and have always been disciplined in our financial management while maintaining a quick turnaround model. This helps us to build a strong foundation in overcoming difficult times, and to seize golden opportunities to strengthen our foothold, as well as expanding our forte for continuous growth.

In line with the general expectations that 2022 will be a better year for the country as a whole, we believe the property market will recover, especially in the affordable properties segment. We will continue to focus on our M-Series projects, which are mainly affordable-range products that have shown tremendous results and proved that demand will remain resilient as long as the right products are offered at the right price and at the right location.

Apart from traditional and on-the-ground marketing, we believe that digital marketing is the way to go in this new norm. This is exactly what we are doing now and we are fast enough to adopt the latest trends into our marketing methodology.

We officially opened the sales gallery of M Astra this month. The 31-storey mixed-use development, which occupies five acres in Setapak, will comprise 1,426 residential units and 24 retail shops. The residential units have built-ups of 850 to 1,044 sq ft and are indicatively priced from RM399,000. 

The 100-acre M Senyum in Bandar Baru Salak Tinggi, which will be launched in January next year, comprises 1,176 double-storey terraced homes with built-ups from 1,555 sq ft and are indicatively priced from RM450,000. 

In Johor, we will be launching Erica Phase 2 @ Meridin East in 1Q2022. It will comprise 210 double-storey link homes with built-ups of 1,601 sq ft and prices starting from RM417,000. 

We will also be launching Delphy @ M Aruna and M Panora in Rawang in 2Q2022. Delphy @ M Aruna will consist of 177 double-storey link homes with indicative prices starting from RM662,800. M Panora will comprise 396 double-storey link homes spread over a 45.38-acre tract. 

Echoing the success of our M-Series projects, we will continue to focus on offering affordable high-rises in central business district areas such as M Luna in Kepong and M Adora in Wangsa Melawati, as well as affordable landed homes in the outskirts/suburban areas such as M Aruna in Rawang and Meridin East in Johor, all of which have seen encouraging demand. Ultimately, we aim to produce the right product at the right location and at affordable prices.

Moving forward, we will continue with our quick turnaround and nimble business model as this demonstrates our dynamic corporate culture and has proven to be effective in delivering promising results. We will also explore new construction technologies that are more cost-effective and efficient.

The key to sustainability in the property business comes from understanding the total development life cycle, from feasibility studies to vacant possession.

We adopted IBS (Industrialised Building System) for selected projects, whereby prefabrication and system formwork are implemented. The reusability of system formwork as opposed to conventional timber formwork enabled us to reduce construction waste that rarely gets recycled.

The passive design concept was also prioritised as a way to maximise the attributes of the natural environment, including light and ventilation. Materials and products that have less impact on the environment will be used to improve the well-being of occupants in the development.

In line with the government’s efforts to support the electric vehicle (EV) industry, some of our developments will be equipped with charging stations.

Considering that dense urban developments will lead to urban heat island effect, we have incorporated greenery and landscaped areas into our developments, and most of these green spaces are more than 25% of the land area of most of our projects.

We strategise our upcoming launches in stages/phases to ensure they fit the market sentiment and meet the pent-up demand for affordable homes. As we stay agile in our marketing plan, our launch timeline is flexible, and we will always reassess the situation to re-evaluate the ever-changing scenario and come out with the best launch options.

We believe the high vaccination rate will help stabilise the country’s economy. From the significant increase in footfall at our sales galleries, we are optimistic that the property market is picking up, and the recovery momentum is positive.

In line with the Home Ownership Campaign and low interest rate environment, we extended our ‘Mah Sing NOW’ campaign until Dec 31 due to the reopening of more economic sectors under the National Recovery Plan and strong interest displayed in the group’s projects.

We are confident that our projects will be well received, as we did thorough market research and feasibility studies from the start of the land acquisition. We always plan our developments carefully and ensure the projects are strategically located with good connectivity and are near various amenities and infrastructure.

Although we are now in the recovery stage, we believe the new norm is here to stay, and the convenience brought by digitalisation and the utilisation of technological tools will continue to expand across various scenarios.

The marketing of our products starts from the conceptualisation stage. In this regard, we will continue to leverage digital technologies throughout the development of our products to obtain more detailed and granular data and insights into homebuyers’ preferences and needs. With this, the entire design and development process will be more efficient.

We will also optimise the wider use of digitalisation to market our products via various digital channels and media platforms to engage with homebuyers, which will help us to understand them better in order to boost the customer experience. We believe the technology will play a bigger role in the years to come, providing more innovative and comprehensive solutions for the convenience of buyers and industry players.

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