Affordability are indeed crucial in terms of of buying a home. Danau Perintis and Bellevue are among developments that offer affordable homes to those who are financially constraint.
Experts revealed that Malaysia is unlikely to follow Singapore’s easing of its property cooling measures, as their current economic situation differs from each other, reported The Star.
“Property prices in Malaysia have not retracted as much as Singapore’s and our economy is strengthening, while Singapore’s remains weak,” said Chris Eng, Research Head at Etiqa Insurance & Takaful.
In fact, real estate prices here continued to climb albeit at slower pace of 6.4 percent in the first three quarters of last year, after surging at a double digit rate in 2012 and 2013.
“However, in Singapore, property prices have dropped every quarter since 2014. The cooling measures there have also exerted downward pressure on headline consumer prices through subdued rental costs,” noted Nor Zahidi Alias, Chief Economist at Malaysian Rating Corporation.
As such, there is a low possibility that Malaysia will relax its real estate curbs just like what Singapore did. Notably, the city-state slightly reduced its seller’s stamp duty (SSD) on property purchases, and exempted some categories of housing loans from the Total Debt Servicing Ratio (TDSR) framework.
The target of these policies are also different, shared Thomas Yong, CEO of Fortress Capital. “Singapore’s curbs were largely against foreign speculation while in Malaysia, the curbs were to prevent excessive domestic gearing.”
Nevertheless, the government might consider reviewing some of these cooling measures if they notice that property prices are under control and there is an improvement in Malaysia’s overall household debt.
“The right time to adjust some of the cooling measures is when the market equilibrium is a lot more certain and sustainable,” noted Danny Wong, Chief Executive Officer of Areca Capital.
“While core fundamental issues such as affordability and oversupply in some segments of properties still linger, a soft economic growth climate may be a good time to review some of these cooling measures to prevent the property sector from over-adjusting,” he added.
Meanwhile, Maybank’s Group Chief Economist Suhaimi Ilias pointed out that there are many measures in Budget 2017 that aims to help Malaysians acquire low-cost houses. These include exempting properties valued between RM300,000 and RM500,000 from stamp duty and launching step-up funding for first-time buyers of PR1MA houses.
However, the authorities will increase the stamp duty from 3 percent to 4 percent on legal documents used in the transfer of real estate valued at over RM1 million starting in January 2018.
Among great affordable homes to look out for are:
Image sourced from The Star
Radin Ghazali, Content Writer at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact her about this or other stories email radin@propertyguru.com.my
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