The supply glut of residential properties across Malaysia and their total value increased substantially last year, according to the latest data from the Valuation and Property Services Department (JPPH).
In fact, the Sun Daily reported that the number of unsold houses surged 67.2 percent to 24,738 units in 2017, with their combined value rising sharply by 82.8 percent to RM15.64 billion on an annual basis.
Despite the surplus of available dwellings, the Malaysian House Price Index rose 6.5 percent year-on-year, with home values pushed up mainly by terrace properties.
Specifically, the three Malaysian states with the most number of residential oversupply in 2017 were Penang (3,916 units), Kedah (3,783 units) and Johor with 4,376 units.
In Penang and Johor Bahru, unsold homes primarily comprise strata-titled housing costing above RM500,000. In Kedah, it mainly consisted of three-storey residences priced from RM300,000 to RM400,000, but the number of unsold inventory there more than tripled, while priced increased by over five-fold.
Moreover, developers started the construction of 133,592 units in 2017, up 14.4 percent from a year ago, while the supply pipeline increased 24.5 percent to 132,731 units.
“As at year-end, there were more than 5.4 million existing residential units, with another 480,892 units in the incoming supply and 448,199 units in the planned supply,” said JPPH in its 2017 Property Market Report.
Meanwhile, JPPH Director-General Nordin Daharom revealed that they have implemented the Unsold Property Enquiry System Malaysia on Tuesday (17 April).
This allows the public to search for unsold real estate across the country and sort them by area, status and property type. “The search results will display the number of unsold units according to local council zones and value,” he explained.
Furthermore, Malaysia’s property market remained sluggish in 2017, with transaction volume dropping by 2.7 percent year-on-year to 311,824, while overall sales value fell 3.8 percent to RM139.84 billion.
Home sales accounted for 62.4 percent of the total deals last year. Although the number of transacted residential units declined 4.1 percent to 194,684, their total value edged up 4.4 percent to RM68.47 billion.
The most sought-after residences cost RM200,000 and below, as this made up almost 45 percent of the successful sales last year.
In the new build segment, home builders released 77,570 units in 2017, surpassing the 52,713 units launched in the prior year. In addition, their sales-to-launch ratio improved slightly to 32.6 percent from 31.4 percent in 2016.
Looking ahead, Nordin expects Malaysia’s property market to perform “better” this year, given the higher number of deals recorded in early-2018.
“The transactions have increased in the first two months of this year by four percent compared with the first two months last year, indicating market conditions have recovered compared,” he added.
This article was edited by the editorial team of PropertyGuru. To contact them about this or other stories email editorialteam@propertyguru.com.my
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