GEORGE TOWN: Tambun Indah Land Bhd is undertaking five development projects in Penang with a combined gross development value (GDV) of around RM571.5mil this year.

The projects are the RM131.3mil Pearl Indah and RM180mil Pearl Residence 1 in Simpang Ampat; RM39.3mil BM Residence in Bukit Mertajam; RM41mil Carissa Villas in Bagan Lallang; and RM180mil Straits Garden in Jelutong on the island.

Group managing director Teh Kiak Seng told StarBizWeek after an EGM that with the exception of the Straits Garden project in Jelutong that would be launched in the third quarter of 2012, the construction for the other four projects had started.

“Both Pearl Indah and Pearl Residence 1 are in the RM2bil Pearl City project, where we plan to build some 5,600 landed residential properties and 1,400 commercial properties.

“The first two phases of the Pearl City project the Pearl Garden and Pearl Villas are 90% and 80% sold respectively. Some 41% and 28% of the purchasers for Pearl Villas and Pearl Garden respectively are from the island,” he said.

The funding of the projects would be through the issuance of 88.4 million rights issues of new shares that would raise RM44.2mil for the group.

The two-for-five rights issues, which were approved at the EGM and expected to be completed in June, would effectively increase Tambun Indah’s share capital to RM154.7mil, comprising 309.4 million shares.

“We have a landbank of 625 acres, which has a GDV of RM2.8bil. We are constantly on the lookout for more land in Penang. We are also exploring land outside of Penang,” he said.

Teh said the Penang property market was expected to chart commendable growth in the coming years, as it had been identified as one of the world’s top 10 most dynamic industrial clusters and contributed 28% or RM17.7bil of Malaysia’s total foreign direct investment in 2010-2011.

“In addition, the Malaysia My Second Home initiatives over the past years have resulted in a spill-over benefit for Penang’s property market,” he said.

“As for properties in Seberang Prai, we believe the prices will be well sustained, due to the completion of the second link in 2013, which will have a positive effect on properties in Batu Kawan and Simpang Ampat.”

The rising prices on the island were prompting many young families to explore properties in Seberang Prai for quality lifestyle at affordable prices, Teh added.

Source: The Star

Foreigners, with their higher currency exchange, are competing with the locals in the landed housing market.

THE hike in property prices of the last two years should be a good enough reason to pull out all the plugs that have stifled home ownership among the people.

House prices in the property hot spots of Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya and Penang have way surpassed the affordability level of the average Malaysians and more proactive measures are needed to extend a helping hand to them.

The latest statistics contained in the Property Market Report 2011 by the National Property Information Centre showed that average house prices climbed 6.6% in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Donald Lim rightly pointed out that the Government was worried of the emergence of a real estate bubble and did not want a United States sub-prime mortgage crisis in Malaysia.

The situation has to be addressed urgently before the high property prices cause more hardship to the people. Any further hike in housing prices will aggravate the climbing cost of living and derail efforts to promote home ownership.

Bank Negara’s measures to rein in rising property prices and deter speculative property buying, including a maximum loan-to-value ratio of 70% for third-time mortgage borrowers and using net personal income calculation instead of gross income to decide on the quantum of loan approved, are showing results.

Banks should be prudent in their lending practices and if the speculative buying persist, tighter lending measures, like a further lowering of the LVR for multiple mortgage borrowers, should be implemented to nip property speculation in the bud.

However, first-time house buyers should be made a priority sector and they should be granted full financing if they met the lending conditions.

To ensure the home ownership programme will be a success, the efforts have to be undertaken holistically with the ultimate objective of making it easy and affordable for all households to own at least a home each.

The programme needs a masterplan that looks into the overall supply and demand scenario in the property market, and should not be undertaken on a piecemeal basis.

Given the importance of the family unit to the well-being of the country’s social fabric, ensuring that every household has at least a house of their own will have many spillover benefits for the overall good of the country.

To address the supply side, sufficient land should be allocated to be developed into affordable housing townships that offer well-planned housing units priced between RM200,000 and RM400,000.

Instead of having different authorities or agencies, a dedicated umbrella body in the like of a National Housing Board should be responsible for all the Government’s affordable housing initiatives to plan and execute projects for the 1Malaysia Housing Scheme and My First Home Scheme.

A closer scrutiny on the demand side points to the fact that besides strong buying interest by local purchasers, there has been an influx of foreign buyers, including from the Middle East and China, who have been snapping up local properties, thus contributing to the sharp spike in prices.

The situation is further compounded by the market cooling measures undertaken by governments in Singapore, China and Hong Kong to stem price hikes in their property markets.

Besides making it difficult and costly for their own nationals to buy multiple properties, strict conditions have been meted out on foreign buyers.

Last December, Singapore imposed a 10% stamp duty on foreign buyers to control the high number of foreign purchases.

The aim is to prevent property prices from boiling over which may lead to mayhem in the market should a property bubble happen.

Having seen the effect of the spiralling property prices in raising the cost of living,

I believe the holistic measures to contain property prices in our country should include some form of curbs on purchases by foreigners.

In view of the strong interest for landed housing units and sharp price hikes in this product segment, foreign purchasers should be disallowed from buying landed residential properties, except the super high-end ones.

Like in Singapore, landed housing projects, except the super high-end projects on Sentosa island, is made a critical sector that is only exclusive to the local buyers.

Foreigners should only be allowed to buy high-rise properties that are priced at more than RM1mil and multi million ringgit landed housing.

With these measures, the foreigners with their higher foreign exchange advantage will not be competing with the locals in the high demand landed housing sector which is one of the reasons driving prices to the current high levels today.

Source: The Star

Primero Heights, high-rise development by Meto Jelata Group, within the established township of Seberang Jaya, Penang. It is strategically located next to Taman Janggus Jaya, within mere minutes drive to Carrefour hypermarket and 5 minutes drive to Penang Bridge.

This 18-storey freehold condominium comprises 154 residential units with built-up area ranging from 1,400 sq.ft. to 2,400 sq.ft. It also comes with full condominium facilities.

Property Project : Primero Heights
Location : Seberang Jaya, Penang
Property Type : Condominium
Tenure : Freehold
Built-up Area: 1,383 sq.ft. – 4,779 sq.ft.
Total Units: 154
Developer : Metro Jelata Group

Location Map:

KUALA LUMPUR: The property market would continue to be active this year, supported by various government initiatives under the 10th Malaysia Plan and Budget 2012, said Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Donald Lim.

“Last year, in terms of construction activities, the higher number of new unit starts and building plan approvals signified the confidence of developers and investors,” said Lim at the launch of Malaysia’s Property Market Report 2011.

According to the report, the performance of the residential sub-sector would be sustained, while vacant space in the office and retail sub-sectors is expected to be absorbed as more space is taken up during the progress of the country’s Economic Transformation Programme.

However, Lim also pointed out that the Government was worried about the emergence of a real estate bubble.

“We do not want a United States subprime mortgage crisis in Malaysia. We noted that a lot of foreigners from the Middle East and China are keen on buying properties here,” he said.

Lim said the Government would intervene when property prices were seen to have “shot up too high.”

“As such, measures such as the implementation of the maximum loan-to-value ratio of 70% for the third home and Bank Negara’s responsible lending guidelines were taken.”

According to data on Bank Negara’s website, the amount of loans applied for purchases of residential property increased by 17% year-on-year in the first two months of 2012 to RM26.7bil.

The amount of residential property loans approved during the period was RM12.25bil, which was 2.7% higher compared to a year earlier.

Last year, the property market performed strongly with the value of transactions rising 28.3% to RM137.8bil. Volume rose 14.3% to 430,403 transactions.

The report stated that market activity was led by the residential sub-sector, which had a double-digit expansion of 18.9%.

This was followed by the development land (14.7%), commercial (9.7%), industrial (6.5%) and agricultural (4.6%) sub-sectors.

In terms of value, all sub-sectors registered double-digit growth with two sub-sectors surpassing 50%, namely agricultural (65.4%) and development land (54.8%).

Despite more units launched, the performance of the residential market improved last year. In 2011, there were 49,290 units of new launches which achieved sales of 46.3%, compared with 47,698 units with 45.7% sales in 2010.

Selangor, Johor and Perak offered the most number (51.2% or 25,216 units combined) of new launches in the country.

In terms of market share, the residential sub-sector dominated with 62.7%, followed by the agricultural (19.7%), commercial (10.1%), development land (5.0%) and industrial (2.4%) sub-sectors.

The residential sub-sector also took up a 44.9% share of the transaction value in the market. Last year, there were 269,789 residential property transactions worth RM61.83bil, which was the highest recorded in the last five years.

Selangor retained the lion’s share by capturing 27.9% (75,344 transactions) of the country’s total transactions.

The demand for high-end units priced above RM500,000 had increased, with 21,905 transactions last year (compared with 16,782 transactions in 2010).

“This could be attributed to the increase in affordability level and supported by the ease in borrowing as well as attractive loan packages offered by financial institutions.”

By property type, terraced houses captured 36.6% (98,597 units) of residential transactions, of which about one-third were transacted in Selangor.

As at the end of 2011, there were 4.51 million existing residential units with 584,546 units in the incoming supply.

According to the report, the Malaysian All House Price Index had surged to 156.9 points in the fourth quarter of last year, compared with 147.2 points a year earlier.

Source: The Star

RESIDENTS of Gambier Heights Apartment in Penang are urging the Commissioner of Building (COB) to call for an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) after the parcel owners claimed that they were not given the audited financial report by the Joint Management Body (JMB).

The apartment is located in Persiaran Bukit Gambier near Bukit Gelugor.

They claimed that matters arising at the second Annual General Meeting (AGM) were also not forwarded to them during their third AGM held on May 3 last year.

Teacher S.C. Tan, 45, said the EGM was needed to vote and endorse a licensed property manager to manage the overall operations and administration of the apartments.

“We were also not given the audited financial statements for 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.

“According to the Building and Common Property Act 2007 (Act 663), the EGM could be called if a quarter of parcel owners signed for it.

“We submitted the petition together with 202 signatures by parcel owners to COB requesting an EGM but was later informed that the request had been rejected.

“In their letter dated November 1, it was stated that the rejection was because 25 owners had withdrawn from the petition, three had duplicated their signatures and six were not parcel owners.

“This left us with 168 signatures. Hence, the petition was rejected,” she said after a meeting with the MPPP president Patahiyah Ismail at Komtar recently.

Engineering site supervisor Stephen Lee, 49, said there were 737 units in Gambier Heights Apartment and at least 185 signatures were required.

“The law is silent on whether it allows ‘withdrawal’ from petition or if it rejects the ‘add-on’ of signatures,” Lee said.

“If the COB had allowed the ‘withdrawal’ of those who are for the EGM, why can’t they allow the ‘add-on’ of signatures?” he asked.

Lee claimed that a decision would be made known after the COB’s meeting on April 13.

Patahiyah declined to comment when met after the meeting.

Source: The Star