Affordable housing: How to own it?

Dream home: HBA has consistently called for government intervention to prevent a ‘homeless generation of young adult Malaysians’ from emerging, especially in urban and sub-urban areas, who, if not for wild speculation, would have been able to buy their own houses.

THE National House Buyers Association (HBA) acknowledges the challenges faced by our Prime Minister in tabling Budget 2017 in view of the slowdown in the global and regional economies and also the weaker ringgit.

HBA’s wish list to stem excessive speculation in the property sector that had caused the unbridled escalation of property prices will continue. We have also to continue to challenge some ill-concocted ideas that may prey on laxity by some departments. It was for this purpose that HBA accepted the invitation by the Finance Ministry early this month to table a paper entitled: Affordable Housing: How the Rakyat could own it? in the focus group dialogue with all stakeholders – government and private. The Government seems to be serious about doing something. And if it is so, then it has to make several hard and unprecedented decisions.