Consequently, prevailing median house prices are beyond the reach of most Malaysians. This is primarily attributable to a gross mismatch between housing supply and demand amid diverging expectations between households and developers.
KUALA LUMPUR: Real Estate and Housing Developers’ Association (Rehda) has unveiled its wish list for the upcoming Budget 2018 proposals ranging from measures to help people own homes to GST exemption on construction materials for affordable housing.
In its wish list, it sought measures to facilitate home ownership, stamp duty exemption, increase in affordable housing supply and more incentives for the industrialised building system (IBS).
Themed “Negaraku: Shaping the Future”, the Budget 2018 wish list included several proposals by Rehda to the government.
To facilitate home ownership, Rehda proposes the disbursement of the 10% downpayment from the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) to be channeled directly to the developer, without buyers having to pay the amount from their own savings or other sources.
To help in home ownership, Rehda proposed the MyDeposit scheme be continued with higher allocation to benefit more first-time buyers in addressing the issue of high entry costs.
Recall that the MyDeposit scheme was launched during Budget 2016 with an allocation of RM200mil to address the issue of first time house buyers struggling with financing upfront deposits.
Rehda had lauded the government’s effort in encouraging home ownership among the first time house buyers by providing 100% stamp duty exemption for houses below RM300,000 in Budget 2017.
“Nonetheless, taking into account house prices which are higher in major cities, Rehda has proposed that the stamp duty waiver be expanded to more properties of higher threshold, which are still under the category of affordable housing,” Rehda said.
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