KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 23 — Putrajaya introduced today the First Home Deposit Scheme with a RM200 million allocation that aims to help affordable home buyers with their down payments on their first house purchase.
“First Home Deposit Scheme will be prepared as a contribution to affordable house buyers’ deposit payments. RM200m allocated,” the prime minister tweeted as he tabled Budget 2016 in Parliament today.
He also announced that there will be an additional 175,000 affordable homes built under the 1Malaysia Housing Programme (PR1MA), all of which will be sold 20 per cent below market price.
“Building 175 thousand housing units under PR1MA, that will be sold 20per cent below market price, with an allocation of RM1.6 billion,” another tweet read.
Some 100,000 new houses will also be built come 2018 under the 1Malaysia Civil Servants Housing Programme (PPA1M) costing between RM90,000 and RM300,000, he said.
There will also be an additional 10,000 houses built under the Rumah Mesra Rakyat 1Malaysia programme, which received an RM200 million allocation, with each unit coming with a RM20,000 subsidy.
Sime Darby Property will also build 4,600 affordable houses while other government-linked companies (GLCs) will build an additional 800 homes along mass rapid transit (MRT) stations.
PropertyGuru’s latest survey shows three out of four Malaysians are unhappy with the current property market, citing expensive properties and lack of government action among the main reasons for dissatisfaction.
The main reasons cited are the perception that properties are overpriced (86 per cent), the rapid increase of prices (61 per cent), a laggard economy (57 per cent) and unpredictable real estate conditions (37 per cent).
Despite the various government schemes to encourage domestic property purchase, 37 per cent of respondents did not apply for such programmes, while another 36 per cent said they did not qualify for such assistance.
Only one out of five respondents applied for PR1MA while only four per cent applied for the Private Affordable Ownership Housing Scheme (MyHome).
Despite property being exempted from the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the measure implemented in April 2015 has influenced consumer confidence with 60 per cent stating that it impacted their decision to buy property.
Other popular reasons cited included planning for children’s education (37 per cent), a hedge against inflation and currency fluctuations (31 per cent) and migration (25 per cent).
