KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 30 — Putrajaya has yet to come up with a formula or plan to sell unsold luxury residential properties to foreign buyers, the Parliament was told today.
Housing and Local Government Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin told the Lower House during Question Time that currently, each state decides the threshold price for the homes that a foreigner can purchase, which is decided by their respective State Economic Planning Unit (Upen).
“On selling residential properties to foreigners, currently the government still has no plans or formula on how to sell these units to foreigners. The threshold price is decided by the state government and managed by Upen.
“The price that they decided is not based on a comprehensive study. So the ministry is hoping for a big data centre in the construction industry to give an integrated statistic so we can have a more accurate projection based on price, location and such.
“This will ensure that we will no longer have any overhang,” said Zuraida in her reply to Ketereh (BN) MP Tan Sri Annuar Musa.
Currently, the threshold in Selangor is RM2 million for foreign buyers. Perak, Sarawak, Johor, Melaka, Terengganu, Pahang, Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, Negri Sembilan, Perlis, Sabah, Kelantan and Melaka have priced their threshold at RM1 million.
Penang has set an RM2 million threshold for homes on the island and RM1 million for its mainland residential properties in Seberang Prai.
Annuar Musa then pointed out that in Budget 2020, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng had announced a threshold reduction to RM600,000 per unit and voiced his concern and worry of the serious implication in allowing outsiders to purchase homes at such a low price.
He asked whether the policy originated from Zuraida’s ministry or was decided by Lim’s ministry and criticised Putrajaya for not preparing a policy before making the budget announcement.
Zuraida said that this was only a proposal from the finance minister and that currently, only 0.4 per cent or 398 foreigners’ own homes were priced at RM1 million and above. She added that the property overhang is a serious problem and the RM600,000 threshold is to allow for better cashflow.
In her reply to a supplementary question from Tebrau (PH) MP Steven Choong, the minister said the nearly RM100 billion worth of unsold residential properties was worrying.
“If unsold and left abandoned, Malaysia will look like it has a glut of abandoned homes. So this is why under the Home Ownership Campaign (HOC), we have successfully helped sell 21,000 units worth RM13.44 billion in the first six months and we will extend it to the end of the year.
“There are also requests to extend the HOC till 2020. This is our efforts to ensure that luxury homes will be sold to its target market,” said Zuraida.
At the end of her answer, Pontian (BN) MP Datuk Seri Ahmad Maslan quipped that the property overhang is a result of developer’s greed.
