At a press conference today, Real Estate and Housing Developers Association Malaysia (Rehda) president FD Iskandar Mohamed Mansor said the 1% figure was based on National Property Information Centre (Napic) numbers.
Valuation and Property Services Department (JPPH) director-general Nordin Daharom had been reported as estimating some 300,000 property transactions for 2017.
Iskandar said a few years ago, a number of properties were sold to foreigners, particularly in Johor and Sabah.
“Since 2016, one of the biggest sources of foreign buyers has been Chinese nationals, but in 2017, Beijing initiated capital controls,” he said, adding that this had dampened purchases by Chinese homebuyers.
In recent times, Chinese nationals have poured money into property projects in Malaysia, most notably in Johor, in ambitious projects like the RM100 billion Forest City mixed development.
Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad had claimed foreigners who bought properties in Forest City could live there forever and that there was no ruling to prevent them from eventually becoming citizens.
On the issue of maintenance of strata properties, Iskandar said joint management bodies must be firm in collecting maintenance fees, even from unoccupied units.
Previously, the National House Buyers Association (HBA) warned that the maintenance of properties could be affected if owners of unoccupied units didn’t pay their maintenance fees diligently.
Iskandar said developers would assume the cost of maintenance for the first 18 to 24 months.
“After that, the joint management body (JMB) must take proactive action. Whether a home is occupied or not, the owners must pay maintenance.”
To this end, he said Rehda Institute’s newly launched Strata Management Handbook would be helpful to JMBs or Management Corporations (MC), as it provided a comprehensive guide on strata living, including measures to ensure owners complied with the relevant laws.
According to Napic data, in the third quarter of 2017, there were 1.58 million residential strata units housing 20% of the country’s population.
Iskandar also said the main issues affecting strata properties in Malaysia, particularly in lower and middle category properties, included low maintenance collection and maintenance of common property such as lifts.
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