PENAMPANG: Property developers associations from Sabah, Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia are seeking an audience with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to push their demand for the banking industry to shoulder more responsibilities in the implementation of a private-led affordable homes scheme.
Sabah Housing and Real Estate Developers Association’s president (SHAREDA) president Francis Goh Fah Sun, said the organization together with its partners, Real Estate and Housing Developers Association’s (REHDA) and Sarawak Housing and Real Estate Developers Association (SHEDA) would make a courtesy call on the premier soon.
“We have concluded during the meeting that we should have a discussion with Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who is also the Finance Minister, [to forward] our suggestion to have local banks come in to play a more effective role towards achieving the government’s pledge to provide 1 million affordable homes for the rakyat,” he said to reporters after the 19th Malaysian Developers’ Council (MDC) meeting here yesterday.
He said it was important that the banks provide more accessible financing facilities for home buyers, especially the low income group to ensure that they could actually afford to buy the houses built for them.
This came following Goh’s statement earlier this month that failure to secure housing loans due to stringent requirements imposed by banks was the main reason low income families were unable to buy a house, despite many assistance and schemes provided by the authorities.
Stressing that local loan requirements for eligible applicants of government housing initiatives such as MyHome need to be more flexible, he had suggested that local banks adopt a quota system, under which they would approve a certain number of housing loan applications as part of their social corporate responsibility (SCR) programme.
“There are over 2,000 branches of local banks across the country. If each of them adopt a quota of 500 affordable home applicants, we will meet the 1 million target in no time. Perhaps, Bank Negara can impose this as some kind of requirement for the banks,” he proposed.
On a separate issue, Goh called for the Chief Minister Datuk Seri Musa Aman’s intervention to expedite delayed land conversion approval for housing projects in Sabah.
He noted there were projects ready to commence but could not go forward pending the issuance of land premium endorsement letters by the related department.
“The endorsement letters are still stuck at the Natural Resources Department which comes directly under the Chief Minister’s Office. I believe this is due to the changing of administration and hope that it could be resolved soon,” he said.
Meanwhile, REHDA’s president Datuk Seri Michael Yam, suggested measures be taken by the government to reduce the upfront cost paid by home buyers to help reduce the prices of houses.
He said this included the utility charges imposed on developers which are transferred to the end prices of housing properties.
“Instead of charging the cost up front to developers, who in return add the additional cost to their selling price, why not have the buyers, for instance, pay higher tariff for 20 years. This will increase the affordability of the houses as they would be sold at lower prices,” he said.
Goh in supporting Yam’s suggestion, said utility charges translated to about six to seven percent of the prices of affordable houses in Sabah, depending on the unit density of the project.
On other matters discussed during the meeting, Yam said the three associations had deliberated on the issue of labour shortage in the property development industry.
SHEDA’s president, Haji Zaidi Ahmad in elaborating on this, said the industry was faced with acute shortage of labour and high dependency on imported workers.
In this regard, he said the council was of the opinion that more training programmes should be conducted by the government together with the industry players to produce more skilled construction workers among the locals.
Another representative from SHEDA also informed that the council together with 13 other associations, have submitted a memorandum of the industry’s perspective on the impact of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) planned for implementation starting May 1 next year.
The association said the memorandum also contained several suggestions to minimize the impact of GST especially on the prices of the affordable houses.
Among the suggestions included to zero rate the taxes for main construction prices such as steel bars, cement, brick and sand.