PPR tenants offered RTO scheme

KUALA LUMPUR (March 6): People's Housing Project (PPR) tenants will be able to buy their units through a rent-to-own (RTO) scheme, according to a Bernama report.

However, Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Minister Tan Sri Noh Omar said the government would first screen the units to make sure that they were really occupied by the original tenants and not rented out.

Bernama reported him saying that the RTO offer would be made to the tenants without any deposit.

“If the tenant has a good record of payment, the amount paid will be taken into account,” he said at the Ministerial Question Time session today, in response to a supplementary question from Anuar Abd Manap (BN-Sekijang) on the mechanism in granting ownership to PPR tenants.

Earlier, Noh said that as of December last year, 84,490 PPR units had been built. He added that the government offered a rental rate of RM124 per month, while the selling price per unit was RM35,000 for Peninsular Malaysia and RM42,000 for Sabah and Sarawak. 

There are two categories of PPR, he explained. In the first category, the construction cost is borne by the federal government although the land is provided by the state government. In the second category, the construction cost and land are provided by the federal government.

"So for the federal PPR, we will grant ownership rights to existing tenants.     

"As for PPR on state government land, the matter will be discussed with the state government on giving permanent ownership to the tenants," he said.