KUALA LUMPUR (May 3): The overall property market is expected to stabilise this year, underpinned by the improving Malaysian economy that had recorded 5.9% GDP growth last year, said Valuation and Property Services Department’s (JPPH) National Property Information Center (Napic) director Md Badrul Hisham Awang.

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“The property transaction volume and value are expected to stabilise this year. The drop rate of the volume and value last year has narrowed to a lower single-digit figure. [In 2018], I believe the prices will not drop while the number of transactions will remain stable,” he said at a sales and marketing conference organised by Real Estate and Housing Developers' Association Malaysia (Rehda) Institute in Kuala Lumpur today.

According to him, transaction numbers only fell by 2.7% to 311,824 from 2016 to 2017, slower than the declines of 11.5% and 5.7% registered in 2015 and 2016.

Meanwhile, transaction values fell by 3.8% year-on-year to RM139.84 billion last year, compared with a decline of 8% in 2015 and 3% in 2016.

In 2017, the value of residential sub-sector transactions had risen by 4.4% despite volume shrinking by 4.1%.

“[Looking at the numbers], it seems that our market is getting better and improving,” he added.

Themed “Utilising Data to Build Demand Driven Real Estate”, the conference saw industry experts sharing their insights on the property market and strategies to overcome current challenges.

Badrul was one of the speakers with his talk entitled “Overview of Napic Data and Transaction 2017 – Malaysia’s Property Market Performance Indicators”.