PETALING JAYA (Oct 13): The increasing interest of foreign property buyers could help to revive Malaysia’s property market recovery, hence Mah Sing Bhd is urging the government to consider resuming the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) programme to welcome more investments back to the country.

In its media statement today, Mah Sing founder and group managing director Tan Sri Leong Hoy Kum (pictured) said the MM2H programme has received a lot of interest from foreigners in recent years due to Malaysia’s tropical weather, cleaner air, good education system, attractive properties and mix of Asian values and Western infrastructure. 

However, the programme was put on hold in August this year for the Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry and related agencies to comprehensively review and re-evaluate the programme.

“We hope that the government can consider resuming the programme as soon as possible with more investor-friendly policies… By doing so, it will encourage more investment in Malaysia which could indirectly help the recovery of the property market as well,” he highlighted.

This is also one of the property developer’s wish lists for the upcoming Budget 2021. 

Besides this, Leong also noted that additional incentives to promote homeownership for first time homebuyers include reinstating the maximum loan tenure to 45 years from the current 35 years; higher debt service ratio; and using gross income rather than net income in loan applications review.

“We hope the government could introduce additional incentives to complement the existing Home Ownership Campaign to promote homeownership, particularly for first time homebuyers, he said.  

The developer also requested the government to consider implementing the Developer Interest Bearing Scheme for first time homebuyers since the current interest rate is low enough for such a scheme. This could also enable the first time homebuyers, who are currently renting, to avoid servicing their loan interest and paying existing rental at the same time during the construction period. 

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