Applicants allowed to select affordable housing projects in Penang

GEORGE TOWN (Aug 8): The Penang state government will allow applicants of affordable housing units to select affordable housing projects in the state, following suggestions from property players for the move.

Speaking at a roundtable session during the Fiabci-Penang International Property Conference (PIP) 2015 yesterday, Penang state executive councilor for Housing and Town and Country Planning Jagdeep Singh Deo said that the state government had decided on the move after taking into account the implications for first time home buyers.

“It was decided by the State Government that as the affordable housing projects involve units, costing between RM200,000 to RM400,000 on the island and RM150,000 to RM250,000 on the mainland, which prove to be quite a large sum for any potential first time buyers, we would therefore allow them to select the project that they were interested in,” said Jagdeep.

He added that the selection could be done at the State Housing Department or via the respective property developers who were allowed since January this year to register applicants on site and forward the application forms for vetting purposes to the State Housing Department

The move by the state government follows concerns expressed by the developers in the inaugural PIP summit held in January this year, on whether the state government could furnish an adequate supply of the name list for affordable home applicants, and whether these applicants could choose their projects.

The Penang state government was the first state in Malaysia to introduce 100% affordable housing guidelines for the private sector in August 2014, whereby through this private-public partnership, the private sector was encouraged to undertake 100% affordable housing projects.

“Since the exercise began in August last year, the Selection Process Enhancement Committee (SPEC) has selected a total of 1,025 names of applicants which were given to developers and for this year, a total of 3,948 names had been given to developers as of yesterday (Aug 6),” said Jagdeep.

He added that SPEC will continue to sit at least once a month to provide the name list for not only developers of affordable housing projects, but for low-cost and low/medium-cost projects as well.

In the last six months, following requests from developers, the state has also opened up several aspects determining eligibility, to improve on the provision of name lists to the developer.

“This includes lifting the geographical requirement, whereby earlier an applicant for a certain project had to be from the same district where the project was.

“On another note, it was also suggested that the state government could consider opening up a certain percentage of the affordable units to the open market; this is being considered by the state but we must stress that the objective of the affordable housing initiative is to ensure that the target group, namely first time home buyers with a middle income can realise their dreams of owning their first home,” said Jagdeep.

He added that for the affordable housing price range of between RM200,000 to RM500,000, the total transacted units in Penang were 5,809 in 2013, which increased to 6,537 in 2014.

“I am confident that there will be a further growth of properties in this price range this year,” said Jagdeep.