MDC outlines three major challenges in property industry

PETALING JAYA: The Malaysian Developers’ Council (MDC), which convened for the 19th time on April 25 in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, discussed the state of the housing industry and highlighted three main concerns.

The issues raised were: the access to end-financing for affordable housing, labour shortage and the inadequate number of licensed land surveyors in Sabah.

The MDC is a tripartite association of three recognised real estate non-governmental organisations: the Real Estate and Housing Developers’ Association (Rehda), Sabah Housing and Real Estate Developers’ Association (Shareda) and Sarawak Housing and Real Estate Developers’Association (Sheda) representing the interests of stakeholders in the housing development and real estate industry in Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak.

According to MDC’s statement, while the government objectives and policies to increase affordable housing should be applauded, the council is concerned that financing facilities for these affordable units are not aligned.

The members of MDC said first-time homeowners are facing great difficulty in securing housing loans. The stringent housing loan guidelines introduced by Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) have affected developers’ sales and are contrary to efforts to promote affordable housing.

“We understand that the prime intent of BNM for introducing the guidelines is to curb household debt but the MDC is of the view that BNM and the government should review the mechanism and qualifying criteria to facilitate first-time homeowners and buyers to own such affordable houses,” said the MDC.

Likewise, the booming property sector in recent years had inevitably resulted in an increase in costs and acute shortage of labour.

According to MDC, unless the government reviews the measures taken against the use of foreign labour, this shortage of human resources will lead to delivery problems and legal implications arising from contractual obligations.

On capacity challenges, there is concern over the lack of professionals in particular, licensed land surveyors in Sabah. Such a shortage is not in tandem with development growth in the state and developers are facing difficulties.

Shareda, through the MDC, has urged the authorities to urgently address this inadequacy and, if required, open up the land surveying practice to licensed land surveyors from the peninsula or Sarawak.


This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on May 2, 2014.