Collective efforts needed to solve housing affordability issue — LBS Bina

TheEdge Sat, May 04, 2019 12:44am - 4 years View Original


KUALA LUMPUR (May 3): Property sector stakeholders must collaborate and address the persistent housing affordability issue, LBS Bina Group Bhd group managing director Tan Sri Lim Hock San said.

In a statement Friday, he said all stakeholders, including the Government, developers, banks, as well as house buyers must make a collective effort to solve the housing affordability issue.

He pointed out that "housing affordability" remained a major concern for the majority of house buyers, and in many cases, it is a financial burden, especially for first-time and millennial house buyers.

Recent data from Bank Negara revealed that properties in Malaysia are labelled as "unaffordable" by international affordability metrics, with some 74 percent of the 171,000 unsold residential units priced beyond the affordability of ordinary Malaysians.  

Thus, Lim believed more Government land should be set aside for affordable housing as shortage of land within the Klang Valley is one of the factors contributing to increasingly inflated prices.

"At present, we know only a small portion of affordable housing projects are built on Government or State-owned land.

"If more land can be allocated for affordable housing developments, this will increase the supply of affordable homes," he said.

In realising the national housing agenda, he noted more collective measures must be taken, including providing further incentives to widen the adoption of Industrialised Building System (IBS) amongst developers and builders, which in turn, will speed up delivery of quality homes and bring down house prices.

Lim also urged property developers to continue to study the actual needs of house buyers in order to create homes that help improve the well-being of the buyers and their families.

“The housing issues at hand are complex, and there are no easy solutions. We need to work together and to think out-of-the box," he added.

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