Remember an earlier article about the number of people registered for the low cost and affordable homes in Penang. Penang affordable properties – 51,238 applications! In a news article in TMI, local government exco Chow Kon Yeow said that within two to three years’ time, all the people’s needs for affordable homes would be met. He said that through Penang Development Corporation (PDC), a total of 22,000 affordable house would be built. Added to this 22,000 would be another 20,000 units to be built by private developers. This is a whopping 42,000 units and not inclusive of PR1MA units yet! Chow revealed that actually there are only a total of 4,000 – 5,000 who have registered thus far for the affordable homes. A total of RM500 Million was allocated to PDC to build the units. I am not sure if this RM500 million is as a subsidy or a partial payment because RM500 million divided by 22,000 units meant that each unit would only cost RM22,000 to be built.
He mentioned something very important for Penang property market too. In 2013, 84% of all transactions were in the secondary market. This meant that secondary market in Penang is very vibrant and might be one of the reasons why transactions numbers did not drop much in Penang compared to many other primary property markets. If we look at online portals today, there are still mid-range apartments for RM300,000 or lesser even in the island itself. Experts said, ‘affordable properties’ NO MORE (nonsense) This is not just within Penang but also elsewhere. In fact the prices jumped mostly in primary while for secondary, it has only be inching upwards because it was not the main focus from 2009 – 2012. Most of the time, the bigger units, mostly condos became highly prized by many and thus it became highly priced. It’s always an equation of demand, supply and expectation.
I am not qualified to buy the affordable units but I think it’s so important for a full transparency to the stages in which the affordable units are being built as well as making the ‘winners’ of such units public. Seriously, just recently, there were cases of the people being cheated because they paid deposits to ENSURE they get affordable units. This is not good because if it’s true these people need the units, why did they not register for the affordable units. Why did they pay deposits which are much lower than the actual cost of the unit itself? It’s a sad case for these people who got cheated but the truth is, they were also trying to cheat their way to an attractive affordable unit. Let’s continue to ask for all these needs to be met transparently.
written on 28 Oct 2014
Next suggested article: Affordable Penang Properties – where are they?
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