Correction: Stamp Duty Exemption is STILL just for First-Time Home Buyers ONLY. Earlier article here about the suggestion for stamp duty exemption to be open to all and not just the first-time home buyers. The Finance Ministry has just announced stamp duty exemption for ALL purchases of properties during the Home Ownership Campaign (HOC) from 1st January – 30th June 2019. The below is an example of what stamp duty is for year of 2019 as well as the stamp duty during the HOC 2019. It’s 1st February 2019 today, so there are now just 5 months more before this campaign ends. How much could we save? Actually,it’s pretty significant. Assuming it’s an affordable property of RM300,000. Applicable stamp duty are as follows:
RM100,000 x 1% = RM1,000 and remaining RM200,000 x 2% = RM4,000. Total stamp duty for a RM300,000 home is RM5,000. We are talking about a brand new iPhone (latest model) or even a holiday for the whole family of 4. (Cuti-cuti Malaysia lah)
Finance Ministry says that this will also help Malaysian households from the B40 and M40 to own a property. This HOC will be supported by the Real Estate Housing Developers Association (REHDA) where all its members will provide a minimum discount of 10 percent on all completed properties while the government helps with the stamp duty exemption. The exemption will now cover homes which are RM300,000 all the way to RM2.5 million. However, the stamp exemption is limited to the first RM1 million of the RM2.5 million property price. The remaining value of the home will be based on 3% stamp duty. The stamp duty exemption also covers loan agreements of up to RM2.5 million. Previously, the stamp duty on SPA for the first RM100,000 of the property price was 1%, RM100,001 to RM500,000 was 2% and RM500,001 to RM1 million was 3%. For properties priced at RM1,000,001 to RM2.5 million, the S&P stamp duty will remain at 3%. Meanwhile, the stamp duty for loan agreement of properties priced below RM2.5 million was 0.5% previously. This offer is only for Malaysians. Full press release from Ministry of Finance here.
So, is it back to the BBB + B period? Buy, Buy Buy is Back? A word of caution yeah. First-timers should take advantage of this and buy the properties which is within their budget. Please also make sure that after the 10% or more discounts, the price of the property is not much higher than other properties within the same area yeah. This is not the time to be gung-ho and try to stretch from that RM300,000 property to a RM400,000 property just to save an extra few thousand ringgit yeah. Buying is just the start. Paying instalments will take the next 30-35 years. Anyway, banks will still conduct their due diligence before granting you the loan. Happy buying during HOC 2019.
written on 31 Jan 2019
Next suggested article: 7 things about home loans we should know before we apply for one.
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