Property Market. 6 years ago, today and 6 years later.

Is Johor Bahru expensive? Perhaps I should ask about whether Iskandar is considered expensive instead? How about Klang Valley or even greater KL or just Kuala Lumpur itself, are they expensive? In an online article from a news site, it said that five or 6 years ago, people can still find terrace houses costing RM150,000 – RM250,000 in Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru. However, today just a good terrace house in Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru would be priced between RM500,000 – RM700,000. I do not wish to doubt the numbers. However, is it true that every single property, especially the landed once are already so highly priced and none could be found today? Let’s use iProperty and PropertyGuru for this. iProperty for KL and PropertyGuru for JB.
Yes, we are only looking at KL because if we include Selangor, the list would be never ending. I also exclude high-rise because if I did, the list would again be endless. As you can see, these landed properties are not the best we can find. It may also not be walking distance to MRT stations or malls. However, if you really must have landed and has a little budget to renovate it, I am sure it can still be a home sweet home for you. Take a look, go online.

What about Johor then? Well, let’s take a look at propertyguru.com.my this time. JB has much larger numbers of available landed properties for RM300,000 or lower. I chose only Johor Bahru. Hope everyone understands that whatever being said by the many parties with interest may not be true. In fact what happens is that most of the time, everyone just wanted places where everyone else wanted to buy. Thus, the prices for these places would have already shot up higher than the sky. Properties are a little bit special. Even if you have to pay RM50,000 extra, you can hardly feel it because the number of repayment years may be stretched to 35 years. Due to this, properties in hotter areas continue to inch up transactions after transactions.

Let’s be very clear. There are places which may not be the best but if everyone who is really intending to make it his home buys that same area, with higher occupancy, the prices would also slowly recover. When we look ahead, say six years later, what would happen to the value of these landed homes? All new homes would depend on land price and the cost of construction. When we look at these two, we can be assured that it is already not possible build any landed properties for RM300,000 or less in Johor Bahru. Unless the property developer intends to ‘bleed’ to death or selling for charity. Think objectively, act rationally. What do we really need? A home? A landed home? Can we afford one? Answer is yes. For now you can still find RM300,000 landed homes in  KL, Selangor and even Johor Bahru. Only question remaining is, would you be willing to buy one and transform it into your home sweet home.
6 years ago, we may have missed those landed that we wanted. 6 years later, we may even miss landed properties altogether. By then, I think perhaps only high-rise would still be available and even those may not be our first choice anymore.
written on 17 Mar 2015
Next suggested article: Johor Bahru too expensive. Too many foreign developers. Too high rental.