KAJANG, Selangor: Malaysia’s real estate market has stabilised since last year, with the ongoing Home Ownership Campaign helping to spur residential property transactions, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said
“Even though the property market has been facing a slump in the past few years, the volume and value of transactions in 2018 has increased by 0.6 per cent to 313,710 and 0.3 per cent to RM140.33 billion respectively,” Lim said at the launch Property Market 2018 report prepared by the Valuation & Property Services Department here today.
“When you compare it to the 11.6 per cent and 2.7 per cent drop in 2017, this is an encouraging development,” he added.
Lim noted the slight increase in both property transaction value and volume in the National Property Information Centre (NAPIC) data of the 2018 report is the first increase in four years despite a bigger overhang of residentials and commercial real estate compared to 2017.
The residential sector saw 197,385 transactions last year worth RM68.75 billion, an increase of 1.4 per cent in volume and 0.4 per cent in value.
Urbanised states such as Kuala Lumpur, Johor and Penang recorded an increase of 6.8 per cent, 7.8 per cent and 3 per cent respectively. Selangor had a marginal drop of 0.4 per cent.
On the commercial front, there was a significant increase in market activity with 23,936 transactions valued at RM29.51 billion. This was an eight per cent increase in volume and 16 per cent in value.
The shop sub-sector dominated 54 per cent of commercial property transactions and 36.4 per cent of the total value.
It recorded a positive movement of 5.1 per cent in volume and 11.5 per cent in value compared to 2017.
Lim acknowledged overhang residential units in 2018 had increased by 30.6 per cent to 32,313 units worth RM19.86 billion.
Unsold units under construction also increased by 30.9 per cent or 80,984 units compared to the previous year.
“High rise homes took the bulk of the overall unsold units with 43.4 per cent. Most of these unsold homes are located in Perak with 2,905 units and Kuala Lumpur with 2,692 unsold units,” he said.
On the commercial property, NAPIC data showed shop overhang increased 11.2 per cent to 5,055 units valued at RM4.08 billion. Unsold units under construction had increased 22.8 per cent to 7,233 units when compared to 5,889 units in 2017.
Unsold units that has not benn constructed reduced in overhang by 16 per cent to 385 units.
Shopping complexes remained relatively stable with a dip in average occupancy rate at 79.3 per cent in 2018 against the previous year's 81.3 per cent occupancy due to slow take up in several states especially Selangor (-32,665 square metres) and Pahang (-10,831 square metres).
Office lots occupancy also showed a marginal drop to 82.4 per cent from 83.3 per cent.
The NAPIC report 2018 revealed office space in Kuala Lumpur had slowded in take up by 38,632 square metres while the other 13 states registered 80 per cent occupancy rate with Perlis registering the highest at 100 per cent.