KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's residential real estate prices, rents, and sales numbers will increase significantly next year and in 2021, according to a survey of 386 Malaysian real estate agents.
Juwai.com executive chairman Georg Chmiel said Malaysia is attracting companies and operations that otherwise might have gone to China.
"The lower price threshold for foreign buyer purchasing will also help absorb some of the unsold inventory that has been weighing on the market.
"While the price thresholds are only being lowered for one year, hopefully that will give foreign investors enough time to purchase," he said.
For the market to be healthy, developers need to sell those unwanted units so they can build more projects that are suitable for local buyers.
The survey was conducted in November 2019 by Juwai IQI, one of the largest real estate groups in Southeast Asia with more than 7,000 agents.
Juwai IQI group executive director Kashif Ansari said the survey is the first large-scale effort to quantify and forecast trends in the Malaysian real estate industry by asking industry experts.
"We share the positive outlook reported in the survey, within rational bounds. Agents have a very strong, positive outlook on the future of the residential real estate sector over the next 12 and 24 months," he said in a statement.
On Malaysia, Kashif said the survey findings showed the states with the most robust price-growth outlook are Kuantan and Ipoh.
He said respondents predicted prices in Kuantan will grow 9.4 per cent over the next 12 months.
Prices in Ipoh are meanwhile pegged to grow 7.6 per cent over 12 months, he added.
Kashif however said the states with the weakest outlook for price growth are Penang, with 2.1 per cent forecast growth, and Sarawak with forecast growth of 3.4 per cent.