KUALA LUMPUR: Housebuyers will enjoy discounts of between 5 to 10 per cent in home prices following the exemption of Sales and Services Tax on construction materials.
Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said that the discounts were, however, restricted to newly launched homes and do not include low cost projects which were already price controlled.
“As for existing units that have been built, you will have to wait until Friday (Budget 2019),” he quipped during a press conference in the parliament lobby today.
Lim also said that he was thankful to the Real Estate and Housing Developers’ Association Malaysia’s (REHDA) positive response on this request by the federal government even though he gave them a short notice to respond to the government’s proposal.
“I wished for a 10 per cent discount but we will give REHDA time to work towards achieving that goal,” he said.
Lim also clarified that he did not mean that SST would cause house prices to drop.
He instead reiterated that if the prices should increase the impact would be far less than that of the Goods and Services Tax.
The Bagan MP also asserted that the government would re-impose SST on developers who do not reduce their prices after being exempted from the tax.
“We want to see a reduction for new homes that are yet to be built or else we will bring back the six per cent SST,” he said.
Earlier Lim asked developers to cut property prices and threatened to review the SST waiver on construction materials if developers refused to do so
He also stressed that what the government wanted to see was house price reductions and not additional perks such as freebies and rebates by developers.
In a statement issued by REHDA yesterday, its president Datuk Soam Heng Choon encouraged developers to lower their prices.
However stressed that these reductions were subject to location and type of projects.