Property Malaysia

First, we saw a huge billboard along the LDP highway, then the fluttering banners. So one day, dropped by at the well marked show house at the project site. The project is located along the dual carriageway behind Taman Puchong Utama, the same road as many of the new projects in the area such as Taman Puchong Tasik Prima, Taman Puchong Tekali, Taman Putra Prima, and Taman Mas Sepang.

As our associates mentions off the cuff, something easy to remember as you drive in through that road – left is Sepang, MDS; right is Puchong, MPSJ. Taman Putra Impiana is on the left as you drive further in, it’s a piece leasehold land unlike its neighbouring developments on the Sepang side of the road.

Taman Putra Impiana is a 541 number of linkhomes, with some planned shoplots at the front of the development. At the centre of the rectangular-ish piece of land is a landscaped park (with some statue of liberty look-alikes). On a smaller plot of land next to this, there is an open field and an area ear-marked as ‘future development’. The first phase to be launched is phase 2,which consists of a few rows of linkhomes named Putra Homes 1.The shoplots are also open for sale.

For this first phase, Putra Homes 1 is a 20’ x 75’ double-storey linkhome. The corner unit is slightly wider, 23’ x 75’. The show unit is one of these corner units, so buyers are well-advised to bear that in mind when viewing it. The standard unit is pretty straight-forward, really, set on a rectangular footprint. There are there three bedrooms and a guest room, and you get a sufficiently large driveway and porch. For the larger corner unit, you get an extra utility room downstairs and larger rooms upstairs (plus a larger family room and balcony, naturally).

Pretty standard layout, not much to differentiate it from a lot of others we’ve seen.

The quality of the show unit didn’t look too fantastic, hopefully the other units will be better. We didn’t like the quality of the stamped concrete they used for the driveway. We also didn’t like a few other finishing items – the 2’ x 2’ porcelain stops at the living room only, the kitchen is laid with smaller ceramic tiles. The utility room had some kind of PVC tiles, not sure if that’s what they’re going to offer for the other units. Secondly, the kitchen tiles only goes up as high as 5’. These days, with the competition offering better and better products, maybe they should have laid the tiles at least to 6’ or even to the ceiling. We also didn’t like some of the impractical choice of windows.

Units come with aircon, heater and autogate points. Professional fees for lawyers is absorbed by developer.

It’s 99 years leasehold. Prices start from RM250k onwards, which is quite steep considering the build-up, leasehold and location.

The developer Acmar is jointly developing this project with Permodalan Negeri Selangor Bhd., they have another project in Bandar Baru Klang. They are also active in construction, and involved in medical centres. hotel , education, motor & trading and services.

We’ve updated the reviews page again, we know it’s a little late in the month to be doing it, seeing that we’re supposed to be doing it by the 1st of every month. Oh well, better late than never.

The few months after the Chinese New Year are usually perceived as the peak period for property launches and sales, following the slow months from November up until the lunar New Year. Well, these days, developers don’t really follow these trends, but nonetheless, we seem to be having less launches this few weeks. Nothing exciting to pique our interests, so to speak. Some people say that the Ninth Malaysia Plan (9MP) announced recently was quite disappointing for the property and housing sector, with no specific mention of them. Construction did get a huge boost, though.

Maybe May will bring some exciting stuff for us. Anyway, you can check out our updated reviews page here.

The recently reviewed projects in March 2006 are as follows:
Idaman Residence, Jalan P. Ramlee
D’Kayangan, Shah Alam
Koi Kinrara Suites, Puchong
Sering Ukay (Phase 1), Hulu Kelang
The Verve Suites, Mont’Kiara
D’Passion, Putra Heights
Kiaramas Ayuria, Mont’Kiara
Phase 3, Taman Dato Demang
Hijauan Kiara

Some good news for housebuyers and investors. The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) now allows members to withdraw their Acount II savings yearly to reduce or settle their housing loans. They can also opt to fund the cost of tertiary education (at diploma level and above) for themselves and their children.

In the past, members could only withdraw from their Account II savings once every 3 years to reduce or settle their housing loans.

EPF also said that, “Withdrawals (for housing) can be made annually from the last date of withdrawal, with a minimum amount of RM500.”

The Edge also adds that,

“Some of the conditions for this withdrawal include that the members shall not be the borrower, the spouse is the purchaser and the borrower of the housing loan, the property is mortgaged with the bank and proof of marriage,” it said.
On the latest development, the EPF said it wanted to make withdrawals more flexible and customer-friendly. It had received the approval from the Minister of Finance on the changes to the housing and education withdrawals.
“These changes are part of EPF’s initiative as a responsive organisation to implement more flexibility in our withdrawals,” its senior public relations manager Nik Affendi Jaafar said.
He added: “The EPF is constantly studying the viability of our withdrawals and benefits to meet the changing and diverse needs of our 5.2 million active members.

To read the full report, check it out here.

Tower Real Estate Investment Trust (Tower) was posted at a modest RM1.06 on its April 12 opening day.

Some fast facts:

• At the opening bell, there were 1.01 million units done.

• Within the first 30 minutes of trade, there were 5.68 million shares done at prices ranging from RM1 to RM1.06.

• By 9.30am, it was trading at RM1.00 flat, down seven sen.

• The Tower REIT IPO consists of 2.48 million shares was subscribed by 2.48 times.

According to the Edge, the cautious market following the sharp increase in oil price and also weaker Asian markets affected sentiment in the counter. Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 1.1% or 193.50 to 17,224.63 at 9.30am. The Kuala Lumpur Composite Index was down 3.12 points to 939.35.

For more info on the Tower REIT, their assets and management company, read the following earlier articles on Property Malaysia:

News on Tower REITs and Axis-REIT
Tower REIT Looking For More Office Buildings

Somethings up these next few days, so all comments are held under moderation. Thanks for being patient.

When I first visited my pal’s apartment when he moved in, the first thing that struck was the impressive timber flooring. This was more than 8 years ago, when it first started getting popular in mid-price homes. Back then, lower and mid-priced homes all either used parquet or homogeneous tiles for bedrooms and upper floors.

We’ll go into why I dislike (a polite word chosen) parquet.

Coming back to timber flooring, the technology has come a long in the past few years, making it increasingly popular. But what are the factors that have made it so? Let’s look at some of the factors:

Affordability – as mentioned, what was once only used in high-end bungalows, is now quite popular in apartments and linkhomes. By using competitively priced timber and more streamlined manufacturing processes, timber strips have been made accessible to a wider range of potential customers. In addition to that, more and more suppliers and installers are appearing in the market, making prices more competitive and offering a wide range of prices, from the expensive imported Tasmanian oak to the local merbau and cengal.

Ease of installation – What makes timber strips popular is that the tongue and groove locking mechanism makes it easy to install and simple to achieve a smooth and impressive surface. Some buyers even lay the strips themselves to save labour costs.

Durability – in the old days, timber flooring tend to get scratched or come loose over time, especially if exposed to humidity, dampness, termite attack and heavy foot traffic. For examples, the area in front of your bathroom tends to get ‘fat’ and pop up, making it unsightly and discoloured. Now with the laminating and chemical treatment, the quality of the product has vastly improved. My friend’s timber strip supplier even offered him 10 years warranty, and even approaching the end of this tenure, there hasn’t been any problem at all.

Variety – These days, timber strips come in many different shades, sizes and textures. You can have light cream coloured strips to match your sunny bedroom, or dark stained wood to make your dining room look cosy and with ambience. For those interested in interior decoration, the different types of textures and colours offer depth and different dimension to your home, at the same time still affordable.

My dusty old house still has parquet in the bedrooms and staircase. The problems are well known – they come off at the slightest hint of water, uneven, prone to poor quality finishing, unsightly skirting, etc. Everyday I have to put back the loose pieces like a jigsaw puzzle.

As industry folks, we get asked this question a lot: What is concrete?

Anyway, we thought of discussing this as part of boosting our ‘The Knowledge’ section, which sadly has been neglected of late.

Answers.com says:

Okay, let’s forget about the textbook definition, for a moment, they tend to be skewered towards American industry standards. Concrete like any other building material, differs from one region to another, even they sometimes use the same code of practice.

Concrete is the primary building material for most kinds of structural element, especially for homes in Malaysia (which is property or real estate, which is how it is related to this blog). Yep, concrete is often used to steel bars, timber, structural steel form the ‘structural’ part of your house, and bricks, aluminium, glass, mortar, plaster and other fittings make the architectural portion of it. Let’s not go into the electrical and mechanical portion of your house for today.

Right, so what’s concrete? It’s made out of 4 important component – cement, water, aggregate, and additives.

Cement – the more base material used for concocting stuff like concrete, plaster, mortar, screeding, etc. in Malaysia, we usually use OPC (Ordinary Portland Cement, don’t ask why). There are many other types, let’s not get into it. In context of concrete, cement is sometimes referred to as the binder material.

Water – H2O. Comes from Malaysian taps.

Aggregates – Around here, we usually use 20-25mm size aggregates, mostly grayish white stones with streaks of black and shiny. Expensive stuff. Aggregates give concrete the strength and volume.

Additives – Local suppliers add loads of chemicals into concrete for a variety of reasons – to make it more workable, to make it harden slower, to make it a different colour, to make it smell like strawberries, etc.

Basically when cement is mixed with the water (not necessarily from Malaysian taps only), a chemical reaction takes place, and lots of heat is released. Long story, we won’t go into it. Anyway, in the old days, concrete is measured in ratio form like 1:2:4 and 1:3:6, and it was mixed manually (with wooden crates and that small concrete mixer). Nowadays, we use the grade of concrete (G30, P45) and concrete come in huge concrete trucks from the batching plant.

And never follow too close to those trucks. And don’t get me started on concrete testing either.

There’s two big news on REITs yesterday, the first one was regarding Tower REIT. We had highlighted them before (you can read it here).

The 9.3 million shares issued was oversubscribed 1.48 times at an offer price of RM1.07 per unit. 30% of the new units, which is about 2.79 million units, and the remainder of 6.51 million units were allotted under the public category. Malaysian Issuing House (MIH) said on April 3 that there were 4,327 applications for all the 23.09 million.

According a report by the Edge,

842,000 unsubscribed units reserved initially for eligible directors and employees were also made available to the public.
Under its listing exercise, there were 201.87 million new units in Tower REIT.

The proposed listing date is April 12. Two office buildings in Kuala Lumpur — Menara HLA on Jalan Kia Peng and HP Towers on Jalan Gelenggang, Damansara Heights — will be injected into the trust for RM351 million.

The other news item is regarding Axis-REIT. Earlier postings regarding them can be found here.

They have just bought the entire interest in Lot 24, Jalan Lebuh 1, Kawasan Perusahaan Sultan Sulaiman, North Port, Port Klang from EC Distribution Sdn Bhd for RM10.3 million cash. The managers said that the lot, with its existing building and land, was currently tenanted by MISC Logistics Sdn Bhd. with a monthly rental of RM110,000 which expires on Dec 31, 2007, with an option to renew for another 3 years at the prevailing market rate.

According to the Edge,

The combined gross built-up area of the original buildings and the extensions is 149,248 sq ft. It said the annualised gross rental income was RM1.32 million and the rental rate per month per square foot as at April 3 was 85 sen calculated on a net lettable area of 130,000 sq ft.
…purchase consideration was at a discount to the appraised value of the property of RM13.5 million in a valuation report dated March 6.

Further on, it also noted:

It added that the proposed debt financing would increase the REIT’s gearing ratio to 14.27% of total assets, which is below the gearing limit of 35% prescribed by the Securities Commission.

This is a 3-part series highlighting the home loan packages and interest rates offered by banks in Malaysia. Today we are looking at the rates offered by the 10 local anchor banks, and the following articles are as follows (links will be updated when articles are posting).:

Home Loans by Malaysian and Foreign Banks Part 1 : Local Banks
Home Loans by Malaysian and Foreign Banks Part 2 : Best selling Islamic Banks Loans
Home Loans by Malaysian and Foreign Banks Part 3

This info was also highlighted in Monday’s Star Business section (27 March 2006). For a full listing of all banks (local and foreign) including info like their contact numbers and addresses, you can check out this page.

For more info and further explanation on these home loan packages and prevailing rates, you are advised to check with the individual banks.

In the following tables, ‘C’ denotes Completed properties while ‘U/C’ stands for properties under construction. BLR stands for ‘Base Lending Rate’ while Y1 is for Year 1 and so on.

It looks like Sunrise is continuing to expand their landbank in the general Mont’Kiara area. Last week, it was announced that their subsidiary Ibarat Duta Sdn. Bhd. had acquired a piece of 15,393.98 sq m of freehold land in Mukim Batu, Kuala Lumpur. The land was bought from property developer Pesona Permai Sdn. Bhd. RM35.63million (about RM215psf).

The land is actually located opposite their Solaris Dutamas, a mixed commercial project carried out by another of their subsidiaries, Sunrise Alliance Sdn. Bhd.

It is expected that Sunrise is looking for more land to continue with their expansion of the property business. It is said that the soon to be launched MK10 is one of their last parcel of choice land in the Hartamas / Mont’Kiara area. RM215psf is actually a quite a good price for the prime location.

A report in the Edge also notes the following:

“The company will continue to assert its presence and strengthen its influence in the northwest hub of Kuala Lumpur with the proposed acquisition.
“The proposed acquisition is also in line with the company’s direction to increase its landbank to generate long-term sustainable income for the Sunrise group,” it added.
It said the acquisition, which would be financed by internally generated funds, is expected to be completed by the second half of 2006.

For the full report, you can read it here.