Property Malaysia

Reader Wei Li sent in these photos of Hijauan Residence@Cheras by Mah Sing. You can read the original review posted in May earlier this year here.

The photos seem to be from the mock up unit.

Some big plans are shaping up for PJ Development Holdings Bhd in the near future. Firstly, they have reported a 122% increase in first quarter net profit of RM14.27 million, and are gearing up to launch three new property projects with total gross development value (GDV) of over RM430 million.

According to a report:

Managing director Wong Ah Chiew said yesterday the projects were the RM250 million Swiss Garden Residences, RM150 million Laman Callista project and the Siarah Oakleaf valued at RM30 million.

“The high-end Swiss Garden Residences in Kuala Lumpur is expected to be launched in January next year and scheduled to be completed by 2010. Pre-tax profit margin is expected at 25%,” he said after its AGM where shareholders approved a resolution to nominate BDO Binder as auditors to replace the retiring auditors, KPMG.

Wong said the twin tower 36-storey development comprised 413 designer service suites which would be built next to the Swiss Garden Hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

The luxury Siarah Oakleaf, with a GDV of RM30 million, would be built in Bukit Antarabangsa on a 2.68 acre site with the soft launch scheduled in December.

The Laman Callista project, a gated community of 192 semi-detached homes, will be built on 35 acres of land in Taman Universiti, Pulai, Johor. Its launch is scheduled in the fourth quarter of its financial year 2008.

PJD have many existing development projects across Klang Valley and the country, and some of the ones reviewed by us in Property Malaysia are:

Impian Meridian, USJ1
Laman Oakleaf
Endah Puri
Kensington Park
Hartamas Regency 2

We are all pretty familiar with all those Australian properties being heavily advertised locally, especially those touting that places like Melbourne CBD is the ‘next hot property market’.

Now here’s something a little different – it’s a local project, with an Australian theme. Why Australian? No idea. Maybe it’s just a name.

The project is located behind Tesco in Puchong, next to Glomac’s Lakeside Residences (review here). To get to this place, there are two ways to enter the site, and the main entrance will be from YTL’s Lake Edge, past some factory lots and you will see this development on your left just before Lakeside Residences.

The other way to come in here would be from Puchong Intan, but that way would be less preferable.

This site is actually just across the river from USJ, and you can clearly see USJ1 Avenue across the waterway on the way in. A huge part of the marketing for this project hinges on the future connecting link from Puchong to USJ. However, as most residents on both sides of the river will tell you, this issue has been much talked about in the past ten years or so, but there seems to be no concrete plans as to when the bridge will actually start to be developed.

But even without the bridge, this area is still quite accessible to the main road, which is the LDP.

The development (which is actually called Bandar Metro Puchong) sits on an ex-mining land, similar to the neighbouring Lakeside Residences. The developer has opted for a raft foundation to alleviate the long term settlement due the effects of mining land, but the extent of the raft foundation is probably limited only to the houses, which may still cause differential settlement in the long term.

The development is quite sizable, about 200 acres in size and the master plan shows a commercial area and some amenities planned to make it an integrated mixed development. According to the salespeople, the developer is planning to set up their own headquarters here in the near future. But besides that, on the residential portion of the development, this is only the first of many phases that will be launched.

For this first phase, there are 213 homes open for sale. There is only one type of unit available for this pilot phase, and the three variations are the intermediate, corner and end lot types. It is a standard 2 and a half storey linkhouse set on a standard 22’ x 75’ plot.

The standard intermediate lot is about 2846sq.ft., and there are 4 rooms. There is a store room on the ground floor, but they’ve shown it to be a bedroom in the brochure. Maybe they should have just named it as a room to avoid any confusion. Every unit comes with a courtyard in the living room area, which opens up all the way to the sky. This courtyard is actually quite large. The other key feature of the house is that the living room and dining is at the back of the house, and the front of the ground floor is occupied by the aforementioned store/bedroom and a powder room.

The kitchen opens out to the courtyard, so ventilation may be a big problem here as air circulation may not be sufficient. This kind of layout was last seen in Ametis of Bukit Puchong.

The project is planned to be gated and guarded.

We are not fans of this kind of layout, but if you are interested, you should check it out. Plus factoring in the previous use of the land, plus the fact that it is leasehold may prompt comparison with other competing projects. It is priced as competitively as we had expected it to be, the prices start from RM482k upwards.

Maintenance fee is about RM150 monthly, please check with the sales people for the latest info.

This is the developers’ first major project in the Klang Valley. Previously they were mainly involved as a turnkey contractor.

Some selection of strange and interesting homes from around the world.

Colourful, but note the cars sticking out from the walls!

Egyptian themed home. Like a very small version of Sunway Pyramid.

Not sure if its a house shaped like a ship, or a ship turned into a house!

This is very sure not a real alien spaceship. Or IS it…?

Well, if you don’t like neighbours…

“There was an old woman who lived in a shoe…”

So how DO you tell your house from the others…?!

Looks like Frodo’s burrow in LOTR.

Low maintenance fees guaranteed.

I suspect this isn’t really a house.

Nice.

Taken from here.

The developer Villamas has now launched the second project in this area of Taman Bukit Serdang, following the earlier launch of Villa Pavilion which was quite well received. This new condo is located at a nearby site, which is actually behind Technology Park Malaysia.

The main concern for people planning to buy into this area is the proposed link road from Taman Bukit Serdang to the free-to-use Jalan Sg. Besi – Puchong. At the time when they launched Villa Pavilion, many people were quite unsure as to whether the road would actually be built by the authorities.

But for this launch of Villa Park, they are happy to point to you that the all-important link road is now heavily under construction, and you can see it from both ends of the connection. So how vital is this connecting road? It’ll greatly improve the accessibility of the area, that is a given fact. To appreciate this, you need to survey the area with the current access roads. There are two options to come to this place, either by the heavily congested main road of Seri Kembangan town, or from a earlier turning off the aforementioned Jalan Sg. Besi Puchong, near the Selangor Turf Club. Both access are heavily used at most times of the day, and both will make you go through some narrow roads and industrial areas.

The new link, although left turn only onto the main road, will make a difference, and it is understandable that all the developers around here are watching it anxiously.

Taman Bukit Serdang is quite different from it’s surroundings of matured, small terrace homes and low-cost apartments. It’s on the small hill, and mainly made up of newer higher priced linkhomes and condos, interspersed by green areas. Sooner of later, these lungs will mostly likely be developed too, but maybe it’ll still be in a few years time.

The TPM greenery next door makes sure that this condo will have a good view for the near future, and we found the location and surrounding to be quite pleasing.

At the end of the road, bordering the TPM is Villa Park, a development with two tower blocks. At the moment, they are opening up only the first tower block of about 200 units. We won’t go into details about the unit layout, but they offer 6 types of design ranging from 956 to 1,414sq.ft, with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. All units come with a balcony, the larger units have a utility room.

The facilities are quite good, they have sports facilities, besides the usual swimming pools, playgrounds, parks and security features.

Judging from the unit size and pricing, they are targeting the entry level buyers getting their first home here. Taking advantage of the proximity to TPM and the nearby colleges, this seems a good strategic move. Speaking of the price, it goes from a cheap RM153k onwards, which works out to be from about RM160psf onwards. Good price, very accessible to buyers and investors.

Did we like it? Sure, as we mentioned, the location is advantageous and well connected with all the highway and LRT. Pricing is attractive, plus it’s freehold. On the downside, the unit sizes don’t have a wide range. Only one parking spot is provided with purchase price, additional parking bays can be purchased subject to availability.

In the news today:

The purchasers of the abandoned property development project known as Desarina Condominium in Taman Desa have voted in favour of the proposed scheme of arrangement to rehabilitate the project.

In a statement, the court-appointed liquidator Ler Cheng Chye, on behalf of the developer Mega Sakti Sdn Bhd, which is under liquidation, said the unanimous agreement was reached at a court convened meeting for the purchasers here yesterday.

The scheme of arrangement was proposed by Ler and Lum Tuck Cheong, the two liquidators of Mega Sakti in accordance with the provisions of Section 176 of the Companies Act 1965. The main contractor NCK Perumahan Sdn Bhd was also in liquidation.

Federal Territory Ministry parliamentary secretary Yew Teong Look said the government wanted to see the project successfully rehabilitated and would assist as much as possible to ensure its success.

He viewed the proposed scheme as a joint project rehabilitation effort by the purchasers, the project’s bridging and end-financiers and the authorities.

An agreement has been reached with Syarikat Perumahan Negara Bhd to be the main contractor to support the rehabilitation of the project and to fund a substantial amount of the project construction cost.

The project was abandoned with 80% completion since construction started in 1994.

I think it’s a positive move for the house owners that have been stuck with this problem for more than 10 years.

Townhouses are quite a strange housing phenomenon in Malaysia. The idea of a townhouse was first conceived as a two-unit strata home in densely populated areas in a town center, where land is scarce and expensive, and not large enough to build apartments. So in these conditions the many forms of townhouses took off, starting from the concept of a low-rise walk-up apartment.

Around here, the most common form of townhouses are two-unit variety, with each unit taking up one and a half floors, with both units having their own driveway. We understand that this concept has its benefits when used in the surrounding that it was intended for – high-density urban areas.

But more often that not, here townhouses are appreciated more for their novel concept more than anything else, and they are usually build as a unit type in a large mixed development. This is usually the case when the developer wants to offer as many types of unit types in his own project – bungalows, semi-Ds, linkhomes, apartments, condos, etc. Sort of covering all the bases to reach the maximum market penetration. So townhouses are also offered as one of them. This obvious in the recent Oasis in Bandar Kinrara and Challis in Sunway Damansara.

Now Bandar Bukit Puchong is also offering a new townhouse phase called Parkville.

Bandar Bukit Puchong is a large freehold development in Puchong and Sepang, and in the past two to three years they have been slowly launching parts of their massive landbank. They have recently undergone through a rebranding exercise, and have dropped the ‘Bandar’ from their name, combined both BBP and BBP2 (the former is in MPSJ land, the latter in Sepang) two one name, and changed their logo to a more contemporary styling. It’s quite timely, since their image was starting to look very dated.

Parkville is the latest phase to be launched will still many more to go. Some of the earlier launches reviewed by us before are:

Nilam Puri
Nilam Terraces
Ametis Terraces
Baiduri Courts

We’ve touched on the quality, location, connectivity and development facilities of BBP in the earlier posts, so we won’t repeat them here, and you are advised to read the above reviews for a recap.

Parkville has the townhouses in a small 24′ x 60′ plot, with both units, higher and lower, having a driveway that can fit one car only. Owners are given space for a second parking spot, but slightly away from your unit. The problem affects most townhouses - it is nigh impossible to park in front of your unit without blocking someone else’s driveway.

The lower unit is at a small 1,259sq.ft while the upper unit fares slightly larger at 1,528sq.ft. in exchange for the climb up everyday. For the lower unit, most of the space, including the master bedroom (and a very small attached bath) is located on the ground, with the first floor housing ony two other rooms and a shared common bath. Both these rooms face the front of the unit, and the third bedroom is very small. But the lower unit has a 5′ backyard, which may allow for some renovation for extra space.

The upper unit takes up two thirds of the first floor, where it houses the living, dining and kitchen. the 2nd floor is where you can find the three rooms. Here the rooms are definitely much more spacious than the lower unit, and the design is altogether more sensible for families.

We’re not fans of townhouses, but if we were to make a choice, it has to be the upper unit. But choice of unit has to be very careful, too, as you need to get a unit that maximizes the ventilation to your unit and avoid the afternoon heat.

The good point is that the units are not as as pricey as the other two townhouse projects mentioned earlier in the review. But at RM200k to RM240k, you need to seriously question yourself whether you want this kind of unit or a apartment outright, which you can easily get for this price. But at the end of the day, it really depends on whether you really prefer townhouses or not. The other points going for this project applies for the whole development, i.e. freehold and ex-plantation land.

They are planning extensive landscaping and some park features to enhance this 16-acre sub-development which is something different from some of the earlier launches.

Property Malaysia wishes all our Hindu readers a belated Happy Deepavali!

We had a good holiday on Deepavali, and this weekend we are planning to visit more new launches around the city, so watch out for new reviews coming starting next week. With the year end coming, most developers are still planning launches before the school holidays, after which there is traditionally a lull until after the Chinese New Year.

For those who missed it, the The “Property Man of the Year 2007″ was awarded to S.P. Setia Bhd managing director and chief executive officer Tan Sri Liew Kee Sin.

The Malaysia Property Awards is presented by the Malaysian chapter of the International Real Estate Federation (Fiabci).

The other category winners were:

Master Plan category: YTL Land & Development Bhd for the Sentul West and Sentul East master plan

Residential Development (Highrise) category: Stonor Park by Beneton Properties Sdn Bhd

Residential Development (Lowrise) category: Leisure Farm Corp Sdn Bhd for Pinggiran Bayou Village

Resort Development category: Resorts World Bhd for Genting Highlands Resort

Retail Development category: Y.S. Tang Holdings Sdn Bhd for KB Mall

Specialised Project category: Laurent Lim Architect for the Sultan Abdul Aziz Royal Gallery

Specialised Project category: Persada Johor International Convention Centre

Special Award for National Contribution: YTL Corp Bhd for the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre

If you are getting surprised at the rising prices for property in the Klang Valley, get ready to be shocked even more.

Previously, when paying RM10million for a bungalow in the exclusive areas of KL was pretty steep, now SP Setia are planning to up the ante by launching a limited series of “super high-end” bungalows priced at RM30 million each next year.

Yep, that’s THIRTY MILLION RINGGIT.’

According to them, they plan to sell 15 units of such bungalows at Kenny Hills in Kuala Lumpur, over a period of two years beginning 2008, pending the authorities’ approval on the building plan.

Read it here.