Property Malaysia

With the rising cost of construction materials, here’s a cheaper alternative of building homes made of… earth.

This is actually a project named Earth House from Erdhaus, a Swiss architect and team. The homes are built to live under or in the ground, but with it, unlike conventional homes. [link]

Reminds me of the Hobbits’ home in LOTR.

We’re still in the progress of writing and posting a few reviews from the weekend, but we’ll close the reviews for June. We didn’t do a wrap-up for May, so here it is all 7 reviews in the past 2 months.

189.Taman Putra Prima: Phase 3C (Amethyst)
190.Laman Ara Utama, Petaling Jaya
191.Papillon Desahill, Taman Desa
192.Residence One, Old Klang Road
193.The Northshore Gardens, Desa Parkcity
194.Primrose, Bandar Puteri Puchong
195.Laman Baiduri, Subang Jaya

As usual the reviews page has now been updated. Also, please drop us a note if you have any new projects, and we’ll try our best to check it out. Cheers.

Sometimes it takes some just creativity and design finesse to make the most out of a need for space in a tight situation… and a magnificent design is born.

Original photo this Osaka cityscape taken from here.

UPDATE: The full review for this project can be found here.

Drove to Puchong the other day on the LDP the other day, saw this massive development under way at piling stage at Taman Wawasan / Pusat Bandar Puchong.

The huge billboard announced that it was the much anticipated Setia Walk project, which we’ve been hearing a lot about in the last few years. Since completing the last phase of Taman Wawasan in the mid 90’s, SP Setia has been quite dormant in this part of Puchong. In the interim years, while the general area of Puchong has taken off in terms of population and area and also density. Other developers, especially IOI Property who have the biggest landbank, have been extremely busy.

According to the the press release, the project is described as follows:

SP Setia’s maiden commercial project comes in the form of the RM800 million Setia Walk, which is set to transform the Puchong area. Built on a 20.8 acre plot in the matured township of Pusat Bandar Puchong, the project is highly visible from the Damansara Puchong Expressway (LDP) and located opposite the proposed Puchong light rail transit (LRT) station.

Positioned as a one-stop boutique lifestyle centre, the project will be an integrated residential and commercial development which comprises offices, retail blocks, an entertainment complex, serviced and residential apartments. The commercial area will combine conventional shop offices and a shopping mall. With a potent blend of innovative architecture, creative landscaping and an exciting retail mix, Setia Walk will undoubtedly be a desirable place to live, work and play.

Phase One will consist of 85 blocks offering 170 retail and 336 office units. Prices of shop offices range between RM2.5 million and RM8.9 million per block. Retail lots will be located on the ground and first floors, and offices will occupy the higher floors.

Phase Two will feature a business hotel, office tower and entertainment complex which will house cineplexes, bowling alleys and karaoke lounges; while apartments will be built in Phase Three. According to the company, buyers can expect annual rental yields of 10 percent.

The commercial zone will be segregated into three main areas. The Active zone will comprise a child development centre, play zones, and children-centric retail shops; the Sanctuary zone will include fine dining restaurants, spas and beauty centres; and the Escape zone will feature alfresco food and beverage outlets, such as cafes and bistros.

The residential component will include three 27-storey blocks offering a total of 759 units. Prices start from RM210,000. There will also be 46 small office home office (Soho) units.

There was an artist’s rendition of the project on the billboard, but i couldn’t find it online.

Looks like SP Setia is banking of capturing a more affluent and yuppie market here, but we wonder if it may be suitable. While the price of homes in Puchong have ben getting higher every year now, this may be a whole new ball game that is more suited for dense city areas. Puchong was in the past (and still is) a haven for young families, but it seems the prices are changing that trend now. But who knows, this may be very successful, judging form the unpredictability of the Puchong market…!

But they’ve got to do something about the traffic situation here. its still okay now, but in a few years time… wow.

You would usually only associate steel containers as temporary offices for construction sites and or storing materials at the ports, but they can also be designed into elegant homes and offices, with some imagination.

Weburbanist has an excellent article with more pictures. Check it out.

But probably in Malaysia, living in a steel box wouldn’t be so practical due to the heat, unless you want to have the airconditioning running all the time…

Thanks to all the readers and friends that participated in the recent poll which asked the question: ‘Will You Be Buying A Residential Property in 2008?’. The poll has been closed after a week and the results are as follows:

As can be seen, about half of the respondents (49%) voted outright ‘no’, probably due to a variety of reasons. Altogether 3 out of every four respondents (75%) voted on the negative side.

In the past 3 months or so, we’ve seen a sharp drop in the number of new launches in the Klang Valley, especially major condo projects and large development projects. Most of the ones being advertised in the papers these few weeks are basically new phases or re-launches of existing projects. A lot of people are wary of the economic situation for the remainder of the year, especially in the light of the subprime crisis in the US and the spiralling price of oil.

Even locally, the building sector is facing hard times with the rising price of materials such as diesel, premix, steel and cement, just to name a few.

Some of our friends that are trying to rent out their KLCC condos are facing stiff competition as more and more condos are being handed over to purchasers and entering the market.

All in all, we hope the property market will hold out against the tough times.

Let’s do another poll, this one on something i’m quite curious about.

The poll will run for a week, ending next Wednesday, following which we will publish and discuss the results. I will also explain a little bit on why i’m asking this question. As usual, please vote once only, and we REALLY appreciate if you can ask all your friends to come here and vote, we hope to get as many respondents and possible. Our polls seem to get more and more popular!

Thanks in advance for your participation!

We were there for a good friend’s housewarming, couldn’t resist taking some photos of this rather new development. Nusarhu is located in a new area of Shah Alam, beyond Bukit Jelutong. It’s in the same vicinity as a clutch a few other developments, namely, Cahaya SPK, Kayangan Heights, Sunway Kayangan, Perdana Heights.

It’s not as far as most people think, but it’s a bit complicated to get there, and it is a relative new area with not much facilities at the moment. As an incentive, property prices are very cheap to entice the crowd, something Puchong was about 10 years ago. We can foresee massive growth in the same time span.

Enjoy the pics.

It’s nothing more than a running number, but the blog Property Malaysia quietly surpassed the 1,000,000th pageview sometime last week.

If you’ve never noticed the page counter, it’s quite small and located at the bottom left of this page. We got a screencapture of the counter, but not at the exact number…

Actually we would have reach there a lot faster if not for the counter going down for about a month earlier, but what the heck.

We’d like to thank all our loyal readers for making this site their daily (or weekly) visit.

No seriously, this is really a house. In Malaysia, this would be called “blocking the side lane”. Taken from the Torontoist:

This house, located near the intersection of Dufferin Street and Rogers Road is believed to be Toronto’s smallest house. Occupying what used to be a driveway, it’s a one-bedroom, one-bathroom house that sits on a parcel of land 7.25 feet (2.2 metres) wide and 113.67 feet (34.6 metres) long and has an interior area of just under 300 square feet (under 28 square metres). The asking price is $179,900.!!!!