Property Malaysia

Ever since its inception, Shah Alam has always maintained its lowkey approach to development. In its early years, besides being the administrative capital of Selangor, it was more known as a quiet, low density residential area surrounded by enclaves of small to large industrial zones. But in the last 10 years, due to the population boom and folks migrating from more developed areas such as Petaling Jaya and Subang Jaya. The attractions are obvious - Shah Alam offered cheaper homes, a well-planned infrastructure and obviously less densely populated that its neighbours.

But the one thing it was lacking was in terms was the sparse commercial centres and with it, entertainment outlets. This has been the policy in Shah Alam all the while, the commercial areas were limited to the shopping malls in city centre and surrounding shops, and pockets of shoplots at every section of housing areas. Any other large commercial outlets were generally not available.

But changes are on the horizon, slowly. In an effort to attract foreign investment, the city council have are greenlighting the knowledge-based i-City development project, which will contain the city’s first cinema.

According to the Star,

The cinema is part of the final phase of the i-City, which comprises a shopping mall and a citywalk which are scheduled to be completed in 2015. The intelligent centre is located at Section 7 of the state capital.

“We are making an exemption for the i-City to encourage international companies and franchisors to invest in the intelligent centre,” Shah Alam mayor Mazalan Md Noor said.

“But they still have to adhere to the existing rules and regulations, especially on the operating hours,” he said.

(source)

While its still some time away from completion, this looks like a positive development for the ever growing population of Shah Alam.

This is one article that has been in our drafts for a few weeks. The source is from the Star, here.

Many years ago, SS16 was mainly known to be where Subang Parade and Wisma Tractors are located. And the land office, if you ever needed to go there. Later came Carrefour. But in the past couple of years, a few condos and service apartments have along the road parallel to the Federal Highway. The area has always been designated as commercial use, but it was only recently that developers realized the potential of highrise residential units on the edge of the predominantly landed homes around the area.

Some of the condos in the area are listed below here. Click on them to read the original reviews:
Empire SOHO
Saujana Residency
Tiaraville

One concern that has surfaced is the traffic situation here.

THE landscape in SS16 Subang Jaya is set to change dramatically once the entire stretch of commercial development sitting on land between the Carrefour and Subang Parade shopping complexes and along the Subang KTM Komuter station is fully completed.

The strip features fewer than 10 projects comprising high-rise serviced apartments and office suites.

While not all are ready, grave concerns have already been voiced about future traffic condition in the area.

The daily crawl on the Federal Highway is affecting Subang Jaya (and other parts of the Klang Valley) with traffic backed up into the township and extending over to USJ.

While the Federal Highway, with its high volume of traffic, takes the bulk of the blame, the mushrooming of development projects, also inadvertently lead to congestion.

To read the full article, see here.

Got this from here, via rocky’s bru.

Blogger Pok Ku has written a heartfelt letter to the new Dato’ Bandar of DBKL, about the plight of the residents of Vista Angkasa, Bukit Kerinchi. The DBKL flats had their telephone cables stolen and have been without phone and internet connection for 4 weeks. A vey interesting read.

Congratulations on being appointed the Mayor of Kuala Lumpur. As a citizen who made the mistake of buying a place administered by DBKL, I am naturally hopeful that we have a mayor who cares about people’s welfare and comfort, especially people living in DBKL’s realm.

I am pretty sure that the people welcoming you in DBKL did not tell you about the urgent problem in Vista Angkasa, Bukit Kerinchi. It is not important, apparently. But, as you might remember from your studies, “important” and “urgent” are two different things.

Read the full letter here.

Perhaps we will finally see the end to some of the issues regarding the approval of hillside projects in the Klang Valley. Currently in the news are some ‘hot’ for projects that have come under vocal protest from surrounding residents. Some of these were highlighted in the press recently:

Development projects approved by the DBKL, which disregard the rules in the Kuala Lumpur Structure Plan 2020 and the Federal Territory (Planning) Act 1982.

Case 1 - Federal Hill

2.1ha (6.2 acres) of land at Lot 55 Plot A, Section 70, Jalan Travers. This prime land belonging to the federal government has been categorised “institutional” use, which basically means that it is land for the police to build their quarters and offices and not for commercial use.

Despite the fact that the DBKL will be holding an objection hearing with residents on April 4, the residents are questioning the relevance of the hearing when construction on the site has already started. By right there should not be any form of construction before the objection hearing.

Case 2 - Bukit Gasing

15.4ha (38 acres) of privately owned land on the KL side of Bukit Gasing, which does not come under the green belt area.

The residents also said that the DBKL had not acted in accordance with the principle of Local Agenda 21, requiring partnership between the DBKL and the public.

The residents have since gone to court to compel the DBKL to hold an objection hearing.

Case 3 - Jalan Gallagher in Taman Duta

In 2005, the developers submitted an application to the DBKL to build 13 blocks of five-storey apartments with a total of 188 units at Jalan Gallagher.

The new development will increase the density in the area by 750% from 10 people per 0.4ha to 84 - that is in violation of the laws.

(source)

The above 3 are under DBKL’s jurisdiction, and another two high profile projects under MPAJ are in Bukit Antarabangsa, which have recently drawn comments from the new MB of Selangor:

State Executive Councillor Ronnie (Liu)… said the developers of both the projects were not allowed to carry on with development until further notice.

Liu said the state was wary of carrying out hillside development especially at Bukit Antarabangsa which was under constant threat of landslide.

(source)

It looks like it won’t be as easy for developers to get hillside projects approved anymore, which is a good thing considering the diminishing green lungs in city and in view of the landslides that has happened recently. Well, at least for the next 4 years…

The next time you see a small white signboard about the size of a white board, located at the edge of an empty piece of land, read it. If it is a ‘notis pemberitahuan’, then that would be a notice board required by any developer who wishes to developer any piece of land. The purpose of this little notice board is to notify the residents living around the proposed site of the following:

• The submission that has been put forth to the local authority;
• The file number of the submission, and brief details like number of units, type of development and number of storeys the buildings have;
• That residents have the right to put in the objection to the local authority if they wish to do so. There is usually a grace period for this, most council put it at 2 weeks;
• The name and address of the developer.

While the size of notice board is standard, a lot of people fail to notice it much less pay attention to it, which means the grace period for recording any objections, passes without fuss. Some local councils actually send the similar notice to neighbors by mail.

The thing to note that this notice board is NOT the same as the project signboard. The project signboard is erected after all approvals have been obtained and the developer starts work.

This whole thing is significant because usually when the planning, building plan and earthwork approval is given to the developer, and when their contractors start work, it is only then when the residents around the neighborhood start protesting. While the residents have every right and recourse to object, the local council usually will not stop the development because the approval has been given – unless it comes from a higher authority like the MB or a federal agency. But in most cases, the council would have deemed that they have studied the development from all aspects during the building plan stage, including getting approval from 14 different technical departments like JKR, JPS, IKRAM and JMG.

We’re not saying that residents can’t object at any one time to protect their rights. The point is this – object BEFORE the project is approved. You have higher chance of succeeding.

What happens if you object? Well, we will cover that in the next article… when we get round to writing it.

So what will the budget bring for homebuyers and investors next year?

Good news or bad news?

With each passing year, property and it’s close cousin, construction, play a bigger and chunkier role in the nation’s economy, Malaysians eagerly wait for the budget announcement. Realistically, we hope there will be good news in the forms of more tax breaks and incentives for buying and selling medium cost homes. While luxury homes is where the big money is for developers, most Malaysian do not participate in buying homes in the excess of RM1million, so we hope that there will be goodies for more people to share.

Construction is badly hit with rising prices of materials (like steel) and strangely enough, material shortage (like the recent puzzling cement shortage). Construction costs directly affect home prices, so we hope that there will be some positive changes in that aspect.

So we wait for the announcement.

Not an April’s Fool joke. Check it out here.

Malaysia to scrap property gains tax from April 1

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia will scrap capital gains tax on property deals from April 1, the prime minister said Thursday as he announced a slew of pro-investment programmes and incentives in a bid to boost the economy.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said he hoped the decision would “inject more excitement and dynamism in both the property and financial sectors.'’

“Potential that has gone unrealized or under-optimized will be turned into new industries and businesses, new value creation and new jobs,'’ he said in a speech at a conference of local and foreign fund managers, and heads of some of Malaysia’s biggest companies.

The Malaysian property market is currently believed to be stagnating, and considered undervalued compared to other countries in the region, especially Singapore.

Abolishing the property gains tax would encourage investment and deals and bring more liquidity into the market.

“Going forward to further improve the national property sector, the government has decided not to impose real property gains tax throughout the country commencing 1st April, 2007,'’ Abdullah said.

All those uncles and datuks with dozens of property investments should be rejoicing, then?

Did anyone read this in today’s The Star Metro?

ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS GO DOWN HARD ON PROTESTERS

ABOUT 12 enforcement officers from the Ampang Jaya Municipal Council (MPAJ) burst into Taman Hijau Apartments in Ukay Heights recently and started tearing down banners and placards put up by the residents in protest against an development project in the neighbourhood.

An eyewitness to the incident who refused to be identified said the officers were dressed in their official uniforms and came storming into the apartment area at about 11am without proper documentation, shouting and behaving like hooligans.

“They did not gain permission but merely stormed in and refused to identify themselves,'’ she said.

“It was shocking to see officers from the local authority behaving like that,'’ she said.

Expatriate H. Berbar said the officers were rude and when he started taking pictures of the raid, they covered their nametags on the uniforms.

“The whole incident happened so fast that I sprained my ankle during the commotion,'’ he said.

“When we questioned one of the officers, he said we did not have a permit for the banners.

“My question is why did they not take down all the other signages in Ukay Heights, which obviously did not have permits as well?

“Where was their permit to enter private property and remove items?'’ asked Berbar.

Datuk Mustapha Mahmud, who is a resident of Taman Hijau, said he was alarmed when he saw the way the officers were behaving.

“Technically, they do not have the right to come into the property as it is private owned yet they did so and when I questioned them about it, they ran away,'’ he said.

Read the full article here.

As bad as the PR of some of the local councils with public, this has got to make it worse. That area has a lot of foreign expats staying there, how do you think it will make Malaysia look? Bad. Especially with the government trying to promote Malaysia My Second Home and Visit Malaysia Year.

This should be good news to most people (although it’s a bit late up here). Something to read while the Internet speed grinds slowly.

Rules on foreign property buy eased

Related story: Developers are jumping for joy, naturally…

With the recent furore about illegally built palaces and business premises on state land, one aspect we should take a good look at is getting the proper approvals for the renovation works done to your homes.

By and large, a lot of people carry out renovations to their landed units without any approvals from the local council. If you want to know, you can ask your neighbours who did renovate their houses - it’ll give you a good picture of just how many. Sometimes, the house owner entrusts the renovation contractor to get the paperwork done - more often than not, he doesn’t do it.

These days, local council enforcement is getting stricter. Gone are the days that “it’s OK if no one complains about it”, nowadays, the council can immediately instruct you to tear down any illegal structures if it infringes on the regulations.

The Star highlighted some interviews with councillors regarding this issue, and they also issued some guidelines for people thinking of doing some works to their houses (source here):

BEFORE SUBMITTING PLANS

• Obtain a letter of consent from the neighbours if extension or renovation works involve house borders or the front facade.
• Appoint a registered architect (or one from the council).
• Appoint a consultant engineer if extension/renovation works involve concrete works.
• Consult the Building Control Department (of MBPJ) if extension/renovation works involved is 50% or more of the built-up area of the premises.

APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS

• Four copies of the proposed extension and renovation work plan
• A copy of the structure plan
• A copy of the latest assessment receipt
• A copy of certificate of fitness
• A copy of the sales and purchase agreement

Some councils have differing requirements, so the best is to check with them before starting any work. Remember, not everyone of us can afford to pay the fine of RM24,000 for not having an approval…