Property Malaysia

A subsidiary of Boustead Properties Bhd, Akademi Pendidikan Pemandu Malaysia Sdn Bhd (APPM) is selling a piece of prime land to a company called Crystalville Sdn Bhd.

The land tenure is leasehold and is located in Setapak. The transaction was in cash in the tune of RM30 million.

According to the report:

Boustead Properties said it acquired the land, which has a remaining lease of 89 years, in 1997 for RM14.5 million. It added that the net book value as at Dec 31, 2006, was RM22.6 million.

It added that sale of the land would allow APPM to realise cash proceeds to repay borrowings taken to acquire the land in the first place.

It said the disposal was expected to increase its net assets of by RM7.5 million and earnings per share for the year ending Dec 31, 2007, by 2.9 sen.

It is not known at the moment how Crystalville plans to develop the land.

If you’re the type who are interested in nice design and architectural innovation in your homes, you might want to check out the 8th Malaysia Architecture, Interior Design & Building Exhibition (ARCHIDEX 07) in Kuala Lumpur.

It will be held from the 5th to 8th of July at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre. This time round they are featuring a total of 15 avant garde architects and designers from around the world who will present their latest ideas on design. But the more interesting part for us will be the exhibition, where they will be featuring 800 local and foreign participants and more than 600 booths, accommodating 200 local and foreign exhibitors in five halls at the convention centre.

We’re probably going to bump into a lot of our architect friends there…

For more info and biodata of the speakers, check out here and here.

A report in the news mentioned that Sunway is providing 8% GRR on their latest condo in Mont’Kiara

Sunway City Bhd (SunCity) is so confident of the property and rental market in Mont’ Kiara that it is offering a 8% guaranteed rental return to new buyers of its Casa Kiara II condominium.

However, the special scheme, available for a year, is valid for a limited 30 units only

The report also goes on the mention the reasoning behind it.

The scheme is part of SunCity’s objective to provide more value to buyers and it exemplifies the company’s confidence in the buoyant property and rental markets in the area,” said a company spokesman.

Our original review of Casa Kiara can be found here.

But why limited to 30 units only?

This report basically confirms what everyone has been talking about in the past few years - in coffeeshops to boardrooms to showrooms - that foreigners are still looking to buy property in Malaysia.

In an article in the Edge:

A growing internationalisation of the property market is being felt in the country, with interest coming particularly from potential and repeat purchasers in Asia, Australia and Europe, said property consultants.

Regroup Associates Sdn Bhd executive chairman Christopher Boyd said this could be reflected from the recent interest in places such as Langkawi, where beachfront properties may hit the US$2 million (RM6.9 million) mark by year-end. He said purchasers from Hong Kong and Singapore made up the largest number of foreigners taking up residential properties here. Boyd added that keen interest was also seen for the commercial segment.

The article also mentions that Koreans were eclipsing the Arabs as purchasers of residential properties with the Korean business community seeing opportunities here to purchase en bloc for resale in Seoul. This of course brings to mind about the recent purchase of an entire residential block by the Koreans.

Some local projects are still marketing exclusively overseas first before opening up sales to Malaysians. Let’s hope the regional market holds up in the next few critical years.

It’s been a pretty slow week for us here at Property Malaysia, mainly due to the school holidays, and partly due to us not being around for most of the week. But next week looks promising, we’ve lined up a few recent launches for us to check out and are looking forward to it.

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We received two invitations to the view show houses last week, one was Alam Sanctuary which have just completed their show house for viewing. They launched their first phase towards the end of last year. The original review is here, and there are also some pictures of the site progress taken last month here.

The other call was from the people at Hijauan Residence in Cheras. Some of you would have seen the ads in the newspapers announcing the launch of their show units.

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Congratulations to SP Setia on winning the Prix d’Excellence for Best Master Plan Category for their project Setia EcoPark. More details can be found here.

Our number online source for Malaysian business and finance news, The Edge Daily, has been down since the weekend.

There was a notice a few days ago on the error message saying they were in the midst of an upgrade, but now the message is no longer there.

Anyone can shed some light on the website?

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Incidentally, has anyone been reading the edge’s new daily edition? We stopped buying the weekly edition some years back due to the skyrocketing price…

Reader sifu has sent in some latest site progress photos for Sierra Residency today.

You can read the original review and discussion here.

Some of the earlier photos also sent in by readers can be found on out Site Progress photos page here (look under ‘Sierra Residency’).

Yesterday in StarBiz, there was an article on E&O Property.

The article basically outlines some of the plans by the company for the near future, emphasizing on their desire to grow in their niche market and strategy to acquire more land.

According to the article,

Its main appeal - the company is the largest property developer in Penang with about 1,350 acres in George Town and 350 acres in Kuala Lumpur city centre.

Some analysts say that in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, E&OP has the largest prime land bank.

Presently, it already has a growth development value (GDV) of RM15bil.

Out of this, RM10bil comes from Penang, and the remainder from Kuala Lumpur.

The article also highlights E&O’s strength in Penang, saying,

Penang is widely seen as one of the largest beneficiaries of the Malaysian property play given that it has the best demand-supply balance among developed states.

Property in Penang has generally done superbly thanks to the pent-up demand and the limited amount of land bank on the island. E&OP has been shrewd and has been aggressively embarking on land bank acquisitions in premium areas to capitalise on the property boom.

You can read the full article here.

Some of the projects by E&O Property reviewed here in Property Malaysia are:
Idamansara
Seventy Damansara

In recent years, Mah Sing has been well-known for their active search of new land and quick launches thereafter.

Now, Mah Sing has entered the Puchong market – the hotbed for property players where every medium sized developer wants to have a piece of the action. Mah Sing has obtained this piece of land near George Kent, which actually is in Sepang. They have tentatively named it Duta Perdana. We reckon it’s near Taman Putra Prima, Taman Meranti Jaya and Taman Tasik Puchong (not to be confused with Taman Tasik Prima).

From what we gather, they are focusing more on upmarket homes like garden bungalows, link semi-Ds, and hyperlink homes. There will also be a commercial centre.

For more info you can call them at 1800-88-1808.

Previously we have reviewed Hijauan Residences and Damansara Legenda, also by Mah Sing.

For some archived articles on them, you can also check these out:
More Launches Soon From Mah Sing
Mah Sing Shows Good Profits

First the China tourists, then the Mat Salleh senior citizens retiring here, now the Koreans are coming.

Looks like future residents of Savanna in Bukit Jalil (review here) can look forward to some friendly neighbours from the land of kimchi and Winter Sonata…