PropertyGuru: Youth, first-time home seekers priorities in Budget 2021
KUCHING: Budget 2021 should focus on job creation and economic drivers, particularly for youth and first-time home seekers, while addressing specific developer concerns such as compliance costs, according to PropertyGuru Malaysia, the nation’s largest property site as recognised by the Malaysia Book of Records.
These demographics have seen surges of home ownership interest following the Covid-19 outbreak. However, despite a bevy of property incentives and deeply favourable lending environment, employment and income loss are hampering them from purchasing a property. As such, economic drivers to foster job creation and income growth, along with digitalisation and PropTech incentives to enhance awareness of available initiatives and opportunities, are key priorities for the property market as Malaysians recover and rebuild from a third wave of Covid-19 cases nationwide.
“Property transaction volumes and values in Malaysia showcased V-shaped recovery curves prior to the recent Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO),” PropertyGuru Malaysia’s country manager Sheldon Fernandez said.
“Along with marginal growth in
the Malaysia House Price Index and PropertyGuru Malaysia Property Market Index, this underscores the resilience of the property market post-pandemic.”
“In short, the current incentives for property, as well as historically low interest rates and a wide range of purchaser and seller incentives, have been sufficient to promote market recovery for property to date. As such, while there remain numerous developer and
industry asks in terms of Budget provisions, the emphasis should be on economic recovery to ease the plight of the rakyat.”
Most prominent among industry wishlists is the expansion of Home Ownership Campaign (HOC) incentives, such as stamp duty and instrument of transfer exemptions, to the secondary market. There have also been calls to extend the HOC beyond its applicability period of up to May 31, 2021.