Selangor to set new prices for affordable houses

THE Selangor government will hold talks with housing developers to set a reasonable price for the Rumah Selangorku affordable housing project in relation to the decline in the value of the ringgit.

The state’s housing, building management and urban settlers exco Datuk Iskandar Abdul Samad said the declining value of the ringgit has affected developers.

“There’s no decision on whether to increase the price of affordable houses yet.

“But we will do a study on it due to the drop in the ringgit.

“For housing development, raw materials such as steel are obtained locally or are imported.

“This raises the cost of building, which has impacted the developers and the state government will discuss it with them,” said Iskandar in reply to Haniza Talha (PKR-Taman Medan).

He had asked if the state will maintain the affordable housing price scheme in the wake of the ringgit’s decline in value.

To an additional question by Datuk Sulaiman Razak (BN-Permatang) on the mechanism to determine the price of the houses, Iskandar said the state finalised the price two years ago when the initiative was launched.

“We had fixed the criteria of the affordable houses according to four categories.

“For example, the (A) category is priced below RM42,000, and the most expensive would be up to RM250,000.

“Maybe you are confused with the federal government’s 1Malaysia Housing Projects (PR1MA) as they have labelled RM300,000 as the price of an affordable house,” Iskandar said.