“Apartments or condominiums have become the most popular properties launched in 1H18, overtaking 2- to 3-storey terraced houses.”

While waivers on the SST for certain building materials and construction services are a good start, more support is needed, said the association.

Soam: The unsold bumiputera units are an additional cost for developers that will be passed onto buyers.

“We are not working on the incentives on IBS developments, not really. Because what we want to do is to give them [developers] the volume and they can construct their homes faster. IBS is supposed to be faster and cheaper, if we have the volume,” she told reporters at a press conference after the opening of Rehda Institute's Rehda Institute’s Housing Conference 2018 themed Re-inventing Affordability today.

Speaking to reporters at Rehda Institute’s Affordable Housing Conference today, Housing and Local Government Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin said compliance cost, which is estimated to account for 20% to 25% of overall development cost, is one of the factors contributing to high housing prices.

Trust chief executive officer Datuk Jeffrey Ng posed a question to Zuraida on how the government intends to meet its target with limited resources.

He noted that urbanisation has changed the face of Malaysia in the past four decades with the size of its urban population growing from 30% to 70% of the total population, necessitating a need to review existing policies and legislation to better handle the challenges faced by industry stakeholders.

“It’s time to review the [release mechanism] policy as I understand some states even have a Bumiputera quota up to 70% for a housing development,” said KPKT Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin.

MTEM chief executive Ahmad Yazid Othman claimed that the proposal by the Johor chapter of the Real Estate Housing Developers Association (Rehda) was a way to avoid paying fees to convert the units to non-bumiputera properties, which he estimated contributed RM600 million to the state's coffers.

The take-up rate for commercial and industrial properties by bumiputra buyers was low, between 2% and 3%, he said, and this forces developers to hold the unsold units before eventually getting permission from the state government to sell them to non-bumiputra buyers.