After a hiatus from launching new projects, Malaysia Land Properties Sdn Bhd (Mayland) had introduced a very different product from its usual offerings in the form of Hampton Damansara serviced apartments at Country Heights Damansara in Kuala Lumpur last November.

Exsim Development Sdn Bhd head of planning and development (residential/commercial) Michael Yam strongly believes that high-rise living is a trend that will soon become a norm in the major cities of Malaysia.

The latest contract has boosted Econpile’s year-to-date job wins to RM1.14 billion for its financial year and its order backlog to RM1.5 billion.

A condominium unit at The Marina Collection in Sentosa Cove was to be put up for auction a third time by Edmund Tie & Co ­(ET&Co) on March 29. However, it was sold prior to the auction, at a price believed to be around S$3 million (RM9.5 million). The unit was a mortgagee sale, and the recent buyer, a foreign investor.

Occupancy of Menara Exxon-Mobil is currently 60% (versus 100% in FY2016), after the Exxon-Mobil lease expired in January 2017.

Sunway Construction Group Bhd (SunCon) was awarded an RM152.4 million contract for the engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning of the gas district cooling plant 1 in Precinct 1, Putrajaya, involving both a chilled water supply system and power generation system. The job was awarded by the Putrajaya Group, and works will span from March 2017 to August 2018.

The year 2013 was a seminal one for property developers. That was when the URA private residential price index scaled new heights in 2Q2013, surpassing the two previous peaks of 2Q2008 and 2Q1996. At end-June 2013, the Monetary Authority of Singapore sprang the mother lode of macroprudential policies — the total debt servicing ratio (TDSR) loan framework — which when combined with the punitive property cooling measures, triggered a downslide in private residential property prices for 14 straight quarters.

The compression in its bottom line was largely due to the fallow period of project awards. In contrast, property division’s revenue bucked the trend by growing from RM359.3 million in 6MFY2016 to RM515 million in 6MFY2017 (43.3% y-o-y) driven by sales pickup from Gamuda and Celadon City in Ho Chi Minh City.

Over the past three years, the government has repeatedly said that it is “too early” or “premature” for the property cooling measures to be lifted. This was despite increasingly strident calls by property developers and other industry players for some of the more punitive measures to be tweaked.

The Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) programme under the Ministry of Tourism and Culture is looking to roll out several initiatives to strengthen the programme, possibly from the third quarter of 2017.