June 2010: You win some, you lose some

KUALA LUMPUR: Asian Pac Holdings Bhd is looking at a more stable revenue stream from recurring income through its KK Times Square II project in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.

Having focused on medium-cost housing in Selangor over the last 35 years, the developer is ready to move to the next level, says co-founder Datuk Seow Cho Thoy.

Russia today is a far cry from the former Soviet Union described by Ian Fleming in his James Bond novels. As the country embraces global capitalism, many affluent Russian-speaking individuals are looking to invest their money overseas.

One of the biggest property developers in Malaysia by market capitalisation, IJM Land Bhd is known for its large-scale housing projects.

Malaysia tends to undersell itself, says Choy-Soon Chua, managing director of Germany-based SEB Investment GmbH (SEB) as he takes City & Country on a tour of Pavilion Residences Tower 1’s newly launched 4-bedroom Sky Villas. Launched on June 26, at an average price of RM1,500 psf, the final phase of Tower 1 offers only 20 units of Sky Villas and six duplex units known as Sky Palaces.

Interest in landed properties up for auction in April and May continued to rise, maintaining the trend in March when the number of bidders shot up, say auctioneers. Demand seemed to have spilled over to even the “not-so-hot” areas.Auction Data Sdn Bhd’s CEO Gary Chia says 6,689 properties were up for auction throughout the country in April, including 2,796 landed properties.

Make small talk with someone in China and eventually the topic will get around to property.“It may be a good time to buy property in the next few months,” says Miffy Li, a 27-year-old yoga teacher, sipping her tea in a coffee shop at a five-star Bei­jing hotel. “The consolidation in the market will not last long.

HDB launches second Tampines DBSS siteThe Housing and Development Board (HDB) is putting up a site at Tampines for sale, to be developed under the design-build-and-sell scheme (DBSS). The site is adjacent to the first such development, Premier@Tampines.

An increasingly audible outcry in China over soaring home prices, at a time when millions still live in shanties, has prompted a search for solutions to make housing more affordable for both the poor and the growing middle class. Many China academics and housing experts propose a dramatic increase in subsidised public rental housing for low- and middle-income people.