this was in Berita Harian today
Berita Harian Online

make it short, before 2010, foreigners can only purchase properties in Malaysia with value of no less than RM250k...now, they've raised that up to RM500k...

reason is, they fear foreigners are over-bidding the locals for lower cost properties...in another word, locals cant buy the property they want becos the foreigners with higher exchange rate than RM is snapping up all properties...

to me, that is utter BS...what i see is plenty of developments here & there...plenty of unsold properties...to say there's a strong competition going on between the locals & foreigners is a load of crap...

say i invested in a property where i feel foreigners or expats would wanna live in for RM300k, and i expect the price to reach at RM400k after completion, making myself handsome amount of returns. now, i cant sell them to foreigners for less than RM500k...foreigners with more than RM500k budget will look for something else...which means i'm royally screwed?

i honestly dun understand why they wanna enforce such rules...already foreigners can only apply up to 80% or 70% loan if not mistaken...why wanna make it more and more difficult for them to buy properties in M'sia? what happened to the 'Malaysia my second home' program? enough already is it?

in KL/Selangor, its probably easy to get houses with value of RM500k and up...what about other states? like Alor Setar? Melaka? certain places in Perak? as i know, some of these more sub-urban areas dun have high property values, but plenty of foreigners prefers the serenity of these places over the hectic city lives..so again, property investors from these states are royally screwed?

in addition, not all foreigners are filthy rich...some of them moved here for a different reason...maybe becos they like malaysia and maybe becos property prices here are a hell lot cheaper than say s'pore & HK or Japan...with this new ruling, wouldn't it deter some of them to invest or choose m'sia as their 2nd home?

what you guys think?

developer not stupid...if they are they're not developers...

d'sara perdana & its nearby area is one place worth mentioning...RM300k not expensive, but if you pay RM300 for a 650sq ft studio, is that expensive now? say RM400+ per sq ft? still cheap? developer still stupid? why u only can look at the big figure?

of course, if there are landed double storey 3000sq ft built up gated & guarded areas with RM300k price tag, its darn cheap & i will be the first one to say it should be reserved to us Malaysians only...

i've been living in MSQ in DP for close to a year now, and honestly, locals probably make up 60%...the rest, middle easterns, koreans, japanese, mat salleh...so is it NOT a place expats will choose to live? its' only a stone throw away from mont kiara via penchala link...one side minimum cost RM900k...another side, can get decent one for RM350k...

pls bare in mind, not all foreigners come to m'sia and have a RM50k monthly salary...look at food court at The Gardens...mostly run by foreigners..selling food...these are not filthy rich ppl...

one or two mentioned property prices will sky rocket with the 'invasion' of foreigners snapping up our properties...dont you think with the RM500k minimum ruling the same thing will bound to happen even more so? property developers will now wanna increase the prices so that foreigners can also purchase their properties, and that, will affect us the locals...becos they cant have 2 (well, 3) different prices for locals, bumi & foreigners...its not like buying petrol with MyKad

i simply feel RM500k is a little bit too much...maybe they should consider readjusting to 400k or so...