hit an all-time high in traffic with over 750,000 property hunters visiting its property website last month.

Not too sure how they came out with the number? counting hits? if yes i think i contributed many many hits to the website, check out properties at different price range, different location everyday at least 2 times. If a search is counted as 1 hit, or if from one page to another also counted, than definetely >100 hits a day by me alone

no choice, monitor prices so must work hard

This post has been edited by godutch: Feb 24 2011, 11:33 AM

Agree!!!

too many average people jumped into the game over the past two years and i suspect not many have holding power that's why have been avoiding overpriced properties although some i really like.

but i think for any category (be it 350K-500K or 500-800K) there would be people with and without holding power. For example a condo (not very prime location but interested to buy coz nearer to my family) asking for (RM425K) about 80K higher than bank value.

When i went to view that condo in Oct 2010, agent said best best best also can get RM420K only, and it was tenanted until last month (jan 2010). I just gave up and then what happened, last 2 weeks i saw asking for RM400K already, but am still waiting. I think the seller starts to feel the pain of having no rental income to help him pay the bank\maintenance fees etc, now everything comes out from his pocket. with Oil prices now what USD95??? petrol will be increase again for sure

I think many others are cought in the same situation as well (difficutl to get good rentals (if any).

But again, those who are in the "same boat" with me (genuine buyer looking for our home sweet home), i believe we will be able to get a desirable place at reasonable price , just continue do to our search la

This post has been edited by godutch: Feb 24 2011, 11:48 AM

Agreed, don't believe too much in rising material cost etc, just excuses used by developers to jack up prices. look at the inventory levels of steel companies, piling up due to lack of demand ... the developers (especially the big ones) definitely got an upper hand

but in the end, if the seller got holding power and die die also wanna sell at ridiculously high price, just let go and look for other properties if most of the buyers are rationale then sellers will have no choice but forced to be more reasonable also

This post has been edited by godutch: Feb 24 2011, 11:57 AM

Glad to hear that
happy for you
just monitor closely.
sometimes it is good to get a condition not so good one at cheap cheap price then renovate the way you like you home to be

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Added on February 24, 2011, 1:04 pmdevelopers will have to keep launching, otherwise less future revenue flowing in, profits will start to decline as existing projects going into tail end (construction period < 3 years) then share price drop

This post has been edited by godutch: Feb 24 2011, 01:04 PM

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Added on March 1, 2011, 11:12 pm[quote=hakon,Mar 1 2011, 02:58 PM]a crappy report...

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/busines...ns-of-slowdown/

copy-paste:

CODE

KUALA LUMPUR, March 1 — The property market has either gone flat or is showing signs of decline, as indicated by rents and capital values for prime areas.

The market, especially the high-end segment, appears to be feeling the pinch of oversupply and the tightening measures on investment.

Figures in a report by property consultancy DTZ Research released in January shows that rental rates for commercial property were on a downward trend last year dropping from RM6 per square foot (psf) in the second quarter to RM5.97 in the fourth quarter.

residential loan approval contracted 3.8 per cent year-on-year in December last year while non-residential loan approval slowed to 30.2 per cent from 47.3 per cent in November.

[/quote]

great news

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Added on March 1, 2011, 11:21 pm[quote=stylophile,Mar 1 2011, 06:09 PM]why are all their surveys based on mont kiara and klcc? astute conservative local investors would never go near any of these places.

[/quote]

Hi, when i started looking for a place for myself i thot the same as you. But i now realised that people became greedy when they see the surrounding area's (for example mont kiara, desa park city) condos and houses are selling at very high price, they also jack up their asking price claiming that their properties are near to this high end area.

So, different segment of property prices are correlated.

For example, a so so condo located outside desa parkcity (leasehold ok?) was selling at around RM150K two years ago, now because desa parkcity, asking for RM370K, eventually the low-mid income people are affected as well .

another example will be condos near The tropicana mall, suddenly all prices increased by RM100-RM200K

when the property market is hot, property prices of all categories increase, a flat in Sri Damansara that was selling RM80K 1.5 year ago is now asking for RM150K !!! crazy

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Added on March 1, 2011, 11:27 pm[quote=UFO-ET,Mar 1 2011, 09:40 AM]
[quote=sampool,Mar 1 2011, 09:21 AM]
the cut down will proceed if majority cannot afffort. i think banking sector will be hurt the most, majority ppl will be happy, me too.

Yeah, let's go to Bahrain to buy properties

[/quote]


Bharain got protests wo

some economists said China will now be more serious to tackle its overheated property market although it means to tolerate a slower growth rate, due to fear that the unrest in the middle east as well as north africa will spread over, which is still under control at the moment, if it does spread....

This post has been edited by godutch: Mar 1 2011, 11:27 PM

http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?f...24&sec=business

Residential property prices likely to stay flat


PETALING JAYA: Property prices of the local residential sub-sector are expected to be flat in the next few months as fears of rising oil prices due to the political unrest in the Middle East may damper investor and buyer confidence.

Khong & Jaafar Sdn Bhd managing director Elvin Fernandez said the local residential sub-sector would not see “insane run-ups” in prices like last year due to both global and local factors.

“Stock markets in the region have not been on the run-up. The uncertainty in oil prices and measures taken by Bank Negara to curb rising property prices will see (prices) within the local residential property sector holding,” he said when contacted by StarBiz yesterday.

Fernandez said the local residential sub-sector experienced “insane run-ups” in prices towards the second half of 2010 but, in light of both local and foreign events, the run-up in prices “will be arrested.”

Henry Butcher Malaysia Sdn Bhd chief operating officer Tang Chee Meng said he expected prices of the residential sub-sector to be stable in the next three to six months.

“Property prices won't go up as crazily as it did last year,” he said.

There would still be interest for landed properties and high-rise developments would experience a bigger slowdown, he said, adding that if oil prices shot up, people might put off property investment.

In its report, DTZ said that to push sales, developers were now selling smaller units in line with market demand, especially aiming at the investment segment of the market which was still relatively strong.

“Capital values are stable in most locations with an average of RM599 per sq ft, but rental rates continue to experience deterioration as new completions add competitive pressures to existing projects,” it said.

Tang also said if oil prices shot up, people might put off property investment.

Those who proposed for the banks to provide 2nd generation loans will never take the loans. Most probably they are all rich people that buy properties with cash

This proposal is going to widened the gap between the poors and the rich.

just think about this: who will need a 2nd generation loan? the poors.

I can't help but to think that for a 2nd generation loan with tenure of say 70 years (forget about the house' condition 70 years later) just after 40 years is the house/condo that still need 30 years to pay off livable??? The poor kid willl probably be inherited with a non livable house and debt of 30 years.

This is a non deniable fact, we will need refurbish the house when it gets old. By then what happen? take another 2nd generation loan to refurbish the house and pass on the debt to the CUCU?.

I hope the government can be more considerate about the poors when come to formulating policies (don't think from their own perspective only), the poors may not be so well educated to understand the consequences of this so called 2nd generation loan. The government should be the one who protect the poors' right and so NO to any banks that wanna profit from this business.

approx. 80% of households earn less than 5K a month, i doubt many can afford a 500K house/ condo in KL. new lauches in those so called prime locations are priced >RM500 psf for condo, and this has caused older condos prices to shoot up to RM400-450 psf in surrounding area. Just wait and see how high can the price go

This post has been edited by godutch: Mar 21 2011, 10:36 AM

that's why the income tax people should go after those with many properties listed under their name, since the govt needs money now, go after them sure can reap something for the govt

maybe do spot check to those properties, and see whether they declare rental income

just ask yourself will you be happy if you are one of the good citizens that pay tax and suffer bcoz not able to get a house at reasonable price?????

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Added on March 22, 2011, 1:47 pmwho is complaining???

it is the FACT that most of today's property prices are ridiculous, period.

This post has been edited by godutch: Mar 22 2011, 01:47 PM

agreed that if the property market is still HOT HOT HOT, then speculators will be busy accumulating properties quietly if they are so sure that prices will increase 20%?30%? 100%??? Why would they wanna waste time telling people to jump in and become their competitors?

I think that BNM's move to control credit cards debt is a sign that Malaysian households debt is at a worrying stage. But to be in-line with the govt's bullish outlook (election coming?) , BNM chose to touch on the credit cards loans first (safer play)..... But, then what will be the next move coz credit card loans still a small portion of total banking industry debt? car loans is hard coz of Proton so prices for cars will always be high.... i think they are running out of bullets trying to control the households debt level and the increasing inflation especially food and energy costs which are affecting everyone, is complicating things.

Interest rate has reached the bottom, it can only go up.

Those who are saying BBB, prices will move higher are probably those already invested and trying to offload their properties, so are the developers. just my opinion

having said that, i do believe that they are still reasonably priced properties (sub-sale), just need to work hard to find them, good luck in our search for a home

This post has been edited by godutch: Mar 23 2011, 11:02 AM

agreed!!

those who bought with $$ they made from selling would probably bought what they hv in hand now at higher prices and waiting for prices to go even higher to offload. When the prices do not escalate as what they expected, they would try hard to convince everyone prices are going up up up etc....

in the end, the real winners are 1) govt? (all duties, taxes paid to them), 2) lowyer (services? provided) 3) bank (interest income for 30years or more , 4) developers.

come to think abt it. TA Global was supposed to launch it residential units in Sri Damansara called Damansara Avenue back in Nov 10, but they put it on hold coz BNM announced the 70% cap around that time. TA then said launching postpone to Jan 11, heard indicative price RM500-RM600 psf, but until now still no news. Developers are smart, i suspect the high end market has actually slowed down abit, coz Desa parckcity's Westside 1 priced at RM600psf has not fully sold yet. I also checked the newly completed Northshore, initially some advs asking for RM700psf, but now dropped to RM640-650psf. I really hope there will be an adjustment to the high-end prices, then the mid-lower end property prices' will be adjusted as well.

Any comments?

This post has been edited by godutch: Mar 23 2011, 11:24 AM

http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?f.../20110325080522

Loans likely to lessen


Bank Negara new measures seen helpful in the long term

By YVONNE TAN and SHARIDAN M. ALI

starbiz@thestar.com.my

PETALING JAYA: Bank Negara's new measures to inculcate responsible lending by banks to retail customers is expected to impact the quantum of credit disbursement as weaker borrowers would be rendered ineligible.

However, in the long term, these measures would be helpful to support the stability of the banking sector as it would limit the banking sector's exposure to weak borrowers who are more likely to default in “times of stress”, analysts said.


“It is encouraging to note that Bank Negara is introducing these steps as a pre-emptive measure to address rising household sector debt levels,” said Malaysian Rating Corp Bhd vice-president/head of financial institutions ratings Anandakumar Jegarasasingam.

On Wednesday, the central bank said individual borrowers would be subjected to a stress test to gauge if they could afford a new loan once guidelines are introduced in the third quarter of this year.

Among others, borrowers would be stress-tested in the event interest rates were to rise by 100 to 200 basis points from the time the loan is applied.

Malaysia's household debt rose at a rapid rate of 11.1% per annum from 2004 to 2009; and from RM516.6bil at end-2009, it climbed by 8.4% to RM560.1bil as at end-August 2010, according to data by CIMB Research.

The household debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio increased from 66.7% in 2004 to 76% in 2009 but is estimated to ease to 74.6% at end-2010.

Nevertheless, compared to the entire banking sector's NPL ratio of around 3.1%, the household sector's NPL ratio stood at 2.3% at end-2010.

“Anecdotal evidence suggests that bankers are focusing more on the underlying collateral, especially for mortgages and auto loans.

“However, collateral are an eventual source of repayment during default and not an immediate source of repayment. As a result of this focus, the actual debt servicing ability of the household sector, as reflected by its disposable income, has often not been looked at in detail during credit assessments.

"The proposed guidelines would fill this gap and thereby improve the quality of credit assessments done by banks,” said Jegarasasingam.

The Real Estate and Housing Developers' Association Malaysia (Rehda) president Datuk Michael Yam said the new guidelines were a signal to the banks to be “less exuberant” in their lending.

“But banks in Malaysia are generally stable and have their own ways to curb defaults,” he said.

Yam said he was confident that the “feel-good momentum” in the property market from last year would continue into this year.

CIMB chief economist Lee Heng Guie said Bank Negara's introduction of the latest measures was a good mov e to keep household debts at a sustainable level and to avoid a systemic risk to the entire banking system.

The central bank has gradually introduced macro prudential measures when needed to nip in the bud any buildup of future problems in the country.

It introduced a maximum loan-tovalue ratio of 70% for people wanting to buy their third house or more and recently clamped down the availability of easy credit to the low income group by raising the minimum income to RM24,000 from RM18,000 for credit cards.

But one area of abundant credit has been coming from co-operatives which have been lending vast sums of money to civil servants, and the upcoming new lending affordability rules might be extended to institutions not regulated by the central bank.

Despite the alarm being raised on the amount of debt households are carrying, data indicate it's not a problem for the financial system as much of those loans are back by collateral and the assets of households are more than double their debts.

Malaysian cepat lupa or Human cepat lupa??? it is a known fact that the U.S financial crisis is caused by the housing market, the value of the so call collateral (properties) or assets that backing the loans declined significantly during crisis time. The collaterals were of course valued more than the mortgage loans when the banks decided to lend , the value only dropped sharply when crisis kicked in

This post has been edited by godutch: Mar 26 2011, 11:34 PM

i think we have to get things right. It is the bad collaterals that caused the financial crisis, not the derivatives products. The significant drop in the value of the collateral is what caused the derivatives market to plunge, increasing couterparty and settlement risks. And why many financial institutions got caught was mainly a result of their overly opmitistics view on the outlook of the housing market ~~

Hi Dave, i feel for you and i think you made a good decision to get your family a home coz paying RM300 more a month, you own the house, so, if i were you also i would buy. but i think for most of the people who are still waiting like myself, 1) we need a home but we can afford to still wait coz the urgency is not there yet, 2) the monthly installment is well more than RM300 that you mentioned. Buying for own stay is different from buying for investment, if can afford and like the house, by all means grap it

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Added on March 28, 2011, 7:19 pmLOL， good one!!
typical excuses used by malaysian when got questioned about something unreasonable.

This post has been edited by godutch: Mar 28 2011, 07:19 PM

http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?f...31&sec=business

CIMB raises BLR/BFR rates


KUALA LUMPUR: CIMB Bank Bhd and CIMB Islamic Bank Bhd have announced an increase in their base lending rate (BLR) and base financing rate (BFR) by five basis points from 6.3% to 6.35%, effective from April 4.

A statement by the CIMB Group said that the change in the rates followed Bank Negara's decision to increase the statutory reserve ratio requirement by 1% to 2% with effect from tomorrow. Bernama

5 years ago when my cousin finished high school and while waiting for her application status (to Uni), she worked as a receptionist and her pay was HK9K a month

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Added on March 31, 2011, 9:28 amLOL.

but the message is that, interest rates will only go up

This post has been edited by godutch: Mar 31 2011, 09:28 AM

http://tw.news.yahoo.com/article/url/d/a/110405/8/2paj5.html

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hope this will come to M'sia soon

Ya, that's why when people said Malaysia is different because we don't hv subprime, i really doubt it.

Maybe the reason why these people said we don't hv subprime is just because our banks are less sophisticated and don't hv a system to differentiate what are prime loans and subprime loans.

Out banks don't hv a perfect system when come to giving out loans, that's why some people managed to find loopholes (banks just want to hv a nice "loan growth" rate to push share price higher, and more loans means more income to the banks) and overstretched, heard of someone was managed to take many loans (including cd cards, personal loans and housing loans) from different banks and the housing loans were more than 10X his gross salary. and i don't think this is an isolation case. Do we not hv subprime loans???

i hv been monitoring prices of properties that i desire to buy for own stay for months. noticed only a few were lowering prices by around 5%. But i think prices will be adjusted by end of this year due to inflation pressure.

living cost is trending higher and higher. E.g the grilled ikan pari (small portion) at a hawker center near my house increased to RM13 from RM10, this is 30% increase.

And i know many of my colleagues and friends, friends' friends have started to use RON95 instead of RON97 after the latter's price increased to RM2.7 per litre. This means the government's subsidy on petrol is increasing as more people using RON95 now. This is in addition to the government's initial plan to subsidize only RM0.30 per litre of RON95. But with Crude Oil price at USD108, the government is surely subsidizing more than the RM0.30 per litre now (maybe GE is around the corner???)

The question is now: how long can the Govt Tahan not to increase RON95 price ???

for genuine buyers who are buying for own stay (like myself) , this is a group that will take into consideration affordability. As inflation kicks in, we may need to redo our family budget so most propably will put on hold any plans to buy for a while (of course i am refering to those who can afford to wait) .

With more buyers putting on hold, when interest rates started to increase to curb inflation, i believe there will be sellers who are willing to profit less (asking price for properties in certain areas was > 50% with some close to 100% of the so called investors' original purchase price) and lower their asking price (they don't rugi anyway).

agreed with you to certain extend, but interest rates hike is just one factor affecting property prices. with global economic recovery remains uncertain now, BNM may do it slowly. There are better ways to ensure the property prices are adjusted to a more reasonable level. if the govt signal possibility of implementing property gain tax like what the taiwanese govt is doing now, property prices will sure go down. Like what i mentioned before, the so called investors are asking 50% or more capital gains for properties in certain areas, if the govt implement property gain tax, these investors may willing to sell with 30% profit instead of 50% profit

This post has been edited by godutch: Apr 6 2011, 07:48 PM