The numbers speak

ACCORDING to the Malaysian Valuation and Property Services Department, the fourth quarter of 2007 saw developers offering a total of 6,636 new housing units to the market. This is a significant drop from the last quarter where 10,536 units were released to the market.

From the total, 1,471 units were taken up during the period, achieving 22.2% sales performance, which is an improvement from 19.3% in the previous quarter.

By property type, terraced units continued to dominate the new housing market representing 59.2% (3,928 units) of the national total.

By price range, houses priced at RM250,000 and above per unit remained popular among developers as represented by 39.5% of the new houses launched into the market. Houses priced between RM150,001 and RM200,000 per unit made up a further 20.7% of the national total.

From the buyer’s perspective, units priced between RM 200,001 and RM250,000 were in demand as indicated by the 61.5% sales performance.

Generally, all states had fewer new launches except Kelantan, Kuala Lumpur, Perlis and Johor. Kelantan had the highest increase from the last quarter to register 36 units. Kuala Lumpur had a fourfold increase to 983 units, followed by Perlis with 157 units and Johor at 1,802 units.

By state, Selangor continued to dominate the newly launched housing units in the country to record 2,044 units but lower than 3,915 units launched in the previous quarter In term of sales, Penang achieved 100% sales performance but there were only 78 units launched.

On the subject of overhang, the number of overhang property in the market decreased 4.7% to 29,481 units from the third quarter. However, units under construction that remained unsold increased 6.9% to 57,230 units after favourable trends in the last four quarters.

The number and value of the overhang residential property in the market improved slightly. On a quarter-to quarter basis, residential overhangs reduced slightly from 24,488 units to 23,866 units while value decreased from RM3.9bil to RM3.8bil.

Across the country, four states registered increases in the overhang units. Perak recorded the highest increase of 27.6% to 1,379 units.

Pahang and Johor observed upward trends of 9.2% and 1.4% to record 596 and 6,941 units respectively. Malacca noted a lower increase of 0.9% but the number remained high at 2,294 units.

On the other hand, Penang, Sarawak and Perlis observed lower overhang units by 20.7%, 19.9% and 16.2% reductions to record 310 units, 682 units and 145 units respectively. Similarly, Selangor and Negri Sembilan experienced lower overhang units by 11.7% and 7.3% decreases to register 4,053 and 1,452 units respectively.

Johor continued to have the highest numbers of overhangs in the country (6,941 units), which made up 29.1% of the total

By The Star