Luxury projects on track to go on

Tough times or not, property players are still going ahead with their high-end property launches.

Ken Holdings Bhd executive director Sam Tan remains excited about the company’s exclusive Ken Bangsar project.


Sam Tan

Ken Holdings’s high-end service apartments Ken Bangsar, which averaged about RM1,000 per sq ft will be launched next year, Tan said.

“Our outlook remains positive. We are still attracting a lot of interest from top end property market investors with our location at the top of Bukit Bandaraya plus the very high specifications fitted into the (Ken Bangsar) building,” he said.

The project on less than one acre has over 80 units. As at May, more than 60% of the units have been sold.

Mah Sing Group Bhd managing director and chief executive Datuk Seri Leong Hoy Kum is no less optimistic.

“If you have a good product in a good location, you would probably see constant demand. There will always be pent-up demand for housing as it is a fundamental necessity.” he said

For developers, it was a matter of good concept and product, location, branding and timing, Leong added.

Mah Sing’s focus is on semi-detached homes and bungalows in the Klang Valley, as they account for only 5% of residential supply.

The property company will soon launch properties under its middle to high end Residence series with units ranging from RM800,000 to RM1.5mil, as well as its high end Legenda series with units priced from RM1.5mil and above.

“These are niche, gated and guarded developments, each with their unique selling points,” Leong said.

It also has plans to launch Phase 2 of its Hijauan Residence project comprising 30 units of garden bungalows starting from RM1mil per unit by year end and Phase 3 comprising four-storey hill villas with an indicative selling price from RM2mil each next year.

Located next to the Hulu Langat Forest Reserve, Hijauan Residence’s Phase 1 comprising 120 units of semi-detached and linked semi-detached homes have been sold out.

“We are launching RM22mil worth of properties for Kemuning Residence in Shah Alam - some of them under the build-then-sell concept — in 2009,” Leong said.

In Penang, Leong said the company had previewed 82 units of three storey super-link homes worth RM67mil at its Residence@Southbay.

This is a gated and guarded scheme with its own clubhouse, and all 288 units in the development should be progressively launched over the next two years.

“We also plan to launch our Legenda@Southbay, which comprises 76 units of three-and four-storey resort bungalows with built up from 5,000 sq ft to 8,000 sq ft, priced from RM2mil to RM5mil from 2009 onwards,” Leong said.

Sunway City Bhd (Suncity) plans to launch its BayRocks Garden Waterfront Villas this year. It is the first phase of the Sunway South Quay project which is part of the Sunway Integrated Resort.

Managing director Ngian Siew Siong said the 77 units were in the super high-end category with prices of RM5mil upwards and a gross development value of RM400mil.

“The BayRocks Garden Waterfront Villa project is targeted for launch in the fourth quarter,” he said.

and is a guarded and gated community facing the lake with an overall development concept based on horizontal strata in a low density development,” he said.

He added that the high-end to super high-end segment still presented growth opportunities for the industry, as Malaysian properties remained attractive to investors, domestic and foreign.

Although property prices were rising, they were still very much lower compared with mature markets such as Singapore and Hong Kong, where homes in prime locations were known to exceed S$5,000 per sq ft, he said.

By The Star