Malaysia Low Cost Medium Housing

In this article, the issues and challenges in implementing low medium cost housing in Malaysia under Malaysia’s government plan are deemed as somehow unsuccessful but have helped numerous Malaysians in owning a house. Issues arose for various reasons including those from the local authority, private developers and housing delivery system. There is no proper local authority regulation to evaluate the price of low medium cost housing in Kuala Lumpur.

According to the data collected on table 5, most people who are working at Kuala Lumpur falls under the income category of less than RM1999 a month which is at 32. 7% and they can only afford to pay for a house below RM42,000. There is no possible way for the low income category to own a house in Kuala Lumpur because the price range to own a house in Kuala Lumpur is between RM42,000 to RM 85,000 per unit. Private developers are not interested in building low medium cost housing because of meager benefits like low profitability and no incentives are given.

Clearly, the local authorities are not doing a very good job in monitoring the process of constructing new houses. Based on table 3, the planned and completed housing units are mostly not up to par. In fact, the Seventh Malaysia Plan reflected on only a 17. 1% of the targeted units of 110,000 low medium cost houses were completed. Also, there is a clear miss-match between demand and supply of low medium cost housing in Malaysia.

Based on table 3, in the Seventh Malaysia Plan, the private sector built 268250 high cost houses more while 10402 low medium cost houses lesser. The primary demand was more on low medium cost houses, instead, more high cost houses were built. Clearly, there would be a vast imbalance on the demand and supply aspect. Also, there were no stern control to be hinged on by the housing delivery system. The low medium cost houses were always property speculators’ choice for them to make investments.