Harapan tells Johor to heed property warning, focus on affordable housing

The Johor government has been told to take Bank Negara's warning on the property glut seriously, and focus its attention away from higher-priced property.

Instead, said Pakatan Harapan vice president Salahuddin Ayub, the state should focus its attention on the serious lack of affordable housing.

"I urge the Johor government to be judicious when approving any future housing project.

"I also want to cite the official report from Khazanah Research Institute (KRI) in their report 'Making Housing Affordable', that has scored Johor 4.2 for the year 2016 placing housing in Johor as 'seriously unaffordable', based on the median income of Johoreans," he said in a statement.

"Don't let this problem drag on until some other party is forced to build affordable homes to fill the people's current needs.

"It is the state's responsibility to ensure the availability of affordable homes is overseen properly," he said.

Salahuddin said this has to be addressed "immediately".

His call follows a Bank Negara quarterly bulletin last week that gave a stark warning Malaysia faced an undersupply of affordable homes.

In contrast, there was an oversupply of non-affordable homes and idle commercial space.

"About 83 percent of the total unsold units were in the above RM250,000 price category," read the report.

Bank Negara said of these units were high-rise properties, where were almost entirely priced above RM250,000.

These properties are mostly located in Johor (27 percent of total unsold), followed by Selangor (21 percent), Kuala Lumpur (14 percent) and Penang (eight percent).- mkini