KINIBIZ As the government acknowledged that affordable housing was not only a lower-income challenge, but also increasingly concerns Malaysians at large, a range of affordable housing programmes was introduced over the years to help prospective home buyers own their first properties.

According to Khazanah Research Institute’s ‘Making Housing Affordable Report’, interventions in the housing market have mostly focused on improving affordability by leveraging on demand, either by allowing consumers to borrow more, or through subsidising the costs of houses.

Such policies include the Malaysia My First Home Scheme, which is intended to enable young adults earning RM5,000 per month or less to obtain 100 percent financing from banks to purchase their first home. The MyHome private affordable ownership housing scheme also provides a subsidy of up to RM30,000 per low-cost house for qualified first-time homebuyers.

On the supply side, the federal and state governments have mainly focused on the direct provision of affordable homes, either through public agencies or via partnerships with private developers.

For example, prior to 2012, public housing models were largely focused on providing housing in the low-cost sector, for the poor and hardcore poor, via the Projek Perumahan Rakyat.

It has, since 2012, moved in large ways to affordable housing targeted at medium-income households via the likes of Perumahan Rakyat 1Malaysia (PR1MA), Syarikat Perumahan Negara Bhd’s Rumah Mampu Milik and Rumah Mesra Rakyat, and Perumahan Penjawat Awam 1Malaysia which is reserved for civil servants.

For the full story go to KINIBIZ .