My parents were civil servants. They were both educators. I think it’s a noble profession. They told me before on how tough it was to obtain a government loan to purchase a home when I was still too young to understand. In the end, they struggled through their first home purchase and the second one was with government loan. All my uncles and aunties who are civil servants also own home(s). One aunty is now at ‘Pengarah’ level which seriously would allow her to buy many of the properties on offer currently. Anyway, I always believe that due to the stable income nature, civil servants should be able to own a home. I am wrong.
I think it’s alarming when it was reported in Bernama that 960,000 out of 1.6 million civil servants were unable to own a home. This is as per Cuepacs president Datuk Azih Muda. In percentage, it’s 60 percent and out of this number, 75 percent are aged 40 and below. Seriously, 960,000 meant that even at a ratio of 4 to 1 home, Malaysia needs another 240,000 homes. All these must be very affordably priced because a typical civil servant would definitely not be looking at those RM550,000 homes or higher. In fact, even majority of those in the private sector would not be able to look at anything above RM550,000. That explains much of the slightly smaller sized homes and higher density to push the prices per unit to more affordable levels.
I personally believe RM500,000 or below is still considered okay because most of the time, people are buying as a couple when they get married. At least, I did. Azih further stated the following, “The Government must also play a role in controlling house prices and build more affordable homes.” To be honest, I do believe everyone must do something about it. Relying on just the government and waiting until ‘forever’ for that unit we would regard as perfect is not the best option. This is especially because those who do not own a home yet are below 40 years old which meant that they could still try to stretch the loans over a longer number of years. If however they wait just 10 more years, the term ‘affordable’ is going to be just a distant memory. Furthermore, they can choose to buy further, as long as there are those new LRT or MRT stations. There is NO NEED to buy next to these stations. What about just 10 minutes radius away? That’s already going to be huge number of choices.
My wish is however the civil servants would read more, understand more and make good decisions. Just reading kopiandproperty.com would already provide some basic understanding. Buying a home is totally different from getting a new car. One ensures our future, the other makes us poorer depending on how much we actually paid to buy and maintain it. Happy working and hopefully saving enough as quickly as possible for a home.
written on 5 Apr 2016
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