For the doubters of Johor Bahru’s property market, here’s a news which may make everyone say, ‘I told you so…’ 😛 However, the news will also be telling of a window of opportunity to negotiate for the best price and well, buy. As for people looking for property bubble to burst and prices jumping off a cliff, please wait for someone to predict yeah. No idea who yet. In terms of buying and then selling the same unit in the next 12-24 months is unlikely to work yeah. However, if one is working in Singapore and needs a home which is not priced until it hits the sky, then this may be a time to start looking. Let’s see what some property market heavyweights are saying yeah.
Reported in an Article in Edgeprop.my CBRE | WTW (Johor Bahru) director Tan Ka Leong said that he expects the vacancy rate of Johor Bahru’s high-rise residences to be above 50% for the first time in 2019. (Briefly, this meant that less than half of all available high-rise units would actually be occupied by owners. Yes, this is considered a negative news for Johor Bahru) Tan said the high-rise residential market in JB will remain challenging. He added, “Generally, all the property segments in Johor Bahru were horizontal in 2018. Landed residential property transaction volume was down 20% while high-rise residential property transactions dropped 50% last year. There were also fewer high-end residential transactions in 2018.” Beyond just the lower transactions, there is another incoming supply of 10,500 units within 2019. He explained, “That translates to about 10% of the existing 102,851 units. I foresee prices and rents moving downwards in 2019 and for the first time, the vacancy rate will break through the current 50% resistance level in 2019.” Article in Edgeprop.my
I am staying in a newly completed condominium in Melaka; Atlantis Residences. It’s pretty good and the price per night from booking.com is below RM200. Current price for a sub 600 sq ft unit starts from RM400,000 or higher. It was originally priced at below RM300k when it was launched previously. Assuming the rental for the units is just 10 nights per month, it will be RM1900 per month. This is equivalent to the mortgage for a unit of RM400,000. For JB, we could use the same benchmark if we intend to buy a unit from the market today. What’s obvious is that prices will not be moving too much but if we could hold on… Happy understanding that bad news or good news are not that obvious to all.
written on 18 Jan 2019
Next suggested article: Working in SG and buying in JB. Considerations.
