KOTA KINABALU: State Local Government and Housing Minister Datuk Jaujan Sambakong said the problem of house overhang in Sabah is not serious based on the records obtained for the past six years.
He said during the period, there were 10,769 units of unsold houses with an average of 1,795 units a year.
“My ministry supports and encourages efforts to address the problem of unsold houses in Sabah to ensure the problem does not get serious.
“The ministry is cooperating with the federal Finance Ministry to implement the House Ownership Campaign as an initiative to stimulate the property industry and to reduce the number of unsold houses faced by developers,” he told the State Legislative Assembly here today.
He was replying a question by Matbali Musah (Bersatu-Lumadan) who wanted to know the efforts of the government to manage the problem of unsold houses in the property market in Sabah.
Commenting further, Jaujan said for the House Ownership Campaign which began on Jan 1, 2019, developers involved gave a 10 per cent discount while the government offered stamp duty exemption for the sales and purchase agreement.
“Apart from that, the government also introduced the FundMyHome scheme based on the concept of obtaining financial assistance to purchase houses through peer-to-peer lending.
“Under the scheme, the buyer needs to only pay 20 per cent cash to buy the house while the balance will be paid by the financier and after five years living in the house, the buyer has the choice to continue staying and buy the house or sell it,” he added.
Jaujan said the government is also proposing to introduce a rent and buy scheme to overcome the problem of unsold houses.
“The scheme is the Rent-to-own programme in which developers offer buyers to rent houses for a specific period decided by developers,” he said. – Bernama
