Govt's 4-pronged strategy to boost property sector
13/04/2007 Biz Edge By Tamimi Omar

The Housing and Local Government Ministry has launched a four-pronged strategy to reduce bureaucracy in the real estate and construction sectors and boost the country's competitiveness.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said on April 13 the strategy would also improve the business environment, reduce hidden costs in these sectors, and cut down approval times for projects.

The move is to encourage developers to adopt a partial build-and-sell concept, where developers can sell homes at 10% of the unit price before construction, while the remaining 90% would be paid after the units were completed.

He said that developers who adopt the 10:90 concept would be given exemption from paying a RM200,000 deposit for a housing development licence.

Developers would also be fully exempted from the low cost housing quota and would also be given priority for all approvals concerning the project.

The Prime Minister was speaking at a conference to speed up the delivery system in the public sector in Petaling Jaya.

"Under the first initiative, the ministry would create a “one-stop centre” to reduce the time for project approvals from two years previously to up to six months under this new scheme," said Abdullah. Fast lane projects would take only up to four months to get approvals.

Under the second initiative, the Ministry has also replaced the Certificate of Fitness for occupation (CFO) with a Certificate of Completion and Compliance (CCC).

The CCC would not be issued by the local government but by professionals such as architects or engineers, appointed by the developers, as project consultants.

These architects would monitor the construction from planning to completion, he added. These professionals would be held accountable as they were the experts for the projects.

The third initiative was the creation of the position of Building Commissioner, who would be elected by the state governments.

The commissioner would be the middleman between the strata unit holder and the developer with the power to solve problems regarding strata titles.

He said the fourth initiative would be on the build-then-sell concept where the government would introduce incentives to encourage developers to adopt the concept.