RM1m policy for foreign ownership of property in Johor to be maintained: Md Jais

KOTA ISKANDAR: Johor will maintain the established restriction on foreign ownership of property in the state.
"We will maintain the current RM1 million policy, as it is a Federal Government policy," said Housing and Local Government committee chairman Md Jais Sarday in his speech during the state assembly sitting here on Thursday.
It was earlier reported that state government was looking at ways to relax regulations on foreign ownership of homes in an effort to reduce the glut of unsold properties in the state.
Jais said, "We have set up a committee to discuss luxury property issues in the state. The committee will be headed by Johor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin and other related agencies."
It was reported that Johor has the highest number of unsold residential units in Malaysia (27%), followed by Selangor (21%), Kuala Lumpur (14%) and Penang (8%).
According to statistics released by Bank Negara Malaysia recently, there are 130,690 residential units priced at RM250,000 and above that remains unsold.
According to Jais, this has caused a negative sentiment on the Johor property market.
"We found the 27% calculation is inclusive of service apartments and Soho units, but the state classifies these units as commercial units, not residential.
"As such, Johor only has 3,803 unsold residential units and the majority are located in the international zone. Kedah has 4,363 of unsold residential units and this is higher than Johor," he said.
"The state government is not worried about the unsold residential units in the international zone due to the aggressive marketing efforts by the property developers.
"They do weekly promotions especially targeted at buyers from China," he said.
Jais also revealed that the state government has so far collected RM40 million from the 2% foreign property ownership levy.