The level of housing loan approval rates for houses costing below RM500K have remained stable over the past few years at above 70%.
Claim:
According to Real Estate and Housing Developers Association (REHDA), end-financing remained the main challenge for house buyers to own affordable houses. The highest number of loans rejected were applications for housing loans for houses costing RM500,000 and below.
Source: FMT, 4 April 2018
Fact:
The level of housing loan approval rates for houses costing below RM500K have remained stable over the past few years at above 70%.
In fact, the approval rate for houses costing less than RM250K was higher at 72.7% as compared to 67% recorded in 2012.
Notwithstanding, housing affordability remains a major issue of households in Malaysia. Property developers should work to increase the supply of affordable houses for the people.
In 2016, house prices in Malaysia were categorised as ‘seriously unaffordable’ by international standards with a median multiple of 5 times of annual household income. Based on the Median Multiple approach by Demographia International, houses are deemed unaffordable if median house prices are more than 3 times the annual median household income.