Rehda Institute urged the government to leave the private sector to focus on market-driven affordable housing developments with units priced at RM500,000 and below and other open market-priced products.
The government should take over the responsibility of providing social housing, especially to the B40 and M40 groups that need housing help, according to chairman Datuk Jeffrey Ng Tiong Lip.
"Private affordable housing is heavily subsidised by the open market segment. It is unproductive and wasteful to have a huge stock of unoccupied or unsold units including Bumiputera units. Affordable housing quota cannot be imposed across the board in all private developments as the required ecosystem may not be present," he said.
Ng emphasised that cross-subsidies to the private sector housing development have become punitive due to rising land, compliance, building material, labour, and other expenses as well as a sluggish market.
He hoped that any upcoming affordable housing would not fall under the overhang category.
Ng was speaking today at the Regional Housing Conference 2023 of the Rehda Institute.
According to the National Property Information Centre (Napic) in its Property Market Report 2022 which was published last week, a total of 27,746 overhang units were registered in 2022, a decrease of 24.7 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y) from 36,863 units in 2021.
Total overhang value also fell 19.2 per cent y-o-y to RM18.41 billion, from RM22.79 billion during the same period.
