THE National House Buyers Association (HBA) welcomes Housing and Local Government Minister Datuk Seri Ong Ka Ting’s recent announcement that the amended Housing Development Act will take effect from Dec 1.

House buyers can now expect better protection from the implementation of the long-awaited amendments.

However, we found that the focus of the announcement seemed to be on the establishment of the Housing Tribunal.

While this is a positive move to ease the pains and suffering of a large number of house buyers, one crucial question begs to be answered. This is with regard to whether the current aggrieved house buyers can bring their cases to the Housing Tribunal come Dec 1.

The HBA strongly feels they should be allowed to do so. Anything contrary is deemed to be a frustration to the aggrieved house buyers who prompted the amendments.

It is clear that Parliament had deemed it fit to promptly pass the amendments to provide better protection for house buyers.

This was due to the increasing number of complaints from house buyers as the existing Housing Act was inadequate to provide for their protection.

To their chagrin, a vast number of house buyers found themselves facing problems with the purchase through no fault of theirs.

What a house buyer wants is to buy a house so that his loved ones can have a roof over their heads and not to spend half of his prime years chasing the developer for his rights.

To deny them access to the tribunal now that it is going to be set up would be grossly unjust.

Though there are some other laws that have been made retrospective, we feel the minister could have been advised that it would be difficult to implement this particular Act retrospectively.

However, we see nothing illogical or unlawful to allow the tribunal to hear cases regardless of whether they came about after the implementation of this Act or before. This is totally different from implementing the Act retrospectively.

Furthermore, the tribunal is only hearing the cases. Its decisions can go either way. It only provides a simpler and speedier avenue for aggrieved house buyers to seek redress. It does not favour the house buyers or the developers. It does not mean every case will be ruled against the developers.

If the tribunal is only accessible to house buyers who sign their Sale and Purchase Agreements on or after Dec 1, then we can guess it will not see any action until problems surface with SPAs signed after its setting up.

This is because developers are supposed to hand over vacant possession of the houses during that period. Only then will the disputes and problems surface.

In the meantime, there are thousands of aggrieved house buyers who are unable to seek redress in court due to financial constraints after having expended their savings on their house purchases.

This group places high hopes on the tribunal to hear their cases. To deny them access will be a complete disappointment and a gross injustice.



Chang Kim Loong
Secretary-General
National House Buyers Association
(via e-mail)