Gated housing to have legal definition soon

18/11/2006 New Straits Times

The Government's move to amend the Strata Titles Act 1985 to facilitate the development of stratified landed property schemes has been warmly welcomed by the Real Estate and Housing Developers' Association (Rehda).

This "move towards bringing legislation on par with current industry evolutions" will further promote the development of quality consumer-oriented housing such as gated-and-guarded communities, Rehda pesident Ng Seing Liong said.

The announcement that changes to the Strata Titles Act have been approved by the Cabinet, he said, would provide buyers with the reassurance that gated communities have clear definition in law.

He expressed the association's gratitude to the Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid, who made the announcement last week, and to the Cabinet for giving its ear to the industry's concern on the issuance of strata titles for gated-and-guarded communities.

Ng called for the amendments to be applied retrospectively to all approved stratified landed housing schemes, since these were developed on the expectations that the issuance of individual strata titles for the approved housing types would be a matter of course.

In his announcement, Azmi has said the draft of the amendments had been approved and would be tabled in the current sitting of Parliament. He expects the changes to be passed into law next year.

He pointed out that while the gated community concept has become popular, without the amendments, many banks were reluctant to offer bridging finance to those developing such projects.

Ng said: "We believe that the amendments will ease bankers' reluctance to extend loans to developers of such schemes, and free up approximately RM2 billion worth of gated-and-guarded residential schemes affected by the non-issuance of strata titles."

In the meantime, pending the gazetting of the changes, Ng said, both the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and local authorities should accept and process applications to develop gated-and-guarded communities.