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Budget 2008: Stamp duty
discount good
08/09/2007 NST Comment by Chang Kim Loong
THE 50 per cent stamp duty exemption on transfers of houses under RM250,000
is intended to stimulate the property market and reduce the overhang in
residential property. It’s not much of an incentive but the National House
Buyers Association welcomes it anyway.
Instead of a waiver of stamp duties on transfers between spouses, it would
be more meaningful if it had been waived for transactions between parents
and children.
Allowing buyers to pay monthly loan instalments out of their Employees
Provident Fund’s Account 2 would open the floodgates to abuse, like what
occurred with fraudulent invoices for the withdrawal of EPF money to buy
computers.
EPF is generally a fund for old age. We do not encourage buyers of
properties to withdraw from the EPF.
HBA urges the government instead to provide fiscal incentives for interest
and capital repayment to be waived for affected buyers of abandoned
residential property projects.
Repayment can resume after such projects are successfully revived and vacant
possession delivered. This will ease the burden of some 60,000 affected
buyers, including civil servants.
Most of them have been blacklisted by financial institutions. Indeed such
abandoning should not have happened in the first place, causing Syarikat
Perumahan Negara Bhd to rehabilitate 6,000 abandoned residential units.
Lax enforcement of the Housing Development (Control & Licensing) Act 1966
has meant taxpayers’ money has gone into reviving such projects.
HBA is disappointed there has been no headway since the prime minister’s
announcement in April to implement regulations on standardising sale and
purchase agreements on the build-and-sell concept.
The market players, house- buyers and professionals are eager to adopt the
new concept. But as long as the standardised sale and purchase agreement is
not announced, they are unable to proceed.
The writer is the honorary secretary-general of the National House Buyers
Association |
