As reported in The Star Online, the Johor state government will continue to assist eligible first-time housebuyers to own houses under the Johor Affordable Housing Scheme (RMMJ) by taking proactive measures.
Johor Housing and Local Government committee chairman Datuk Abdul Latiff Bandi said this includes maintaining the prices of the houses despite economic challenges.
The price for the RMMJ houses has been set at RM150,000 each while houses under package A were at RM40,000 and package B at RM80,000.
Since 2013, the Johor government has required developers to have 40% of residential properties in their projects to come under the affordable-housing scheme, from previous quotas ranging from 20% to 35%.
Abdul Latiff also said that they had allocated RM150mil to buy suitable land for the development of the RMMJ residential properties to cater to the eligible first-time house buyers, whereby the developers for the RMMJ housing schemes are not allowed to increase prices due to the state government’s policy of providing affordable homes.
“We want to encourage home ownership among Johoreans and the way of doing that is to offer prices that are within reach among average income earners,’’ added Abdul Latiff.
Abdul Latiff said the state authorities would refer those who failed to get their housing loans from other banks to the two banks offering financial facilities for the RMMJ houses.
However, he said those who were poor paymasters, with debts with the National Higher Education Fund Corp and bankrupts, were not eligible for the financial facilities.
“We cannot do much to help them (applicants) to get housing loans as it is the prerogative of the banks in disbursing money to their customers.
As much as banks want to help their customers, at the same time they also cannot simply disburse loans to those who are not able to service loans,’’ said Abdul Latiff.
Abdul Latiff said that by the end of this year, some 11,000 units of affordable houses would be completed and the state was confident of achieving the target to deliver 30,000 units to buyers by 2020.
Click here to read the full article as published on The Star Online.
