Malaysia Property Market Outlook (Q4 – 2019)

The property market has been one of the most talked-about industries in Malaysia. Over the past ten years, property development in and around Kuala Lumpur has grown rapidly without any large-scale consumer research being conducted to gauge the market demand.

It is widely agreed that the lack of up-to-date and comprehensive data on the demand side of the property market are the primary cause of property overhang problem in Malaysia.

As the state of the real estate industry continues to be a major concern among the public, property developers, real estate agencies and the government, proper research needs to be conducted to ensure the interests of all parties are aligned for sustainable growth in the years to come.

Are a mismatch in supply and demand causing the property overhang in Malaysia?

We have surveyed 90K adults in West Malaysia across 3 days in Q4 2019 to measure the property market demand. Our study shows that 42% of adults in West Malaysia are looking to buy a home has a budget of RM300K and below, whereas those with a budget to buy a home above RM300K stands at 22% of the population.

This underlines that there are still a large fraction of adults in West Malaysia who are looking to buy a home, however these adults are only capable of buying homes that are well below the average housing price that are available on the market. As a matter of perspective, the average housing price in Kuala Lumpur is RM700,000.

Excluding the economic initiatives taken by the government, property developers have to take into consideration the demand side data when projecting their development plan.