PropertyGuru Group’s head of real estate intelligence Nai Jia Lee said the government is likely to offer something similar to the Home Ownership Campaign (HOC), given the challenging global economic prospects.
“One of the key challenges for the government is to try to balance spending and also the government’s revenue, and where it should put the money in,” he said at PropertyGuru’s virtual discussion on the Property Market Outlook Report 2023 today.
“We have seen countries that try to have more expansionary policies or giving out more money to make housing more affordable, (but it) may backfire because they end up getting into more debt,” he said.
According to its Property Market Outlook Report 2023, sellers are unlikely to lower their asking prices unless unemployment rates start to increase, as sellers are more likely to wait out for higher offers.
PropertyGuru Malaysia country manager Sheldon Fernandez said findings from the report foresee a challenging year ahead for the sector due to vast uncertainties in public policies, federal incentives and economic prospects.
“Due to these uncertainties, it is difficult to project an accurate outlook on how the market will fare in the new year.
“While we’ve seen gradual movement in recovery with overall transaction prices in the first half of 2022 recording a higher trend compared to the previous year, we are also seeing cautious behaviour as Malaysians await possible revisions for Budget 2023,” he said.
After almost two years of the global pandemic that wrecked economic and social activities, 2023 is the year of economic recovery, albeit with a weak outlook, the report noted.
“As the world reopens international borders leading to the labour market resurgence, and a more robust domestic demand, positive economic growth is expected.
“However, the global economic outlook remained weak due to ongoing military conflicts in Ukraine, aggressive tightening of US monetary policies, and an overestimated recovery of the economy in China,” it said.
On top of that, uncertainties in the year ahead make it challenging for projections made at this juncture to remain accurate as changes to public policy, federal incentives and economic prospects could positively impact the property market.