PETALING JAYA: The Real Estate and Housing Developers Association (Rehda) hopes the 2025 Budget will provide more incentives to ensure developers can deliver on the government's directive to build affordable homes in the long run.
Rehda president Datuk Ir Ho Hon Sang said a survey carried out by the association, which gathered responses from 162 out of over 1,500 members, shows that they are hoping for a reduction of development charges, lower land conversion premium and exemption of utilities contribution charges.
"Rehda stands by our numerous calls that affordable housing provision should be handed back to the government.
"Making these changes to existing requirements will make free market housing more unaffordable for the M40, who currently pay for the burden of these cross subsidies," he added.
Ho also suggested that the government should conduct a detailed study on the supply and demand of affordable housing, noting that it is crucial to determine the price of affordable houses and appropriate location for the development.
Ho also noted that the association expects the government to provide tax reduction incentives to property developers who undertake projects related to green buildings.
Based on Rehda's recent Property Industry Survey for 1H2024 and Market Outlook for 2H2024 and 1H2025, cost implications, lack of government incentives and limited public awareness are the key challenges in implementing green building projects.
"The industrialised building system (IBS), building information modelling and green certification involved costs."
"Feedback from developers is that they need to spend more to embark on green projects. In order to intensify, we want better tax incentive and compensate for the increase in cost to adopting the environmental, social and governance (ESG) agenda," he said.
Ho was commenting on the Rehda's 2025 Budget wishlist at a media briefing on the survey here today.
2025 Budget will be presented on Oct 18.
He also hopes that the government will exempt the levy imposed by the Human Resource Development Corporation (HRD Corp) on participants in the construction industry.
He said the levy exemption was very important for industry participants since they also need to pay levy to the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB).
"We would like the government to wave this 1.0 per cent contribution to HRD Corp because in the building industry, we are under the CIDB levy where we contribute up to 0.125 per cent for every awarded contract," he explained.