RISING DEMAND: Visitors browse for attractive offers at a property fair recently held in Kuala Lumpur. TA Securities expects developers to line up new launches of affordable houses next year to cater for rising demand. — Bernama photo
KUCHING: The property sector has a positive outlook for the future moving forward as property sales have been on an upbeat pace as the government strives to foster first time ownership for home buyers.
Key attributes of the third quarter of 2011 (3Q11) results performance was a strong revenue growth of 36.5 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y) underpinned by strong progress billing on the back of record high unbilled sales
In addition, a marginal improvement of 0.4 percentage point (ppt) y-o-y in profit before tax largely due to a disposal gain of approximately RM44 million recorded by SP Setia in the 3Q10.
Excluding the said gain, as well as a RM6.5 million gain from disposal recorded by Glomac Bhd in the latest quarter, the industry experienced a growth in PBT margin of 1.9 ppt y-o-y.
For 3Q11, the sales of residential properties in major areas (Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Penang and Johor) surged 25.5 per cent y-o-y to 40,691 units, led by Johor (up 78 per cent y-o-y), Penang (up 54 per cent y-o-y), Selangor (up three per cent) while the Federal Territory recorded marginal increase of three per cent.
In terms of value, the four areas recorded an average 21.3 per cent growth y-o-y to RM12.1 billion.
TA Securities Holdings Bhd (TA Securities) stated, “We remain upbeat on the property industry outlook and believe that demand will tilt toward affordable homes. This is in line with the government’s aim in encouraging home ownership among first‐time buyers.
“As such, we expect developers to line up new launches of affordable houses next year to cater for rising demand. We expect the impact of the new lending guidelines to be insignificant as the new ‘net income approach’ is non‐mandatory to a certain extent.
“Hence, we do not think such measure will affect property developers from achieving higher sales next year. We note that bigger developers are still positive on the market outlook by rolling out new projects,” the research house opined.
This could be evidenced from higher sales target for financial year 2012 set by the property developers, with Mah Sing Group Bhd targeted to achieve RM2.5 billion of new sales.
TA Securities maintained its ‘overweight’ stance on the property sector, seeing changes in buyers’ lifestyle that switched toward smart homes with gated and guarded features due to rising affluence of the population.
From July 2011 to Sep2011, the total transactions done at RM500,000 to 1 million per unit and above RM1 million per unit rose 0.8 ppt and 0.3 ppt respectively as compared with the previously year corresponding period.