Transactions for terrace houses make up for 54% in 1Q21, report shows

by S BIRRUNTHA / Pic by TMR FILE PIX

LANDED homes are still the top choice of many homebuyers despite changes to their lifestyle over the past years, according to PropertyGuru DataSense MD Joe Hock Thor.

“When it comes to the property market, a lot has changed. But if we look at the data, what’s interesting is that buying patterns have not quite changed.

“We still like landed property. That’s one thing that has not really changed for as long as we have been able to track the market. We have always had this affinity for landed property.

“So, this trend remains unchanged in the property industry till date,” he said at the City Expo Malaysia Star Talk webinar yesterday.

According to Malaysia’s Property Market Update report for the first quarter of 2021 (1Q21) released by PropertyGuru DataSense recently, landed units have become the buyer’s choice over high-rise units in 1Q21.

The report revealed that with a large portion of the nation’s workforce working from home since the start of the pandemic, the type of properties that buyers are purchasing has also changed.

This is reflected in the transaction data from 1Q21, which found that homebuyers are favouring larger, more spacious units in the RM300,000 to RM500,000 price range.

Buyers also preferred landed units over high-rise in 1Q21, with terrace houses making up 54% of transactions in Malaysia followed by condominiums and apartments (18%).

Many among the top 10 projects with the greatest number of transactions in 1Q21 were areas located away from city centres in self-contained townships such as Bukit Sentosa and Bandar Bukit Beruntung in Rawang and Bandar Putra in Kulai.

According to Joe, now that many employees no longer need to travel to the office every day and have the choice to work from home, they can opt for areas further away with lower density and more spacious layouts that could comfortably fit an extra room for a home office.

“We observed that the desire for larger, more spacious property has resulted in a shift towards terrace houses as well as properties in the fringes of city centres, driving up transactions in smaller townships in 1Q21.

“We believe this trend is likely to continue into the second half of 2021 (2H21),” he noted.

Meanwhile, on the importance of using data in making good and accurate decisions, Joe said, the use of technology provides great access in terms of data, which in turn helps in predicting and analysing demographics for property buyers.

He said, with the available data, companies can create profiles of homebuyers to identify whether they are investors, first time home buyers and so on for specific areas and segments.

“Data-supported decisionmaking is now very important, in fact, it helps decisions be made better and more accurately. The use of technology also allows us to estimate future demographics,” he added.

PropertyGuru DataSense is the data analytics and solutions arm of PropertyGuru Group.

In November 2020, PropertyGuru took over real estate data company, MyProperty Data, thus furthering its mission to support the home ownership aspirations of Malaysians.

Following the strategic acquisition, MyPropertyData has been rebranded as part of PropertyGuru DataSense.

Joe noted that PropertyGuru DataSense aims to empower Malaysians with accurate and easy access to data for every step of their property journey so that consumers can buy or sell property at the right market price and capitalise on potential gains in the future.

In addition to integrating the business under PropertyGuru, he said the rebrand also represents the group’s commitment in further building and growing its data business.

“We recognise that data plays a vital role in the growth of the property industry, and thus, we aim to continue providing property players and homebuyers with access to big data analytics and solutions to help them make informed investment and property decisions,” he added.