According to Mohd Razlan Rafii, WP UMNO Youth leader, he described the market nowadays where the reality of our market condition for high-end housing supply and development is 93.6%, while Malaysian who are with high income is just around 20% only. So the remaining percentage that we see here has been listed as unsold or overhangs, which means houses that are brand new kept empty for years.

 

Also, Malaysia house prices are also heavily dependent on location, and so some states in Malaysia have more affordable housing markets than others. "Melaka for instance is ‘affordable’, with a median multiple of 3.0x whereas Kuala Lumpur (5.4x) and Pulau Pinang (5.2x) are both ‘severely unaffordable’. (Khazanah Research Institute. (n.d.).  This situation resulted most households in KL, Penang had to spend more than 30% of income to own or rent and operate their house. When this continues for years, most household will face housing affordability stress where they need to cut down expenses on food, transportation, medical, educations. This stress affects both ownership and rental.

“affordable house is a house that is reasonable for the needs of a household with low to moderate income and reasonable prices so that these groups can meet their basic life needs”. 

- Policy Research Working Group (Milligan et al., 2007)

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However, developers are smart in a way that they do unavoidable marketing strategies by promoting facilities such as jogging parks, gyms, swimming pools which could increase quality of life. In that way, developers get to increase profit margins through selling house at higher market prices. But, ask yourself? Do all those facilities are necessary in order for you to meet your basic life needs?

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In fact, The Australian Government's National Housing Strategy (AHNs) has emphasized that reasonable housing costs are imposed on households with sufficient income to meet basic needs such as food, clothing, transportation, medical care and education (Berry and Hall, 2001). In other words, when the housing cost is affordable with strategic location which could satisfy users , government and public sector would spend less on the provision of healthcare facilities, recreations, crime prevention and pollution, while productivity and prosperity increase.

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Therefore, unaffordable housing is a challenging issue in Malaysia as a developing countries. Private sectors are focusing mostly on profit-driven projects rather than affordable housing. When laws changed that foreigners can only purchase property above RM 1 million, property booms in one night.

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"Only capitalism can solve the housing crisis" 

- Patrik Schumacher

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So ask yourself, do you want to keep buying property when capitalist is consistently producing more commodity for you to purchase?