Access to loans not primary issue for affordable housing - BNM

Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) has come out in defence against allegations made by various parties over the issue of financing for affordable housing.

In a statement released by the central bank here today, they outlined facts to show that the issue is not about people unable to secure loans.

And while they did not spell out in clear language what is indeed the root cause of the affordable housing problem, they did say that they wanted to focus on the solutions instead.

“Solutions to affordable housing need to address the shortage of affordable housing,” the statement said.

BNM outlined that based on the data issued by the National Property Information Center, “less than 30 percent of new housing launches in 2015-2016 were for houses priced RM250,000 or below, compared to 70 percent during the 2008-2009 period.

“This makes the issue on housing affordability not improving significantly where average national housing prices remaining at 4.4 times of median income,” it stated.

Affordable range is 3.0 and below.

The central bank is alluding to the fact that the real problem for affordable housing is not about access to loans, but instead developers are not building enough cheap housing.

In the same statement, BNM made a call to builders to address the matter collectively.

BNM said that “housing developers, working together with authorities should therefore intensify efforts to reduce costs and accelerate supply.”

In rebutting the allegations that the issue is not about access to loans, BNM furnished data to prove their point.

“From January to May this year, RM40 billion of housing loans were approved to more than 152,000 borrowers, where three quarters of the borrowers were first time home owners,” it said.

The statement did not show how much of the 152,000 borrowers were buying affordable houses.

It is important to note that in the BNM statement, they did clarify that nearly three quarters of housing loan applications or 74 percent were approved and continued to say that this level of approval is ‘stable’.

This puts roughly 200,000 people applying for home loans for the first five months of this year.