A generation of renters
Pauline Wong, The Ant Daily
Twenty six-year-old Mayanne Lee* (names have been changed) has been searching for a house for the past two years, ever since she made the decision to settle down with her boyfriend (now fiancé) of eight years. During this time, she has been scanning newspaper advertisements daily for new and old homes in neighbourhoods both near and far from her current workplace in Subang.
But having looked at house prices in Subang, Petaling Jaya, Wangsa Maju, Gombak and even as far as Putrajaya, Rawang and Shah Alam, she is close to giving up her search for a home to call her own.
The closest she can come to affording, even with help from both families for the down payment, is a RM250,000 apartment in Rawang, or a small RM300,000 terrace house in Seremban – which will mean long hours of commute and being far from her family.
An apartment in Gombak, ten minutes by car from her family home, now costs RM350,000 – her eldest brother bought a unit in the same apartment block seven years ago for only RM180,000.
Both she and her future husband draw a joint income of about RM6,000, which is not a lot for a couple living in Kuala Lumpur. They both own a car each (a Proton Saga), but due to the rising cost of living, they still live with their families, unable to move on because they simply cannot afford a home.
Luck was on Johari’s* side when he and his wife found a one-storey intermediate terrace in Kajang for RM288,000, and that was only because its previous owners were still living there.
He had bought the house even though it would mean not being able to move in until some months later, because properties closer to their offices in Petaling Jaya would mean paying at least RM400,000 and that was way out of their league.
However, this means a commute of over two hours (one-way) daily during peak hours for him and his wife, plus several hundred ringgit in toll charges, which in the end also takes a toll on their overall expenses.
But this is not only happening in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s bustling capital, where high house prices are perhaps to be expected due to the high land cost.
It’s even worse in Penang. Twenty-eight-year-old Zulkifli* is still looking for a home to start a family. The newlywed says he has been searching high and low for a place close to his work place in Penang island, but the prices are beyond his reach at over RM400,000 – his income is below RM4,000. He had applied for the government’s Project Perumahan 1Malaysia (PR1MA) homes, supposedly ‘affordable’, but the ones on the island are sold out, he says.
On the mainland, prices are lower, but that still means battling the Penang bridge traffic every day. His sister bought a house in the mainland for RM230,000 at least five years ago, and he can only hope for the same luck.
These youths are, quite literally, Malaysia’s new ‘homeless generation’ – and this is a term that’s been around for a while now in discussions about the younger generation.
Conversation about the Gen-Y often revolve around how these youth, aged between 24 and about 30, are often still living with their parents or, if they are outstation folk working in KL, renting a house but are unable to own one.
And if they do buy properties, their houses are a distance away from where they work, leading to hours of frustration on the road, battling traffic jams.
Of course, the authorities, property developers and even those from the older generation encourage these ‘homeless’ youths to buy properties away from the city, which essentially means anywhere else in the Klang Valley.
They say the youth are too fussy, and do not want to live in rural or suburban areas because it is not ‘exciting’ or ‘happening’. They say the youth want ‘dream homes’, and would not settle for less. They also say the Gen-Y prefer to buy fancy cars over houses.
But are they correct in this respect, or are they ignoring a far bigger problem with the overall property market and the way the authorities are concentrating too much on the Klang Valley, without developing the rest of the country?
After all, the young will naturally look for jobs and higher wages where economic activity is heavily concentrated – but at what cost? Like a bottleneck on the road, too many people living in one area with nowhere to put them can only lead to disaster.
And while we are on that note, what harm is there in wanting a dream home, close to your family, friends and workplace?
We are now faced with an entire generation who, unlike their parents before them, cannot buy houses without serious financial support from their own parents. Where their parents bought homes and built families in their early to mid-twenties, the Gen-Y are getting married later and later in life and not moving out until well into their late 20s and early 30s.
But what is causing this situation, really? And what can we do about it?
This is the first part of an article that was first published in the Sep 5, 2014 issue of The Heat. The second part of the article will be published on Dec 2.
