Investors make up a majority of residential property purchases in the Klang Valley in 2020 at 81.1%, and they are increasingly turning their attention towards sub-sale properties.

“The sub-sale residential property market in Malaysia has seen steady growth in the last few years, and this upward trend is further accelerated by the effects of the pandemic,” MyProperty Data managing director Joe Hock Thor said today.

“There is a rise in overall interest in the secondary market as some property owners are selling their assets at lower prices to maintain liquidity, creating opportunities for investors to acquire them below market value.

“The Real Property Gains Tax exemption has also driven some investors to cash in their existing assets and make a profit. This is reflected in the spike in the average number of subsale listings tracked on PropertyGuru.com.my, which grew by 21.3% between 2019 to 2021.”

MyProperty Data is Malaysia’s largest online property data company under PropertyGuru.

The economic downturn in 2020 has led to a 47.2% drop in total number of residential property transactions in Klang Valley.

However, the impact is largely seen among first-time home buyers, which used to comprise 55.5% of total property purchases in the area in 2019 but has since then dropped to 18.9% in 2020.

Meanwhile, appetite for residential properties in the area remains strong among investors, with a 36.6% YoY increase in investor activity from 2019 to 2020.

This change in trend could potentially be attributed to first-time home buyers being more wary of the current situation, with complications and challenges presented by Covid-19 spurring them to take a wait-and-see approach, as purchasing a home can be a major financial decision for this segment of buyers.