PUTRAJAYA’S plan to allow homeowners to sell their affordable housing units back to the government is unlikely to work due to a lack of federal funds and a thorough understanding of the current property market, said a highly-placed government source.

Last month, Housing and Local Government Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin told the Dewan Rakyat that the ministry seeks to introduce new regulations to make it compulsory for owners of affordable housing units looking to sell their homes after the minimum two-year holding period has ended, to only be able to do so to the government.

Homeowners would not be able to either rent out their units or sell them to ineligible tenants.

The source said the ruling, if set in motion, would be doomed to fail as Putrajaya would not be able to predict the market reaction and sentiments of buyers and sellers, and would likely be stuck in a situation where it has insufficient funds to buy back units for sale.

“Suddenly, if there are 100 units how would you buy back?” the source told The Malaysian Insight.

The new regulations would be introduced under the Affordable Housing Policy to control prices and ownership, said Zuraida.

She said the new rules would also ensure that only eligible applicants would have access to such houses.

Zuraida had also said her ministry was also working on a big data system to address the property overhang issue.

She said the lack of a database has made it difficult for the government to understand local housing needs.

However, the source said that while the government may have information about current sentiments via data provided by the National Property Information Centre, the statistics would not be sufficient to determine the actual property market condition.

Zuraida had announced earlier this year that the government plans to build 1 million new affordable homes in the next 10 years.

Under the new government’s housing policy, there will be three new categories of affordable housing; houses worth RM150,000 and below, those worth between RM150,000 to RM300,000 and those priced at RM300,000 to RM500,000. – April 28, 2019.