http://www.straitstimes.com/archive/...-come-20130615

COMMENTARY

Iskandar property data hard to come by

Investors need reliable website with live updates to verify dubious claims

Published on Jun 15, 2013

By Yasmine Yahya


WE ALL know the Iskandar property market is feverishly hot, but you would be hard put to get an accurate reading on prices.

There is a lot of talk about values having risen by leaps and bounds in popular areas such as Medini, Puteri Harbour and Danga Bay, but pinning down hard data can be a challenge.

Real estate consultants and valuers based in Malaysia can access data compiled by the Valuation and Property Services Department, a government agency.

Its website goes under its Malay name - Jabatan Penilaian and Perkhidmatan Harta (JPPH) - but the site does not offer much by way of statistics about the Iskandar property market.

The Iskandar Regional Development Authority also compiles property data and while it answers requests for information from industry professionals and the media, it does not publish figures regularly.

Since information is not easily available, very few property agents and consultants based in Singapore keep track of sales volumes and price trends there.

Those keen to keep tabs on what is going on there say they rely on colleagues in Malaysia for help or share information across their network of contacts.

Neither process is efficient nor scientific, but they are still better than the second- or third-hand snippets that members of the public get from agents or by word of mouth.

In Singapore, anyone can log on to the Urban Redevelopment Authority's website to check on any amount of information, including the number of homes sold in a particular development last month, their prices or the prices of recent transactions in a given area.

Investors who want to keep a close watch on Iskandar mostly have to resort to online forums and blogs.

Few developers in Iskandar publish official information about their projects on their websites - if they even have a website in the first place.

This makes it difficult to verify the information found online about Iskandar's property market.

Not only is this frustrating for potential investors who want to keep a close eye on property trends but also it makes it easy for people with vested interests to cherry-pick anecdotal data to talk up the market and make it look hotter than it really is.

CBRE Malaysia's associate director of estate management Kevin Goh said that unscrupulous agents and developers sometimes use the information gap to make false claims about their properties.

They say, for example, that the project is 50 per cent sold and selling fast when the real number might be closer to 20 per cent.

The savvy buyer could, of course, simply stick to doing business with established and reputable developers.

But once Iskandar matures and the sub-sale and resale markets pick up, information about available properties will come not from developers but from myriad sellers and agents.

That will make it even easier for touts to make exaggerated claims, claims that will be even more difficult to verify.

As Iskandar strives to be a world-class city that attracts investors and expatriates from all over the world, the authorities should consider setting up a simple user-friendly website where professionals and the public can access regularly updated property market data.

As Mr Tim Murphy, chief executive of property consultancy IP Global, said: "If the authorities aren't being transparent, there's always the suspicion that they have something to hide.

"Without ready access to prices per square foot and yields, then it's like buying a car without being able to look at the engine."

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