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Showing posts with label Demystifying the property market overhang. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Demystifying the property market overhang. Show all posts

Sunday, February 12, 2023

Demystifying the property market overhang


AN account­ant, who is tasked with pre­par­ing the books of a cor­por­ate, will always be guided by account­ing prin­ciples when it comes to how the fin­an­cial state­ments of the com­pany are presen­ted on an annual basis to ensure they are accur­ate and reflect­ive of the com­pany’s busi­ness affairs.

An aud­itor, look­ing at the same pre­pared accounts, will run through the num­bers and audit the key mater­ial items to ensure they are reas­on­able, reflect­ive of the com­pany’s fin­ances, and free from mater­ial mis­state­ments, includ­ing due to fraud or error, or applic­a­tion of wrong account­ing treat­ment.

In fin­an­cial state­ments, two of the most crit­ical items are receiv­ables and invent­or­ies.

In order to have proper account­ing treat­ment, account­ants and aud­it­ors used account­ing the­or­ies to describe what is deemed to be cur­rent, and those that have a longer-dated age­ing pro­file are either impaired or writ­ten off.

The reason for this is to ensure that the fin­an­cial state­ments reflect the status of a cor­por­a­tion’s cur­rent assets and are in no way doubt­ful.

There is also an applic­a­tion of gen­eral pro­vi­sion or spe­cific pro­vi­sion when it comes to how these bal­ances ought to be treated in the fin­an­cial state­ments.

Often, we see cases of over-inflated bal­ances and when it came to the crunch of the mat­ter, the man­age­ment would have no choice but to write them off.

The ‘real’ over­hang

At the recently con­cluded 15th Malay­sian Prop­erty Sum­mit 2023, the Dir­ector of the National Prop­erty Inform­a­tion Centre (Napic) presen­ted a paper on the status of the Malay­sian prop­erty mar­ket up to the third quarter of last year (3Q22), with some data points related to the per­form­ance of the mar­ket up to Novem­ber 2022.

The full mar­ket report is only expec­ted to be released in the middle of next month, where Napic will not only provide the usual annual update of the mar­ket’s per­form­ance but also provide more insight into some of the key data points that have been much dis­cussed among all stake­hold­ers, of which, one of them is the status of over­hang in the mar­ket.

As we are aware, the res­id­en­tial over­hang at the end of 3Q22 stood at 29,535 units worth some Rm19.95bil.

Napic’s web­site also provided the details of where these over­hang prop­er­ties are loc­ated and the three key states – Johor, Selangor, and Pen­ang – are the main hot­spots, account­ing for some 14,956 units or just over half of the coun­try’s total over­hang.

In terms of the type of prop­er­ties, the 3Q22 data showed that high-rises com­prise 18,962 units or 64.2% of the total over­hang.

In terms of price points, 23.8% of the total over­hang was priced at RM300,000 and below, 29.5% was priced between RM300,001 and RM500,000, 31.6% was priced between RM500,001 and Rm1mil and the bal­ance was priced above Rm1mil.

In terms of the total value, the res­id­en­tial over­hang is skewed towards the high-end seg­ment with prop­er­ties worth more than Rm1mil account­ing for 43.4% of the total over­hang value, while those priced between RM500,001 and Rm1mil accoun­ted for 31.9% of the total over­hang.

Prop­er­ties priced between RM301,000 and RM500,000 have a total over­hang value of just Rm3.5bil, while prop­er­ties priced below RM300,000 are worth some Rm1.39bil. These two rep­res­ent some 24.8% of the total over­hang value.

For the ser­vice apart­ments, the total over­hang in units stood at 23,688 worth some Rm20.21bil as at end of 3Q22, with Johor alone account­ing for 62.4% of the total.

Most of these over­hangs in the seg­ment are prop­er­ties priced between RM500,001 and Rm1mil, which accoun­ted for two-thirds of the total unit num­bers and 58.9% in value of the total over­hang.

For the longest time, Napic had not shared with the stake­hold­ers the key under­ly­ing age­ing pro­file of this over­hang, and that has led to a mis­lead­ing status of the mar­ket’s over­hang status. It was indeed an eye-opener to see what the real over­hang has been.

For example, as seen in Table 1, the key over­hang is prop­er­ties (both res­id­en­tial and ser­vice apart­ments across the four key states) that have been part of the stat­ist­ics for the last five years and they account for between 51% and 93% of the total over­hang units.

For example, as seen in Table 1, the key over­hang is prop­er­ties (both res­id­en­tial and ser­vice apart­ments across the four key states) that have been part of the stat­ist­ics for the last five years and they account for between 51% and 93% of the total over­hang units.

In total, these prop­er­ties accoun­ted for a whop­ping 75.7% of the mar­ket’s over­hang status while prop­er­ties that have been in the mar­ket for the last three years are just over 5% from the key states.

Spe­cific men­tion must also be made on ser­vice apart­ments loc­ated in Johor, and those that are in the five to 10 years bucket, as they account for 26% of the total mar­ket over­hang.

In terms of prices, most of the over­hang is seen in the same five to 10 years bucket across the board and they alone account for 71% of the total over­hang prop­er­ties in the mar­ket.

As seen in Table 2, prop­er­ties below three years account for less than 5% of the total mar­ket over­hang. Spe­cific men­tion must also be made on ser­vice apart­ments that are in the RM500,001 to Rm1mil bracket and are in the five to 10 years bucket as they account for 25% of the total mar­ket over­hang.

In the cor­por­ate world, when one is up against data that is dis­tort­ing the real pic­ture, the proper thing to do is to see whether the data is still rel­ev­ant or oth­er­wise.

Clearly, look­ing at the age­ing pro­file of the prop­erty over­hang, those above five years will likely remain unsold for a fore­see­able future, mainly due to either being wrongly loc­ated and without the proper or good infra­struc­ture to sup­port com­munity liv­ing, or untouched by prop­erty buy­ers for simply being too expens­ive, espe­cially those bey­ond the RM500,000 price threshold.

Clearly, look­ing at the age­ing pro­file of the prop­erty over­hang, those above five years will likely remain unsold for a fore­see­able future, mainly due to either being wrongly loc­ated and without the proper or good infra­struc­ture to sup­port com­munity liv­ing, or untouched by prop­erty buy­ers for simply being too expens­ive, espe­cially those bey­ond the RM500,000 price threshold.

Hav­ing iden­ti­fied the issues, reg­u­lat­ors and prop­erty developers would need to come out with strategies to address them and to attract buy­ers to these prop­er­ties via a rehab­il­it­a­tion exer­cise and with a sig­ni­fic­ant price reduc­tion.

The bot­tom line is to remove them from the over­hang data.

Let’s call a spade a spade

So what is Malay­sia’s real over­hang? Based on the data presen­ted by Napic, one can take com­fort that over­hang is not as ser­i­ous as it is made out to be mainly due to a lack of data and proper ana­lysis in terms of what is real over­hang pre­vi­ously.

While those more than three years but less than five years are part of stat­ist­ics, we should redefine them as core over­hang while those bey­ond five years can be redefined as hard­core over­hang.

As we have been able to slice and dice these num­bers, the real over­hang is only per­haps less than 5% of the mar­ket in terms of the num­ber of units and value.

Napic could also help stake­hold­ers to under­stand bet­ter the prop­erty mar­ket data bet­ter by break­ing down the data points as an over­hang that is mainly due to gov­ern­ment hous­ing schemes and those that are privately built.

In this way, we could also see whether the gov­ern­ment’s inter­ven­tion is needed to boost demand for these obscurely loc­ated prop­er­ties.

For the private developers, most of these invent­or­ies would have been impaired as the like­li­hood of the assets being real­ised in full value or even at 50% to 60% of the mar­ket value is seen as low.

Private developers too ought to think out­side of the box on how to over­come the prop­erty invent­or­ies sit­ting in their books as being part of the stat­ist­ics only res­ults in paint­ing the wrong pic­ture for the prop­erty mar­ket as a whole.

By Pankaj C. kumar is a long-time invest­ment ana­lyst. the views expressed here are the writer’s own. 

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