Congratulations Encik, You Are Now A Houseowner, Of 150,000 Houses !!

Folks, this is a shocking piece of news.  

Online media please follow up on this story.  

Opposition Members of Parliament, please bring up this issue in Parliament.

But first a walk down memory lane. I recall I was about 29 years old when I bought my first house.  Once my bank loan was approved and the documents were signed I recall my fellow banker wishing me, "Congratulations you are now a house owner."

That was 29 years ago. Since then I have built from scratch or bought and then sold  quite a few properties (land, apartments, shops and houses). 

It has been quite rewarding plus I have developed a complete set of skill sets - from the Sale and Purchase, the documentation, the approvals, the design and construction, the marketing and selling etc.  It has been an education.

A friend says, 'with great power come great power bills'. 

Similarly with ownership of assets come greater responsibilities.   

You have to pay the quit rents, the assessments, the water and electricity bills. You must keep the house in good condition, keep it painted, cut the grass, fix any leaking roofs, leaking pipes etc.  

It is strange - an empty and unused house has a way of  suffering more wear and tear and "breaking down" quite fast. Do not leave a building unoccupied for too long.  

Owning more assets mean more headaches taking care of them.

When you sell your houses folks, MAKE SURE you cancel your name with TNB, Syabas, Alam Flora etc.  It is your responsibility.  Otherwise if you did not 'potong nama' with TNB and if the new housebuyer  does not pay the power bills, you will be held liable.

Ok here is the  story. I just heard some really shocking news today.   The gomen (actually the Treasury or MOF to be exact)  has forfeited or repossessed over 150,000 houses from defaulting Civil Servant housing loans.  This is a huge figure and is quite unprecedented.  This is like 10% of the Civil Service !!

Civil Servants can take out loans from the gomen to buy houses. 

The gomen then deducts from their monthly salaries to repay the housing loans.  

If a Civil Servant leaves the Civil Service, then of course he has to refinance the housing loan from a bank and settle the gomen housing loan.  If he cannot settle the housing loan or if he cannot pay the instalments then the gomen housing loan goes into default. The gomen will repossess his house.

If the Civil Servant faces disciplinary action (for corruption, discipline issues etc) then his gomen housing loan is also terminated. The Civil Servant then has to pay the loan in full (by securing refinancing from the private sector).  If he cannot refinance or he cannot pay the instalments anymore, then it also becomes a loan default. The gomen will repossess his house.

In this way (plus more of course), the Treasury has repossessed 150,000 houses under the Civil Servants housing loan scheme. 

If the average gomen housing loan is RM100,000,  that works out to about RM15 BILLION in default !!

150,000 x RM100,000 =  RM15, 000, 000, 000

Without using the 'F' word, the gomen is screwed.  

Not forgetting 150,000 former homeowners as well !!

So now we must congratulate the gomen. 

They are now proud owners of 150,000 houses.  

"Congratulations Encik, You Are Now A Houseowner, Of 150,000 Houses!!"

What the - - - - - are they going to do with 150,000 repossessed house?

PR1MA is finding out now that a huge number of  Malays who registered as the 1.5 million potential buyers of PR1MA houses not only cannot afford to pay the 10% deposit but they cannot even secure  housing loans to pay for the PR1MA houses.

PR1MA plans to build 60,000  "not so affordable houses".

So PR1MA is not going to find buyers for many of those 60,000 houses they are planning. 

Then the gomen has repossessed 150,000 Civil Servant owned houses.

I believe that all these bad things are happening to the Malays (largely) because of multiple factors.  

The really stupid  "High Income Nation"  idea is definitely one major cause of this disaster.  I will expand on that soon.

The other reason is of course the GST.  As I said the Malays are largely "fixed income" monthly wage earners. The Civil Service alone employs over 1.6 MILLION Malays (Federal gomen, State gomen, Army, Navy, Airforce, Police, Maritime, GLCs etc).  

Easily 20% of their "purchasing power" has now been sucked away by the GST  (through higher prices of goods and services).   To maintain their life styles they have no choice but to dip into their savings and reserves.  After TWO years of the GST,  their savings and reserves are possibly depleted. Now they are selling their assets just  to survive.  It is NOT going to get any better.

Anyway,  150,000 units are a lot of unoccupied houses in the country.

Now the gomen must take care of all these repossessed houses and make sure they are in good condition.  Otherwise the gomen cannot resell or lelong these repossessed houses at a good price.

The people at the Treasury in charge of the Civil Servants Housing Loans are at this outfit:

LEMBAGA PEMBIAYAAN PERUMAHAN SEKTOR AWAM (LPPSA)
Pusat Panggilan Utama : 03 - 8880 1600

(A little bird told me that the Ketua Pengarah has ordered a 20 foot container load of Panadol Fast Relief Pain Killer for his department).

Folks, assuming ayah kahwin satu saja, plus say four kids per household, it means about 150,000 houses x 6 pax = 900,000 people are now without their own home.  

The gomen and this country are in deep shit in more ways than one.

They will drive their cars until they run out of fuel. 

Then their cars will stop. 

They will then step out of their cars and stare blankly at the sky.   

And they will say  "Eli, Eli lama sabachthani".  

It is happening now.

They dont know how to fix this.
It can be fixed.