Oversupply of homes, who are actually to be blamed?
To the general view of the public, the federal government outlines the housing policy, the state government enforce and ensure regulations on land and housing are adhered to while the developers acquire the land allocated, construct, built and sell the properties to the public.
Developers wanted to sell for profit, the government wanted to collect revenues to increase their funds for the expenditures to facilitate the development of better infrastructures for the people in the country.
Building houses, shoplots or even shopping complexes around selected areas, whose plans are they? Planning for affordable homes, determining the locations of these houses to be build, ensuring the prices are affordable to the public, building houses and properties at a minimal cost, using the cheapest ever labour to carry out the constructions.
In the end, who grab all the profit? The developers, of course. Who plan and do the conditioning on the affordable homes, the state government does this jobs then! In most cases, who determine the market prices of these properties? Yes, the developers, the real estate valuers, agents, sellers are the one who ensure the prices of these properties goes up in order to gain as much profit as possible.
At the end of the day, when these houses are in the wrong locations, when these houses or properties are too expensive for our citizens, what happened? Many are left unsold, house buyers ended up unable to continue servicing their housing loans thus risk being served bankruptcy orders and had their properties auctioned. Yes, auctioned to the highest bidders, then the bank got the profit too. So does the agents to the respective parties.
In this flow, the people suffered due to high prices of properties, unable to buy a house of their own, instead resorted to rental at a very high cost as well. It is just like living in hell.
And now you see, the party who yield the most profit gets to complain that the oversupply of homes are going to get into their pockets soon. They have nobody else to blame but the government of the day because these unsold properties are inching into their pockets almost every second now.
Where are the flip flops now? Actually, there are no mechanism to control the increasing or decreasing value of properties in this world because prices of properties are determined by development of lands, demands and supply, the taste of buyers, FDIs and the potentiality of the locations.
Simply building more houses is not a must and if you insist that, it is purely for profit of one party. Can we make housing a human rights segment? Many who demand it to make it happen, but will the market which is the direct deciding factor allow this to happen? You should know who control the market price of properties today. It is not the government, it is not the people, but....... you know where it goes.
So, stop the blame game or issuing any warnings. address the issue together, come forward with a community-oriented policy, work with the government to resolve this issue. Coming up with the solution on housing is not a one-man show, it is also not a-government-only responsibility. The commercial ones ought to make some sacrifices to order to achieve a reasonable control over the situation.
