House buyers bring woes to ministry

Monday, 14 November 2011 10:46

KUALA LUMPUR: Disgruntled house buyers top the list of nearly 3,000 complaints received by the Housing and Local Government Ministry.

Minister Datuk Seri Chor Chee Heung said most of the grouses were about late delivery by developers.

“Many of the projects were abandoned and there were also unlicensed developers involved.

“There were also those who complained that developers re--fused to pay compensation.

“Others complained about the poor quality of their building,” he said when lau-nching the National Housing Seminar here yesterday.

Many buyers cheated by dishonest developers were unaware that every housing developer is required to have a ministry-approved licence.

“Before buying a house, check with the ministry to ensure you are not dealing with an unlicen-sed developer,” he said.

Chor added house buyers could visit the ministry’s website for a complete list of licensed developers, adding that many house buyers did not fully understand their rights as stated in the Sales and Purchase Agreement.

Most of the complaints are by house buyers who found their purchase suddenly abandoned.

Some even complained that the developer was taking too long to build their house.

He revealed that the ministry, with the help of state governments and private developers, had successfully revived 83 out of 167 abandoned housing projects as of Oct 31.

“This has benefited 9,278 buyers. Efforts to rescue 62 abandoned housing projects are underway and we are in the midst of reviving the remaining 22 pro-jects,” he said.

Under Budget 2012, RM63mil was allocated to help revive 1,270 abandoned houses.

The seminar was organised by the ministry in collaboration with Real Estate and Housing Deve-lopers’ Association (Redha) and The National House Buyers Asso-ciation (HBA).

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