Thursday, January 7, 2010

New Sabah Property : HOT !



Famous Feng Shui sifu said that new sabah property is going to continue to be HOT for the next 20 years. As a matter of fact, he refers to both Sabah and Sarawak. Some may have already seen that properties development have been on the rise in East Malaysia for some time now especially in Kota Kinabalu, capital of Sabah.

Although there have been critics that such a trend has no sustainable growth and therefore they considered it a bubble rather than a living standard up scale.

However it doesn't really matter how right they may be or how noble you are, the market doesn't really care. If it continues to have more buyers than sellers then the price will continue to trend up, despite anything else i.e. no one actually utilize those properties.


It shouldn't be too hard to understand the rise. First of all, Borneo is an island. Island has limited land. So 'eventually' the price of land will rise. Its been proven in Japan, Hong Kong Island, Singapore and even Australia ( a continent but nevertheless an island geographically). And its not just any island, its the 3rd largest island in the world. Imagine you can fit 1,000 Sinagpore in Borneo !!

But not all islands have great track record. The largest island in the world - Greenland - doesn't do so well, most of the very small one man islands do not do well neither. Is Borneo too big or could it be just nice ? New Guinea (2nd largest island) and Madagascar (4th) are both not that encouraging. The list continues down until Great Britain, the 8th largest island who obviously did pretty well in property growth. Limited land of an island may be a good starting point but other deciding factors seem to be more influential.



What other positive notes do we have ? Politics movement is good for Sabah property. As a matter of fact, due to Malaysia politics instability, the paying master political party has to move to East Malaysia. Whether or not you need houses, more will be built. How do they justify building more ? They will get buyers if you don't. Property trend is a developer's game. If they have the power to sustain selling price during bad time, the only thing left is up trend.

20 more years of HOT property growth is a surprisingly SHORT period given that it is a land of more than 700,000 square kilometers. So this prediction is actually an insult to those who truly love Sabah. The only reason why it can be hot for another 20 years is because outsiders will come in to Borneo, harvest out all the benefits and then leave. If they don't leave in 20 years time, they will start to pay just like the permanents. Where the business and finance ecology have been exploited, not to mention the environment.

How can we grow Borneo's property and leave a long term positive effect ?

1. Create MORE forestry reserve lands. this makes sure land is really limited.
2. Focus on ONE main theme - it should be along the nature's line ...
3. Form environmental alliance among Brunei, East Malaysia and Kalimantan.
4. This alliance has authoritative power over real estate development.
5. Beef up sea lines transport, bring in the industries

Then all the other developments can follow suit ...

So do we need that coal plant ? Well, I hate to ... but we do need to address the problem of water and power supply first.

If Borneo can be made into an eco-self-sustain-island, it can be the Eden for human races. Not only property will continue to rise forever but it could also be our last hope ...

And to iron out the whole architectural solutions in the next 5 years, we will need USD 20 billions now.