Monday, June 27, 2011

Corruption



This morning I got an email from a property agent which almost caused me to fall off my chair. He is marketing a low cost apartment project located at Park51, Petaling Jaya which is right behind the Mercedes' Cycle and Carriage beside the Federal Highway.

This project is called Impian Seri Setia, developed by the Taipan Group. This low cost project consists of 650sf 3 bedroom and 2 bathroom units. They come without car parks but these can be purchased separately (in my opinion, apartment projects without car parks should not be approved by the council as people are very reluctant to purchase or rent car parks resulting in traffic congestion as residents park illegally outside the building and blocking traffic). Anyway, each unit is selling for around RM80k but it is quite possible to rent it out at RM700 per month in this high demand area. Therefore, attracting a rental yield of 8%.

Since I am an investor, the thought of an 8% return and an investment of under RM100k would cause me to quickly book 10 or 20 units without thinking. I suppose many people are doing this at the detriment of the lower income group owning their own property. Naturally, demand to purchase is high. That is why, the agent has very openly demanded a RM10,000 under-counter money to secure a unit.

But low cost units are not so straight-forward. The units are allocated to the purchasers by the City Council, in this case MBPJ (Petaling Jaya City Council). Therefore this RM10,000 BRIBE can potentially implicate that the state government is involved. I have reported this case to the state government and hopefully something will be done. The honourable State Assemblyman for Seri Setia has already promised a Press Conference. Let us see...




4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good job! Corruption is everywhere... Don't be selfish.

kvinlim said...

sigh, i can see the trend coming for sungai besi development by the government, how many will ends up in the hand of the poor community?

Kevin said...

all the while is like dat .. ppr also have nice cars one

Anonymous said...

Kevin is so right... The question is "to join in or not to join in" :) to Join in will be selfish and deprived the people who really need. Not to join in - stupid if all other buyer drive big cars?