According to a recent survey, Malaysia has featured amongst the top choice of investors for investment in property and real estate markets. The iProperty.com group, famous for their insightful surveys, recently sampled investors with some very interesting results.
The survey, called the Asia Property Trends Survey of 2007, asked 2,066 investors a variety of questions, with the main question of the survey being their top choices for investments in property. While Singapore and Thailand both featured heavily in investor preferences, it was Malaysia that took the day as the most preferred location for property investment.
Patrick Grove is the executive chairman of iProperty.com, and he said that the results of the survey make the future look bright for Malaysia. He also commented that the results boded well for the recently launched Malaysia My Second Home programme, which is an effort on the part of the Malaysian Government to draw foreign capital and property investors into the country.
The programme allows eligible investors the ability to obtain a Malaysian identification card which would allow them travel into, out of and around Malaysia with an ease that was previously not experienced by non-Malaysian nationals. Additional tax and domestic service perks have also made the programme and through it the country more attractive to foreign investors with capital looking for high-potential Asian property markets.
Here are some highlights of the survey:
- 55% of non-Malaysian investors surveyed indicated that they were currently looking for high-end properties with a value between USD 100,000 and USD 500,000.
- 15% of non-Malaysian investors surveyed indicated they were looking for properties valued between USD 500,000 and USD 1 million.
- 24% of those surveyed had purchased one property in the last two years, 23% had purchased two properties in the last two years and 95% intended to purchase within the next year.
- Collectively, 94% of non-Malaysian investors favoured high-rise properties over anything else.