The Penang government plans to extend the Home Ownership Campaign (HOC) to end-2021 following the Movement Control Order’s (MCO) re-implementation as well as the imposition of Emergency which will likely continue until August, reports PropertyGuru.

The move is aimed at easing the burden of new home buyers during this difficult time as well as for economic generation within the real estate sector, said State Housing, Local Government and Town and Country Planning Committee Chairman, Jagdeep Singh Deo.

“In Penang, we have almost 3,000 unsold houses worth RM2.9 billion but out of this number, only 0.8% of affordable homes priced under RM300,000 are still unsold. We will try to assist this sector as it is important in ensuring cash flow in the market,” he said as quoted by Bernama.

Introduced to stimulate the housing sector and help homebuyers, the HOC offers various incentives to new house buyers, such as stamp duty exemption as well as at least 10% discount in sales price from developers to encourage homeownership among Malaysians.

Jagdeep revealed that almost 4,000 applications for low medium-cost, low-cost and affordable homes have been approved by the state government.

He added that the state is committed to delivering a supply of affordable homes priced from RM72,500 for low medium-cost units, RM42,000 for low-cost and up to RM300,000 for affordable units.