As a key contributor to the real estate landscape and the national economy, M-REITs are increasingly committed to corporate social responsibility and environmental, social and governance initiatives to uplift the community, society and country.
To begin, M-REITs will lease suitable vacant or undeveloped wakaf land from the respective wakaf trustees to develop the affordable rental homes, which will help to unlock the value of these lands to benefit B40 households. This is also compared to other built-for-sale affordable home programmes such as Perumahan Rakyat 1Malaysia which suffers from high rates of unsold units due to the high prices of RM200,000 and above which are unaffordable to B40 households, despite high upfront development costs and subsidies of 20%-30% of property costs incurred by the government.
Compared to existing built-for-sale affordable homes which will no longer be in the inventory and control of the government once sold, the government will enjoy the option to purchase the ARH at cost from M-REITs at any time during the lease period, either to be continued to be tenanted as part of a sustainable long-term supply of affordable rental homes, or to be sold by the government in the form of a private lease arrangement to existing tenants as part of a rent-to-own programme to...
Moreover, as an additional feature of the programme, the government may also consider implementing the Contribution-in-Lieu Fund to further subsidise the rental rates for B40 households with contributions from private developers in-lieu of affordable housing development quotas as initiated and endorsed by the Real Estate and Housing Developers Association Malaysia.