JOHOR BARU: The state government will continue to assist eligible first-time housebuyers to own houses under the Johor Affordable Housing Scheme (RMMJ) by taking proactive measures.

Johor Housing and Local Government committee chairman Datuk Abdul Latiff Bandi said this included maintaining the prices of the houses despite economic challenges.

The price for the RMMJ houses has been set at RM150,000 each while houses under package A were at RM40,000 and package B at RM80,000.

Since 2013, the Johor government has required developers to have 40% of residential properties in their projects to come under the affordable-housing scheme, from previous quotas ranging from 20% to 35%.

“We also had allocated RM150mil to buy suitable land for the development of the RMMJ residential properties to cater to the eligible first-time housebuyers,’’ he said.

Abdul Latiff said among the land identified were those with the agricultural-based status in districts outside Johor Baru that could be converted into RMMJ housing schemes.

He said developers for the RMMJ housing schemes were not allowed to increase prices due to the state government’s policy of providing affordable homes.

“We want to encourage home ownership among Johoreans and the way of doing that is to offer prices that are within reach among average income earners,’’ added Abdul Latiff.

He said the state government had in March this year launched financial facilities scheme with a bank to disburse loans to eligible first-time housebuyers to own RMMJ houses and would this month launch a similar scheme with another bank.

Abdul Latiff said the state authorities would refer those who failed to get their housing loans from other banks to the two banks offering financial facilities for the RMMJ houses.

However, he said those who were poor paymasters, with debts with the National Higher Education Fund Corp and bankrupts, were not eligible for the financial facilities.

“We cannot do much to help them (applicants) to get housing loans as it is the prerogative of the banks in disbursing money to their customers.

As much as banks want to help their customers, at the same time they also cannot simply disburse loans to those who are not able to service loans,’’ said Abdul Latiff.

He said 7,000 out of 24,000 applicants offered the RMMJ houses were rejected by banks and those rejected were replaced with new names, adding that 140,000 applicants had already registered online for the RMMJ housing scheme.

Abdul Latiff said that by the end of this year, some 11,000 units of affordable houses would be completed and the state was confident of achieving the target to deliver 30,000 units to buyers by 2020.

He welcomed the Government’s initiative to allow developers to provide loans to buyers as the move could help to boost demand for residential properties and reduce abandoned projects.

“Maybe the loan period from the developer should only cover the first five years to ease the burden of first-timers.

From the sixth-year onwards, they could get bank loans as by then, I believe their income level has increased and they are able to service their loans,’’ said Abdul Latiff.

He said the loan rate offered by developers should be the same with the rate offered by banks and not higher, or else the move to encourage homeownership would not meet its target.