So why do people invest in gold?

• To diversify their investment.
• To protect against crises such as economic, political or social crisis (social unrest, wars and others tend to drag the stock market down…but gold tend to be more stable).
• Because it’s simple and straightforward.
• Because the price chart is easily obtainable.

From what I’ve observed, gold investing can be highly speculative but if you are investing for the long term, gold price will definitely go up. And rather than investing in stocks (which you are relying on companies), funds (which are relying on the fund managers and stocks), currencies (which you are relying on the governments for not screwing up) or real estate properties (which sometimes depends on luck since cheap prices are only available for new housing areas), investing in gold does not have so many external factors involved. True, whatever goes down will go up and vice versa. But for a precious metal which will decrease in amount (there’s only that much gold in the world), the price will still go up, albeit slowly.

So my advise to you and myself, is to look at this possible investment option as a way to diversify my portfolio away from funds and stocks. Don’t buy a lot in one go. Just slowly accumulate little by little. And you don’t need to keep all the gold and gold bars at your home. You can let the banks to manage them

There’s a very good article written by KCLau on gold investment in Malaysia. It’s a very good read. For those who are interested to invest gold in Public Bank, you can refer to this link Invest Gold in Malaysia through Public Bank. Maybank also provides such service and the minimum is 1g of gold, as compared to Public Bank’s 10g.

Take a look and who knows maybe gold investing is the one for you (it’s a good learning step for beginners as well).

Good luck

p/s… just checked with Maybank today. The min investment is 1g but there’s no way you can do it online. Meaning, even if you want to buy or sell 1g, you will have to bring your passbook to any of MBB’s branches, and do the transaction there. Kinda troublesome :T

p/s…. you can check MBB’s gold price HERE.

Fortunately, the CEO tried his best to dig the details from the older servers and managed to restore the data before Nov 2010. Unfortunately, all my blog posts within the 1 year is now gone, forever.

I will cut down more on blogging from now onwards. It’s a very big blow for me and I don’t really have time to set everything up again.

Anyway, since the last post on FD was back in 2010, here’s an updated FD list for December 2011.

Hope it helps.

Hope it helps.

Hope it helps.

The funny thing is, no matter how ridiculously priced these properties are, they still get sold. A semi-d house with an awkward design (toilet next to the car porch), located in Shah Alam and priced at 800-900k….sold out. This shows how desperate the home buyers are…. or rather, how aggressive the property investors are.

I think it’s pretty obvious that our property market is seeing a stiff competition between the desperate local home buyers and the cash-rich property investors (especially foreign investors). The situation is fast becoming a “get a house while you still can afford” thing as local home buyers (or first time home owners) rush to get their hands on ANY affordable properties.

As a result of this, the price shoots up even more, to a state where other local home buyers can no longer afford to get their own houses and yeah….people have to rent a place or risk getting a big big debt on their shoulders.

But seriously, will this situation continue? I’m afraid so. What bout the price of the properties? If the properties are overpriced as they are now…will there ever be a bubble burst for our local property market? I’m afraid not due to the large number of rich foreign property investors coming in, and also due to the smart marketing move by the local property developers.

And on the question of whether the government’s decision to lure foreign property investors is a positive/negative move…. i will leave that to you.

p/s…. property consultant Chris Boyd recently said that now is a good time to buy property due to the affordable interest rate and that the property price has not peaked *shudders*. Check out his article in The Star here – A good time to buy.

If you refer to the previous rates in August 2009, you will notice that there’s no change to the rates at all. But many people are saying that our Bank Negara will increase the interest rate soon, considering the fact that our economy is slowly recovering. I’ll post up an update to this list of FD rates once there’s any changes to the interest rate.

Hope it helps.

The Malaysia government has recently announced Budget 2010. To be honest, there are not much good news for this time’s budget. But whether there’s bad news or not, it is really up to you to decide.

Anyway, for this post, I will talk about one of the most talked about changes – the reintroduction of the Real Property Gains Tax or RPGT.

From BERNAMA:

The real property gains tax (RPGT) will be fixed at five percent on the gains from the disposal of real property effective 1 January 2010.

Reiterating this on Sunday, Second Finance Minister Datuk Husni Hanadzlah said that the rate imposed is irrespective of the holding period and the category of the owner.

However, exemptions to the individuals are given as follow;

* The level of exemption is increased from RM5,000 to RM10,000 or 10 per cent of the chargeable gains, which ever is the higher;

* Gifts betwen parent and child, husband and wife, grandparent and grandchild; and

* disposal of a residential property once in a lifetime.

To be honest, there are pros and cons here.

Pros:

• This will deter property investors from acquiring too much properties. Most often than not, the property price fluctuates because of flipping and holding activities. If a place is too crowded with property investors, the price will go up and down pretty fast. This is quite bad for people who are looking for a place to stay, and not investors. So by having this, it will limit the property investors’ activities, thus keeping the property price under control.
• Lesser property investors also mean the number of mortgage loans defaulters will decrease.
• More people would be able to purchase properties for their own stay since they don’t need to fight with so many property investors anymore.
• There could be a number of good bargains on the secondary property market from now until end of 2009. Existing property owners might want to offload their properties without incurring the 5% tax, and due to the competition, it could end up as a buyer market where the sellers are more willing to bargain.
• The fluctuation in prices for properties in prime areas will be minimized. This is because the demand will drop due to the big property gain often associated with properties in prime locations. Remember the more profit you gain, the more tax it’ll incur, and the more tax it incurs, the more property investors would avoid it.

Cons:

• Unfortunately, despite what the government wants, I believe the property price will still increase. The secondary market will have to include the 5% RPGT. As a result, a property which is selling for 500k now as compared to 300k when it was first bought, would cost additional 10k in 2010. As for primary market, the price will also go up because home buyers would turn to new properties instead of the expensive secondary market.
• Luxury property developers would take a hit. A 1,000,000 condo in Mont Kiara (bought 3 years ago at 700k) would cost an additional 15k in RPGT if the owner decided to offload it in 2010. That is quite a huge amount. That’s why I believe the luxury property projects would take a hit due to this RPGT especially when most of the buyers are property investors who would want to maximize profit.
• Some property investors are foreign investors who are investing their money in our country. By implementing this, the foreign investors might stop to pour in more money into our property sector.
• The banks are likely to increase their interest rate as the economy recovers, and this will be worse for those home buyers who have to pay for the extra 5% and then pay the higher interest rate.

Many people say that the reintroduction of the RPGT is not really helpful but I believe there are pros and cons to everything. The main question here is whether the cons far outweigh the pros and whether this RPGT is really able to achieve what the government is trying to do – to make homes more affordable to the middle and lower income groups.

Feel free to post up your opinions on this. Again, this is based purely on my opinions and views.

There’s not much change to the interest rates of most banks. Most of them have the standard 2.0% for 1-11 months, and 2.50% for 12 months FD. The good thing is major banks like CIMB, Maybank, Public Bank and Ambank are giving pretty good FD rates as compared to the international banks. Most of our accounts are in there anyway. And if you are looking to invest for anything less than a year, I guess the best is Affin even though it is not as accessible as other local banks (not as many branches around).

Hope it helps.

This actually confused most of them because the overall property market is SUPPOSED to drop by 10-20% this year.

Well, there are properties which drop around 10-20% this year, but those are located in selected areas only. Anyway, let’s take a look at some of the reasons why our property market is not going to see a decrease in price this year or next (if there is any, it won’t be much).

Marketing move

Most of our local property developers are pretty good in marketing especially the big ones like Sime and SP Setia. They’ve came out with plans like the 5/95 plan, the Sime Darby Property Parade of Homes, etc. All these smart marketing moves actually give the buyers more confidence, lower entry point (low downpayment) and an opportunity for first time home owner to buy a home during times like this. Imagine if everyone is required to pay 10% upfront for a 350k property. The demand will go down, and the price of the property will also go down due to lack of demand.

No new launch

If you notice, most property developers are only working on previous project launches. There are not many new launch nowadays. This is because most developers prefer to delay some of their important project launches due to the recession. They prefer to wait till the storm is over. On the other hand, there are also developers which go for the built-and-sell model. This actually gives them time to build the property while waiting for the economy to stabilize, and built-and-sell model normally demands a higher price tag for its units.

Rich developers

Okay, let’s face it. We have a lot of rich developers in Malaysia. They are willing to postpone the launching of their projects. That is why you can still see some empty lands in prime areas. By postponing the launch, the supply will decrease and this will actually prevent the price from dropping too much.

Demand is there

The demand for properties is still there even during recession. A lot of people are moving in to the big cities from the small ones and there are also some foreign investors, and foreigners who are making Malaysia their second home. On the other hand, I also notice that there are a lot of people getting married this year. Some did that last year. So it’s not really a big surprise for the newly-weds to hunt for their first home. Oh, and the low interest rate certain helps! All these generate a strong demand for properties. And when demand is still strong but the supply is lesser, the price will go up.

Malaysia is not as badly hit

Malaysia is not as badly hit as the likes of US and UK. Our Central Bank has been doing a very good job in keeping everything under control. True, there are still jobless people out there but again, I must say it is not as bad as we first feared it would be. Also, those who are looking for properties are actually not the typical property investors (most of them anyway). They are looking for properties for their own stay. Property investors can always postpone their purchase to a later date, but for this group of people (looking for own stay), buying now is the same with buying later.

Government

There have been moves by our government to help the property market. For example, the stamp duty exemption. This move actually helps to promote the purchase of low to medium cost properties for the first time buyer. A good move by the government for the low and middle income group to own their first home, but not so useful for the property investors. Still, it doesn’t take away the fact that this move DOES generate some demand.

Again, I must stress that I am not an expert. All the above points are based on the research which I’ve done for my friends.

Anyway, if you are a first time home buyer, this is actually a good time to look for one because I doubt there will be any decrease in price anytime soon. Just remember to choose your housing loan properly. Also, pay attention to some of the auctions organized by banks, and also on the secondary market (there could be some bargains there).

And I do feel that our property price will go up and not down. Unless you’re talking about areas where the supply far outnumbers the demand – Mont Kiara and KLCC area.

Malaysia's stock market rebounding?

Is this the sign of more good things to come? Is our stock market staging a fierce come back after so many months of below-par performance?

Actually, part of the positive come back is due to the announcement of the cabinet by our new Prime Minister and also the recent Wall Street’s rally. But if you were to ask me (I’m a newbie, to be honest) about the sustainability of this rebound, I’m quite skeptical about it.

In my opinion, it is still too early for any form of market recovery even though market movement is actually 6 months earlier than the actual economy. So if you predict that the economy is going to recover in Dec 2009, the stock market should be showing some signs of recovery in June 2009.

But from the looks of it……an immediate recovery is not likely. After all, there are still plenty of jobless people in our country (and even more in US and Europe). This doesn’t do the economy any favor since people will still be unwilling to spend money. In fact, more people are more conscious about their spending now than they were few months ago. People have finally woke up from their assumption that “economy will be fine very soon”.

Also, the recent mini budget looks more like a slow and long-term plan. The effects will not be immediately visible .

But even if there’s no real sign of positive recovery, I do believe that the worst is over for now. Maybe there will be worse news in the next few months, but most people will be prepared for it.

So let’s just keep our fingers crossed for now.

p/s…….. If you’re looking to invest your money, try to look into properties. Stock market in my opinion, is a little bit expensive after the recent rebound. Do wait for a while and see how it goes. The rebound is too drastic for my liking. But then again, I’m just a newbie when it comes to stock market and I could be wrong.