Malay realty marred

Bloomberg

"In the past four weeks, I’ve been staring at an abyss," said Allan Soo, managing director and founder of Regroup, a Kuala Lumpur-based property consultant and home seller. "What’s changed is the global recession."

A worldwide slowdown has sparked real-estate slumps from the U.K. to Singapore, causing Malaysian developers such as Magna Prima Bhd. to scale back projects. Values of luxury homes in Kuala Lumpur, where prices surged to a record last year, may fall as an oversupply looms, according to Soo, who declined to give a specific forecast.

Malaysia’s property market took about a year to recover from the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, Soo said. The rebound from the latest slump may start in 2010 and take as long as the recovery from the 1985 recession, Soo said.

Compared with 2007, interest from prospective buyers has dried up, Soo said in an interview in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. "Inquiries would come in right after we put up a sign board on properties," Soo said. "Now, there’s none." Home prices will come under further pressure as the number of high-end apartments in Kuala Lumpur doubles to more then 30,000 in the next three years, according to Regroup.