“MINISTER gets ticking off” – read the front-page headline of a mainstream newspaper. It was 1999, and that marked the humble beginning of the National House Buyers Association (HBA).
At the time housing abandonment cases were aplenty and aggrieved buyers had problems getting their voices heard by the governing authority, i.e. the Housing Ministry which was then headed by Datuk Ting Chew Peh (now Tan Sri).
The very people who confronted the minister in the year 1999 are the ones who initiated the HBA. HBA's pro-tem committee came into existence on June 10, 1999, comprising a group of aggrieved house buyers who had discovered to their disappointment that getting their woes heard was a frustrating process.
The housing industry then was in shambles, and the administration was pro-developers. There was no single entity explicitly representing house buyers’ interest, though there were non-governmental organisations, namely the Federation of Malaysian Consumers Association and Consumer Association of Penang, assisting aggrieved buyers.
HBA was duly registered on July 7, 2000 by the Registrar of Societies and then formally launched as the House Buyers Association (Kuala Lumpur and Selangor) on April 20, 2001 by Datuk Seri Ong Ka Ting (now Tan Sri), the then housing and local government minister.
The organisation subsequently evolved into a national body as the National House Buyers Association.
Striving for house buyers’ rights and interests
HBA continues to be a voluntary non-governmental, not-for-profit, and non-political organisation. Our working committee consists of volunteers from various professions. Our work revolves around sheer humanitarian principles and ethics, and we strive wholly for balanced, fair, and equitable treatment of house buyers in their dealings with housing developers.
Before the establishment of HBA, house buyers who were disappointed by their developers could only lodge their complaints to the very people who had caused their problems! With the slogan “Striving for House Buyers’ Rights and Interests”, HBA was determined to get the laws and legislations changed so that those buying new homes will get the same degree of consumer protection and redress accorded by the government to all other new products of substantially less cost.
From complaints we have received and from the media reports, cases of damage sustained by house buyers who have trusted their developers to deliver their products efficiently are too numerous.
HBA aspires to see a level playing field between developers and house buyers and that the rights of house buyers are not short-changed. There were then more crooks that surpassed the numbers of responsible housing developers.
HBA continues to give constructive criticism on the fundamental requirements to ensure that new homes are built and delivered timely and properly, and that those buying them can have realistic confidence that they are buying well with a commensurate level of after-sale service.
Rebel with a cause
Andrew Wong, an editor with NST Property, had this to say about the HBA in an article penned on March 17, 2003:
“For all the new laws and government tribunals set up to rein in our sometimes overzealous property industry, the only effective enforcement agency capable of righting wrongs and locking horns with errant bulls is a group of professional volunteers called the National House Buyers Association.”
“HBA, which only insists troubled house buyers be ‘nice and humble’ and also be ‘willing to help themselves’ before offering assistance, was originally seen as rabble rousers – thorns in the sides of developers; whingers whose complaints would not be constructive”.
“That was then. A mere three years after its inception, the HBA is now seen as a property police squad of sorts – vigilantes comprising working professionals driven by a passion to do what is right. That the group has stuck around for so long when it could have disbanded, allowing its members to free up time to pursue their own lives instead of helping others, shows its level of dedication.”
Working with 10 different housing ministers from different parties – the best ministers
Looking back in history, HBA has in fact worked through the tenures of ten housing and local government ministers. There were pleasant ones to work with and not so pleasant ones to work against all these 23 years.
We have to single out Tan Sri Ong Ka Ting as one of the best that we have worked alongside with. Even before the official inception of HBA as an organisation, our volunteer lawyers were roped in to participate in the amendments to the housing laws, regulations, and the statutory sale and purchase agreements.
That was in the year 2000 and the positive outcome was that our voice representing the buyers was heard, and due recognition was recorded in the Parliament Hansard when he tabled the amendments to the legislation for the second reading.
Ong was also instrumental in tabling the Building & Common Property (Maintenance & Management) Act 2007 (Act 663) that gives “power back to the hands of the owners” in the year 2007.
The previous act instilled on the developers the mindset and recognised the rights, benefits, and entitlement of the strata owners upon delivery of vacant possession.
The developers’ duty is to sell property while the owners’ duty is to form a community. The said Act 663 has worked with some teething problems for eight years. There were a lot of uncertainties and ambiguities. But it has since outlived its usefulness and was repealed.
When Tan Sri Chor Chee Heung helmed the Housing Ministry portfolio, he boldly took a notch higher in the succeeding years to table the current wholesome legislation named the Strata Management Bill in Parliament on December 19, 2012.
Congratulations to the past ministers and their teams at the Housing and Local Government Ministry who have worked through unequalled weekends with the numerous stakeholders (including HBA volunteers) in the related industry; tweaked and tuned both the management and maintenance aspects in the Strata Titles Act, 1985 (Act 318) and the related Housing Development legislation.
Hence, the birth of the Strata Management Act, 2013 (Act 757) (SMA).
Equally important was his counterpart at the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, Datuk Seri Douglas Uggah Embas, who had also simultaneously tabled his law i.e. the Strata Titles Act 1985 (amendment 2012) at the sitting in Parliament to make the SMA a reality.
A whopping 536 EOTs approvals invoked
The floodgate of extensions of time (EOTs) began from the year 2014 onwards. Prior to 2014, the granting of an EOT was almost unheard of.
There have been a total of 536 EOT approvals from 2014 to mid-2019 granted by the controller of housing under HD Reg 11(3) and HD Reg 12 by the housing minister since 2014, according to the Parliament Hansard made available.
The HBA took Datuk Seri Abdul Rahman Dahlan to task for giving a housing developer more time (an extra 12 months) to complete a project during his previous tenure as urban well-being, housing, and local government minister in the landmark case of Ang Ming Lee & Ors v Menteri Kesejahteraan Bandar, Perumahan dan Kerajaan Tempatan & others (2020) CLJ 162, whereupon the Federal Court on November 26, 2019 ruled that the EOT was invalid.
The HBA legal team working pro bono represented 103 aggrieved buyers from the high court to the Court of Appeal and finally at the Federal Court.
The figure is mind-boggling. How could they have issued EOTs to developers to save them from having to pay late delivery compensation to the detriment of house buyers?
Has our country now reached a state of economic crisis that the minister must dish out EOTs to developers already in distress who threaten to abandon their projects?
If left unchecked, the power may be abused and susceptible to corrupt practices. The buyers will ultimately be at the mercy of housing developers, especially those who walk the corridors of power.
This gross injustice should be checked under the new housing minister’s watch. Any decision that deprives the house buyers of their rights and entitlement should be exercised transparently, strictly, and with open communication. At the very least, the views of the buyers, directly affected, must be considered prior to the minister making a decision – the right to be heard is of utmost importance.
Do they not know that buyers also face hardship and commitments, having to pay rent while continuing to service their bank housing loan? They too bear the burden of additional cost and expenses for the delay as well as their future plans derailed.
One cannot continue to unilaterally hear the views of the housing developer and shun the buyers.
Remaining steadfast
HBA continues to stand for the truth and be the source of accurate information and advice for our fellow rakyat who were and still are being subjected to inaccurate information and sometimes misinformation.
HBA remains a voluntary, non-profit, non-political organisation manned by volunteer members of various professions. The organisation operates purely on volunteer workers’ benevolence who unselfishly give their time to strive for the interest and benefits of house buyers with our adage: “our free service for nice people only”. – The Vibes, July 16, 2023
Datuk Chang Kim Loong is honorary secretary-general of the National House Buyers Association
