Catch22@PJ:Service Apartment

Apartment is referred to multi storeys building with residential purpose. This concept was mooted to overcome the challenge of land shortage in the urban area as well as the emerging and changing life style of people. People nowadays like to enjoy club-alike facilities that are affordable and convenient within the vicinity of their living environment. Hence, apartment is getting popular days by days, simply because people have no choice due to availability or affordability or life style desire.

The concept of service apartment was further developed to take advantage of the development guidelines for apartment during the era of economic difficulty. In late 1990s, when Malaysia was badly affected by global economic downturn, the property market was equally in bad shape and many on going commercial development projects were stopped because of sudden drop of market demand. While commercial properties were not good, the demand for residential units remained strong. Thereby, in order to taking advantage of the residential market demand and to develop in faster pace, the developers built houses onto the commercial land. That's how service apartment came to play and it explained why the concept of service apartment is different from elsewhere. While service apartment is meant for medium-term of at least 7 days stay with services on offer, these include laundry, house keeping and etc, service apartment built then was meant for owner occupied and never of such services were offered. The owners however, are paying commercial rate for their assessment rate, water tariff and electricity bill and even the maintenance fee.

Not less than 80% of the total unit for a service apartment project should be kept by the developer, but this is never done so in Malaysia. Many of the service apartment units are built for sale and owner occupied. Some buyers who are unable to differential the differences between apartment and service apartment felt short change lately. This explained why lately there are occupiers of service apartment requested the assessment rate be reviewed and services provided to improve.

This is a Catch 22 situation here. While the building of service apartment is fast gaining popularity because of less procedures involved, the potential buyers should have been given more information and let them making an informed decision. If ample of information be given, such as maintenance cost, rate, utilities tariff and etc, I presume many will think twice before deciding on the purchase. If they have decided to do so, then it is illogical for them to complain about services and rate at later stage.

Of course for those prefer to stay within the commercial area, they will continue buying the service apartment. Of course this will change as well, if the Council decided to provide incentives for building more residential units in the city centre for fear of wasting resources during night time in the city centre.