Illegal Parking @ IOI Boulevard

There are many parking lots in the surrounding of the IOI Boulevard Puchong for drivers to pay and parking at the designated parking lots in yellow box. There is no problem with this system. What is really annoying is the irresponsible vehicle owners who parked their vehicles at the back and blocking the vehicle parked at the yellow boxes. This is particularly rampant especially during the office hours as the lazy drivers refused to park further down the road. These uncivilized illegal parking behaviours have caused so much inconvenience for those who are obeying the instructions as we need to wait for the car owners to remove their vehicles before we can reverse our car and get off from this area. In addition, it also caused traffic jam at the shophouses beside IOI Boulevard.

I had a bad experience this morning as I had to go shop by shop to locate the car owner who has blocked my car in the parking lot beside IOI Boulevard. This has wasted half an hour of my time and also caused unnecessary traffic jam in this area.

I had lodged a complaint to MPSJ to take drastic action against drivers who illegally parked their vehicles at the commercial area like IOI Boulevard so as to improve the traffic situation in these areas during the office hours.

3 -Storey Townhouse @ Taman Tasik Prima

Bolton will be launching the 3 storey townhouse (lot size : 24' X 85') at the Taman Tasik Prima, Puchong in the coming Apr or May 2010.

The sales launch comprises of

(a) Lower Unit

Quantity : 81

Built Up : 1600 sf

Layout : 3+1 rooms; 1 study area; 3 bath rooms

Indicative price : RM300K

(b) Upper Unit

Quantity : 81

Built Up : 1660 sf

Layout : 3 rooms; 1 family; 4 bath rooms

Indicative price : RM290K

Both types can fit in 2 cars, back to back. Refer to the floor plan

According to sale rep, the first row facing the lake is going to price from RM350K - RM400K, about an additional 20% from the inner rows

Based on the sales info collected, the developer will be providing the sales package as follows:-

- 5% rebate

- Early bird discount

- Bulk purchase discount

- 10/90 free interest scheme (Developer Bearing Interest Scheme)

- Free SPA legal fee, disbursement & stamp duty on MOT

- Buyer get buyer incentive

Registration is in progress now. Booking fees of RM1000 is refundable. After the site visit, my major concern is not on its relatively pricey for the leased hold property, but its location which i feel is a bit too close to the high electricity pylons, close to the Lake Vista Link house. I have subsequently cancelled the booking the following day for the same reason.

The developer will also be launching the serviced apartments in Taman Tasik Prima which will comprise of 3 blocks of 33 storey serviced apartments with the size of 800sf and 1,100sf, Indicative prices are approximately from RM220K to RM290K

Domain 3 @ Cyberjaya

While investigating for the condominium investment opportunity in Cyberjaya, the intelligent city with the beautiful and well-maintained landscapes, I came across the NeoCyber project, a 21.2 acres freehold mixed development project that will span over a period of approximately 6 years in 4 phases.

(i) Phase 1 - consisting of 67 units of shop-offices (Biz Avenue 1) and 272 units of serviced apartments (The Domain) which are already completed

(ii)Phase 2 - consisting of 138 units of shop-offices (Biz Avenue II) and 1 commercial lot (6,555 nett land area)

(iii)Phase 3 - consisting of 2 blocks of office towers (262,000 sf of nett floor area)

(iv)Phase 4 - consisting of 4 blocks of 600 units of apartments.

There are only a few units left for the apartments in “Domain 2” launched last year. “Domain 3” is currently in registration stage and the project will be launched for sales by end of this month. According to the sales rep, there will be 4 blocks of apartments with the similar sizes as Domain 2.

“Domain 3” Apartment with the size of about 800 sq feet will be selling at the cost of RM250 – RM270K tentatively. The price is on the higher end with more than RM300 per square feet. The main attraction for the investors is of course the rental income, eyeing on the limited apartments in Cyberjaya and therefore the good demand from the students or ex-students from MMU and Lim Kok Weng University and probably the IT professionals who works in Cyberjaya. The apartments are popular among the middle-east students. Given the potential monthly rental of RM1500 for unfurnished unit, the rental yield is about 6-7%.

My concern is the shop-offices within the same project are still not fully occupied yet and therefore the commercial zone is actually not that busy yet. We only see tenants such as pharmacy, mamak restaurant and of course the developer which occupies a few units of the shop-houses. A check on the Friday evening revealed that there are not many people hanging around and therefore it is not a happening area at night. The fact that franchise restaurants such as Old Town, Papa Rich do not choose this part of Cyberjaya to operate their business does reveal the potential for capital appreciation is probably limited given the already high selling price.

The Domain Serviced Apartment

Office Towers still in construction stage

From the back


Junction in front of the shop houses

A Decent Return of 5.65% EPF Dividend for 2009

EPF announced today the dividend rate of 5.65% was declared for financial year ended 31 Dec 2009. It was declared on the back of the highest ever net income achieved of RM19.63 billion. The dividend rate is better than expectations for many EPF account holders and it is in fact an impressive return. I have initially anticipated to have the maximum of 5.25% - 5.5% for 2009 considering that the country had just recovered from the recession in Q4 2009, resulting from the global financial crisis. This is the second best dividend rate declared in the last 10 years, slightly behind the highest 5.8% in 2007.

Based on EPF website, as at 31 December 2009, EPF’s investment portfolio grew 8.55 per cent or RM29.25 billion to RM371.26 billion compared to RM342.01 billion in 2008.

There is an interesting note pointed out as well. For the 2009 dividend payout, the EPF requires RM3.43 billion to pay a one per cent dividend rate as a result of a larger membership base. This represents a 7.86 per cent increase over the amount of RM3.18 billion per one per cent dividend rate for 2008. This reflects the great challenge faced by the national pension organization in sustaining the decent dividend payout with the increase of contributors and the respective contributions.

In view of the challenging market condition and also unlikely to sustain the same performance of the EPF unit trust investment in 2010, I have decided to lock in some of the profit from the unit trust investment which I had commenced 6 years ago. The fund from the repruchase request is returned to the EPF account 1. Let's hope EPF can sustain the same performance for 2010 and beyond.