Practical Issues in Development Charge: Perspective of Property Developers

Abstract

While the local governments view the development charge as one of their income sources for providing utilities to the society, property developers’ communities still contend that the charge surges development uncertainty. Moreover, the existing empirical studies of the implementation of development charge in Malaysia is limited by a lack of developer’s view regarding this matter. This further inhibits the aim to gauge the property developers’ perspectives regarding the implementation of development charge in Malaysia. An online exploratory questionnaire was conducted to gather information from the respondents, which included 10 house developers from all over Malaysia by using purposive sampling technique. The findings revealed that the effect it has to property developers seems to have increased developer's uncertainties, especially on the cost of property development. Moreover, the contentious issue concerning how development charge affects the availability and affordability of housing, surround the use of development charge due to the developers pass the burden by increasing the house price. This paper provides new insights for future research in the study of relevant approaches to improve the efficiency of the development charge and the effect it has on the developer's uncertainty.