Posted On : The Jakarta Post, 26 March 2020
Harizul Akbar Nazwar, B.Eng., M.Ec.Dev., MAPPI (Cert.)
Missed Prediction
At the beginning of the year, many predicted that the property market in 2020 would getting better. Several economic stimuli, both directly and indirectly related to the property market, have been issued. One of the policy packages that has become an effective strategy for the government to boost property growth is the relaxation of loan to value mortgages from 10% to 5%, effective on December, 2019. In addition, since mid-2019, the Minister of Finance has also reduced PPNBm (Value Added Tax on Luxury Goods) by issuing the minister of finance regulation number PMK 92/PMK.03/2019 from the 20 billion to 30 billion thresholds with the aim of boosting the middle to upper class property market.
But until the first quarter of 2020, there were no signs that the property market in Indonesia was improving. Colliers research results show that the growth in apartment prices in the Jakarta CBD in the fourth quarter of 2019 grew stagnant, while as year on year (yoy) it only grew by 0.8%. Bank Indonesia’s Residential Property Price Index (RPPI) recorded a decline in growth of only 1.77%, lower than 1.80% in the third quarter of 2019 (yoy). The slowdown was also shown in the commercial property market. The commercial property market in Indonesia has experienced a significant slowdown, from 3.12% (yoy) in the third quarter to only 0.04% (yoy) in the fourth quarter of 2019.
This condition was also exacerbated by the depressed condition of the Indonesian economy during the end of semester 2019. BPS noted that Indonesia’s economic growth in 2019 was only 5.02% lower than in 2018 which was 5.17%. Considering that the property sector has a linkage to 10 other sectors, the national economic slowdown will also directly impact the property sector slowdown. (more…)