The issues of strata title development in Malaysia and Australia : a comparison for future direction

Abstract

Property development in Malaysia has undergone changes in response to the needs and demands of property purchasers. Traditionally a house is purchased for shelter of the whole family. However today property purchasers are looking for a sense of community and meaningful lifestyle beyond satisfying their safety and security needs. Housing developers are subscribed to principal of communal governance to ensure the continuous harmony of the environment within the clusters of neighborhoods. The Strata Titles Act 1985 year is constantly under review to meet the changes and demands in property markets from time to time. The Act is originally used for high rise development but recently property developers used the Act for application of strata bungalow and terrace houses. (The Star 17th June 2002) See Appendix I & II Flexibility and options are important especially in a big property development. The writer is looking into community titles which has been widely practiced in a more matured property market in Australia. The community titles provides a less restrictive or rather more options in the management of property, for examples, multi tiered management, non-contiguous lots of land and etc. With the introduction of these communal titles, many problems related to strata can be resolved or reduced significantly. It is hope that in the near future the legislation of community titles which gives a high degree of flexibility can be introduced in Malaysia so that more innovative, quality and better values of housing products will be created by housing developers to meet consumers' demand. This study is to identify the problems that arise as a result of the inadequacy of the provisions in the Strata Title Act. The survey from the various government officers, developers and professional surveyors reveals that there is a strong need of additional legislation to bridge the gap between the conventional land code and the Strata Title Act. The study is to cover an existing Strata Title Act legislation, the community titles scheme which have been widely practiced in states of Western Australia, New 'South Wales and Queensland. The writer had to make comparisons in some of the areas of these legislations. At the end of this study, the writer had proposed certain recommendations to government as guidelines in trying to implement new concept of community titles in Malaysia. Among others, the writer propose to adopt some key features in some of the community title schemes in Australia. .