An Overview Of The Recent Amendment To The Housing Development (Control And Licensing) Act 1966

An abandoned housing project is a serious issue which cannot be ignored in Malaysia. Based on the official statistics, there were 216 private housing projects certified to be abandoned for the period between year 2009 and 31 January 2015. As such, the government has amended the existing laws to improve the legal aspects to enable the National Housing Department and the Ministry of Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government to take more aggressive action against irresponsible developers and to protect house buyers from being victims of abandoned projects.

The Housing Development (Control and Licensing) Act 1966 ("Act 118") which provides for the control and licensing of the business of housing development in Peninsular Malaysia and the protection of the interest of the purchasers has been in force since 29 August 1969 and this Act has gone through 5 times of amendments in which the last amendment was made on 12 April 2007.