KINIBIZ This has been a year to forget for the Iskandar economic region in Johor.

After much lauded growth in the last five years, led by a robust property market, cracks began to show in Iskandar this year. Bullishness about Iskandar’s property market has been replaced with a more cautious, sometimes even bleaker outlook.

What is causing this dwindling optimism about Iskandar? For a start, the numbers don’t lie.

Alarming drop

“In comparison to the first half of 2013, there was a drop of about 48 percent in terms of total transactions in the same period this year,” said V Sivadas, executive director of PA International Property Consultants based in Johor Baru (JB).

That is an alarming drop in sales by any standards. The fact that it is happening just when Iskandar seems to have picked up momentum in the last few years has rattled the market.

According to Sivadas, this decline is across all sectors of the property market in Iskandar.

“Our records indicate 5,419 total transactions in the first half of this year at a value of about RM3.7 billion. In comparison with the first half of 2013, there was a drop of about 48 percent in terms of total transactions and about 37 percent drop in terms of total value of transactions in the first half of 2014,” said Sivadas, who based his analysis on available records of properties sales within Iskandar Malaysia.

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