Take a sub-sale terrace house at RM 750,000 with a 90% margin of finance approved. The deposit is RM 75,000, and that is the figure most buyers have saved for. Then the rest of it arrives.
There is ad valorem stamp duty on the Memorandum of Transfer, charged on a banded scale against the higher of price or JPPH-assessed market value. There is a further ad valorem duty on the loan agreement, calculated on the loan sum. There are the purchaser's solicitor's fees on the Sale and Purchase Agreement and a second set on the loan documentation, each with its own disbursements — title searches, land office registration, bankruptcy searches, courier and printing. There is fire insurance and, in most cases, MRTA or MLTA cover, which can either be paid up front or absorbed into the loan if your lender allows the extra margin.
On top of the transaction costs sit the ones nobody budgets for: the valuation fee, the first quarter of quit rent and assessment apportioned from the completion date, utility deposits and reconnection, and the renovation you will discover you need after the second viewing rather than the first. Grilles, water heaters, a rewire in a 1990s house — these are not optional in practice.
Our working rule is that a first-time buyer should hold the deposit plus roughly a further four to five per cent of the purchase price in cash before making an offer, and should hold a separate reserve of three months of instalments after completion. Budget-linked stamp duty exemptions for first-time buyers below a stated price ceiling have been available in recent years and can move this materially, but the ceiling and the conditions change with each Budget, so ask your solicitor to compute your actual figure rather than working from a number a friend quoted two years ago.
Do this arithmetic before you pay a booking fee, not after. A buyer who discovers the shortfall at SPA signing has already committed 2% to 3% of the price to a stakeholder account.
