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Hesagon Consult, Klang (2026)

22/08/2023

Everyone is talking about ESG and solar energy on the building rooftop, is there anything we need to be aware of when installing the solar panel at our rooftop?

Let's forget about the ROI and your electricity tariff savings first, here we only talk about the things that are related to property development. Do you need to get any approval from relevant authorities to install the solar panel on your rooftop?

Yes, you need to! As you're changing the external of your building, you have to submit a renovation plan to the Local Authority for approval!

17/08/2023

Recently, the Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur (DBKL) has issued a circular to ban the partition of a stratified service apartment and SOHO in DBKL area. Do you think this is a good move?

As discussed before, to build a building, there is a need for the developer to obtain the Building Plan. In order to obtain the Building Plan, there are several other approvals needed to get approval from relevant authorities, such as:
~ Fire Fighting Department (BOMBA) for fire fighting passive and active plan
~ TNB on the supply of electricity
~ Water Supply Company for the water demand approval
~ IWK for the sewerage reticulation plan
The list is not exhaustive.

Making partitioning of the unit and altering the original building design, it will not only affect the building usage (as claimed by DBKL used as short term renting purposes), but it will also affect:
~ safety of the building (the fire fighters don't know what has changed in the building)
~ impose additional loading of the building without any control also could cause the building cracks
~ utilities supply (the utilities providers don't know how many people are using the service, this could cause the shortage of supply or overload the supply system)
~ basic living standards for the building users (altered unit without any control by the Local Authority, doesn't comply with the basic living standards under the Uniform Building By Law, ie natural sunlight, natural ventilation, etc)

With the concern of the above, the DBKL is making a correction to ban the partition of the stratified building!

16/08/2023

Every building requires a Building Plan, the Building Plan must be approved by the Local Authority prior to the construction commencement.

Building Plan is the detailed version of the Development Order, whereby the Development Order is showing the overall planning of the development, whereas Building Plan indicates the building design in detail.

A Building Plan shall consist of the floor plans for all the floors, specifications of the building, an elevation plan, a cross section plan as well as the structural calculations of the proposed building.

If you are a buyer from a developer, you could also purchase a copy of the Building Plan from the Local Authority's Building Department for your own reference during renovations.

15/08/2023

Say, your girlfriend's house is opposite your house, can you build a pedestrian bridge to link both houses? So that you can go to your girlfriend's house without needing to cross the road.

Technically speaking, yes, you can do that, provided you obtained the following approval:
~ Temporary Development Order from the Local Authority
~ Temporary Building Plan from the Local Authority
~ Temporary Occupational License (TOL) from Land Office (Pejabat Tanah Daerah, PTD), if you have a landing on public reserve, however, if you link from one building (your house) to another building (your girlfriend's house), then you don't need a TOL
~ Air Space Permit from Land and Mines Office (Pejabat Tanah & Galian, PTG)

For the Temporary Development Order, it's a form of Development Order, however, the validity period is limited to 3 years, you have to renew it within 3 years. Whereas for the Temporary Building Plan, it's required to be renewed every calendar year.

Why is it only temporary? As the pedestrian bridge is above the public reserve (public road and public drain), the land belongs to the State Government, hence, the Government would only grant a temporary license to use the space, until the Government decided to take it back.

14/08/2023

3+1 rooms?
2+1 rooms?
1+1 rooms?

Why doesn't the developer provide it as 4 rooms instead of just 3+1 rooms? Is it so difficult for the developer to add one wall and one door to create a proper room?

If you wonder why, here is the answer to you.

According to the Uniform Building By Law (UBBL) 1984, a habitable room (a proper livable room), shall consist of:
~ shall have at least one window with the area of not less than 10% of the room size
~ the window shall have at least half of it be openable
~ minimum room size shall be not less than 9.3 square meters (100 square foot)
~ minimum width shall be not less than 2 meters

Hence, it's not because the developer wants to save the cost of building the wall and door, it's because the space provided isn't fulfilled the requirements to classify as a "room"!

11/08/2023

Why is there a playground in a development area? Why doesn't the developer build houses there? Who maintains it?

Malaysia planning guidelines have stated that every development must provide at least 10% of the land as open space (Kawasan Lapang) for public (in the case of landed development), the developer is to beautify the space in accordance to Landscape Department's requirements, land needs to be surrendered by the developer to State Government and to be managed and maintained by the Local Authority.

Typically, the Landscape Department would want the space to be all age friendly, i.e. planted with tree and grass, equipped with children playground set, jogging track, and some lighting for safety purposes.

09/08/2023

Why the road in your taman is much narrower than the road in front of the retail shop that is just across your house?

Ever notice why some roads have a green space at the road centre and some don't?

This is because we have a few different road hierarchies in Malaysia. The hierarchy is separate for two main categories, namely Rural Road and Urban Road.

For Rural Road, there are five categories (hierarchies):
1) Expressway
2) Highway
3) Primary Road
4) Secondary Road
5) Minor Road

Whereas for Urban Road, it has four categories (hierarchies):
1) Expressway
2) Arterial Road
3) Collector Road
4) Local Street Road

JKR has defined the design standard for each of the road categories in their guideline. It is based on the usage volume, function, as well as access of the road to determine the design standard for each category of road.

We will further discuss in brief in the near future for this road standard.

08/08/2023

Can a developer build an apartment that covers the entire land?

The straight forward answer is no. This is because the planning guidelines do control the total coverage of the building on a piece of land.

Based on the guidelines provided by Plan Malaysia, the maximum coverage of building for a piece of land is 60%, this is what we so called as Plinth area. The purpose of this Plinth area in place is to:
~ provide natural sunlight to the surrounding building
~ provide on ground surface water run off
~ reduce the mental pressure of the public passing by
~ provide the space for the fire fighting department to reach the building in case of emergency

07/08/2023

What is the Local Plan (Rancangan Tempatan, RT)?

RT is a form of document that was issued by a Local Authority, to indicate the development planning and outline the development direction within the Local Authority's control.

It will consist of plans to indicate the zoning of each and every land within the area (district) as well as planning control of the land.

The planning control including but not limited to:
~ usage of the land (ie. Commercial/ Residential/ Institutional/ Government Reserve/ other special purposes)
~ allowable principal activities and secondary activities
~ Density or Plot Ratio
~ and other specifications about the development planning within an area

You can check the RT for your land in the Planning Department of the Local Authority for your area, it's free to make an enquiry about it!

04/08/2023

Service Apartment (SA) vs Condominium (Condo), what are the differences in the property development viewpoint?

For SA, it's sitting on a commercial land but the units meant for residential purposes (some owners may use it for short staying purposes, so far Malaysia still does not have solid guidelines to control that). Condo is a development sitting on a residential land.

The easiest way for the general public to identify which is which from the first sight will be:
~ SA typically will come with smaller units sizes, whereas the Condo comes with bigger unit sizes

~ SA development usually has more number of units and Condo typically is lesser units (refer to our earlier post in regards to Plot Ratio and Density to know more about it)

~ Most of the SA projects will come with retail shop at the podium (some but very less, are without any retail components) or other commercial development within the development, i.e. hotel, office tower, etc

~ SA commonly is nearer to the main road (as commonly the commercial land is nearby/ fronting main road)

03/08/2023

As discussed in our previous post about the density calculation for the residential land, in the following we will discuss the Plot Ratio:

Plot Ratio is imposed on the commercial land to control the maximum buildable area within the land. It's different from the Density, Density is to determine how many units can be built, whereas Plot Ratio is to determine how many areas you can build.

Typically for commercial land in Selangor, the Plot Ratio is allowed as 1:4. This means 1 acre land can build a building with 4 acres built-up. It's not allowed to cover the entire land with building (that's control under planning guidelines, namely the Plinth area, we will cover that in another post), hence it means that the building will be a multiple storey on the land.

The total units allowed is very much depending on the developer, whereby the developer is to set the per unit size (within the permitted unit size under the Building By-laws as well as the planning guidelines) and the total built-up within the permitted Plot Ratio. In the following we demonstrate two scenarios for your better understanding.

For example, for a 2 acres land with Plot Ratio of 1:4, the maximum allowed built-up is:
2 acres × 43,550 (conversion from acre to square feet) × 4 (Plot Ratio) = 348,480 square feet (sf)

Scenario 1: the developer goes with a smaller unit size whereby each unit is designed as 750sf, consider the common areas as 20% of the total buildable area, the total units could be as high as 372 units.
348,480 × 80% (after minus off 20% as common area ÷ 750sf = 372 units

Scenario 2: the developer goes with a bigger unit size, say 1,000sf, the total units could be just 278 units.
348,480sf × 80% ÷ 1,000sf = 278 units

The difference in total units is almost 100 units with just changing the unit sizes.

Imagine for a land with a higher Plot Ratio (KLCC area could be as high as 1:16), how much more the units can be built and how the developer could have the flexible planning on the end product.

02/08/2023

Keep seeing the property advertisement mentioned that low density development? Ever wonder how low is low density?

In Malaysia, there are two methods to control the number of units that can be built for a land, ie. Density and Plot Ratio. Density is meant to control the residential land whereas Plot Ratio is meant for commercial land. In this post we will cover the Density method in general.

There are also two methods to determine the number of units in Peninsula Malaysia, ie:

a) people per acre:

Kuala Lumpur is adapted to this method, whereby it's determined by the total people staying for an acre of land.

For example, 160 people per acre is designated for a piece of land, the land's size is 3.3 acres, the total units that can be built within the land will be:
160/4 (Government took the average per household as 4 people) x 3.3 acres = 132 units.

In Kuala Lumpur area, the low density residential is controlled from 4 to 40 people per acres (typically for landed development); the medium density residential is controlled from 48 to 120 people per acre (for low-rise development); whereas for high density residential is controlled from 160 to 400 people per acre (commonly for high-rise development).

b) unit per acre:

Selangor is using this method, whereby the Local Authority will gazette the unit per acre in the Local Plan to determine the maximum number per acre is allowed.

For example, 24 units per acre for the land size of 3.3 acres, the maximum number can be built is:
24 units × 3.3 acres = 79 units

Commonly, for landed property in Selangor is controlled within 24 units per acres, whereas for low to mid-rise development is controlled at the maximum of 60 units per acres; and for public houses (like Rumah Selangorku), it's allowed to build up to 120 units per acres.

Hesagon Consult