KL property players question assessment fee hikes

THE Kuala Lumpur City Council's proposed jumps in assessment fees are misconceived if they are based on higher real estate values, property consultants say, noting that they should be based on annual rental instead.

Amid the brouhaha over a recent move by DBKL (as the council is called by its Malay acronym) to raise 2014 annual assessment fees by 100-300 per cent - some reports put it as high as 1,000 per cent - property experts believe that the council as well as Federal Territories Minister Adnan Mansor, who attributed the assessment review to rocketing home prices, appear to have erred in justifying the steep hikes.

"In simple terms, assessment of a property is based on rental value," said SY (from Shah Alam) in a letter to the editor of The Star yesterday. The rental value is determined by existing tenancies of similar properties within the same location, SY said, with the valuer usually determining the hypothetical rental on about 70-80 per cent of actual rental values, primarily to avoid excessive objection hearings.