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Jakarta apartment projects give residents hope for housing
Many Jakarta residents struggle to get proper housing within the capital’s area of 662 square kilometers inhabited by 10 million people
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span>Many Jakarta residents struggle to get proper housing within the capital’s area of 662 square kilometers inhabited by 10 million people. Available land is scarce and property prices keep rising, making it challenging for people to purchase a place of their own.
Edi Saputra, who lives in Buaran, East Jakarta, was seeking information on Wednesday on the availability of units at the Klapa Village apartment complex build by the Jakarta administration. The building is the first under a flagship program to offer property with no down payment, with which the city aims to address its housing backlog of 302,319 units.
Edi said he wanted to move into the apartment building because of its accessible location and because it was near the houses of his relatives as well as the current house he rents.
The housing program gives him and his family hope to own a place to live after they have been renting for nearly 40 years, even though it is not the landed house of his dreams.
“I don’t own a house even though I have lived in Jakarta since 1979,” he told The Jakarta Post in the apartment area.
He said he spent between Rp 450,000 (US$31.5) and Rp 1 million a month to rent a house in Buaran to live with his two children, an amount not very different from the credit payment offered by the housing payment scheme in Pondok Kelapa.
“But at least I will have my own house,” he said, adding that he sought a one-bedroom studio in that tower.
The zero-rupiah down payment housing program was a key campaign promise made by Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan and his former deputy, Sandiaga Uno, during the 2017 gubernatorial election.
The pledge was tweaked, however, as the administration began to develop what it calls the citizen housing solution (Samawa), to allow for vertical housing instead of the promised landed houses. Construction on the Klapa Village complex was launched in October last year and has now completed. The administration has begun to hand over the keys to buyers.
Our target is to sell all the units in Klapa Village by October
The 780 apartments of Klapa Village will not help much given the immense need for housing. Experts have noted that the administration still has a long way to go to tackle housing issues.
Bima Priya Santosa, finance and administrative director of city-owned developer Sarana Jaya that developed the building, said credit requests for more than 200 buyers of Kelapa Village apartments had been approved by city-owned lender Bank DKI.
Around 80 of them had received the keys to their apartments, and six units were occupied as of Wednesday, he said.
On weekdays, up to 40 people approached the management of Klapa Village to apply for credit or simply to request information about properties in the complex.
“The number [of visitors] doubles on the weekends,” he told the Post on Wednesday.
About 200 of the total 780 units have been sold.
“Our target is to sell all the units in Klapa Village by October,” he said.
Similarly to Edi, another visitor of the apartment building, Novi, 42, said she was interested in buying a unit because the location was close to her parents’ house.
“The price is affordable too,” she said. “With my and my husband's salaries combined at the moment, it is very hard for us to buy a house using the conventional down payment scheme.”
The city administration — represented by the Jakarta Housing and Settlement Agency — opened the application process in November 2018. It says 2,359 people have signed up for the program and 1,790 applicants have been declared eligible after verification by the Civil Registration Agency.
In order to acquire a unit, eligible applicants must proceed to request a housing loan from Bank DKI.
The head of the housing agency's housing ownership unit, Dzikran Kurniawan, said at a press conference on July 24 that the agency was prioritizing applications from 899 registrants who were married or had a family.
The agency is currently accepting registrations for the second phase of the project.
Apartments in the Klapa Village high-rise complex range in price from Rp 184 million for a studio apartment to Rp 310 million for a two-bedroom apartment, with installment plans of 10, 15 or 20 years.
Jakarta residents can apply online at samawa.jakarta.go.id or visit the agency office or mayors’ offices in the five Jakarta municipalities. Residents only need to bring their ID cards and fill in a form for the agency to input their data.
There are several requirements for buying an apartment under the program, such as having been a resident of Jakarta for the past five years, having a Jakarta ID card and never having owned a house. The apartment units are aimed at those with monthly income of Rp 4 million to Rp 7 million per month.
In response to growing interests, Sarana Jaya plans to build down-payment free housing in Cilangkap, East Jakarta, by the end of this year and in Pulo Gebang, also in East Jakarta, next year.
“Our next project is a 900-unit apartment in Nuansa Cilangkap. We are hoping to have the groundbreaking by the end of the year," Bima said. (sau/nal)
