Welcome to our virtual third place, The Café.
Come on in and make a new human connection over a cup of coffee (or Teh Tarik). This is a casual community, do whatever you want, share your oyen pics, your frustrations, and even organize a weekend picnic with the community. The world is your oyster.
Rules are simple, be kind and civil with each other. As with any other café, rude patrons will be kicked out.
It's hard to gauge the thing for sure, but it also depend on how much business that location will bring. I remember hearing the shoplot in Kota Syahbandar in Melaka costing north of rm1 million per unit(3 storey) after they've done building the area and i first thought it will die off, but right now it's one of the busiest place in Melaka, replacing Melaka Raya.
The rental is high, but the potential of making a load of money is higher so people willing to take the risk.
Melaka💀
Haven't been there for years now. So they finally managed to complete that reclaimed land construction eh?
Still, I would look at that development with suspicion because it is funded mostly by PRC financiers desperate to get their money out from their country.
And knowing Melaka income level exactly how many people willing to spend their money there is questionable. But that had never stopped anyone, like Hatten😅 (Heard that their serviced apartment are in deep shit?).
Maybe it is like you said, people taking risk to make money. Probably the bussiness are not making any real profits just yet and still burning through their cash reserves.
Hoho, you've underestimate the middle income group of melaka. The place is also frequent by people from KL/Selangor, Singapore, and mostly China, but normally it's full of young people. It's stayed up for quite some time now, so i doubt it will just crash, but if it does it's because Melaka is in deep shit.
As for business owner, a lot of them likely not coming from locally but other state, and even other country. That's normal i guess, attract foreign investment and make more job for local
Donno leh, last time I lived there 10 years ago even Melaka Raya was too much for my middle income ass. I go there window shopping only. Probably mostly children of upper middle class Melaka people + out of state tourists?
Plus, afaik anyway, Malaccans don't like going to Melaka Raya area. Hot AF. Traffic is shit. Aeon bandaraya is bettter.
But still, I really hope the state gov stop being so crazy. If not one of these days Melaka will end up losing its UNESCO status then everybody dies.
Also consider the age of the business. Newly minted ones tend to close the moment they suffer a loss. But in city centre you may stumble upon old family run businesses that have operated for a few dozen years those tend not to shut down ever unless they retire from old age and nobody take over
Inflation in Malaysia is also lower than you think. Our interest rate is relatively low and stable. Disposable income is there (relatively speaking). Holistically speaking it really is up to the government (especially local ones) to decide how best to increase that pool of disposable income to drive local economies and businesses.
It's really office space that is making a bit of a crunch. Since telework has become a thing, why pay for more office space than you really need? This is leaving a lot of skyscrapers needing to hang way too many "for rent" signs up, for properties that are very expensive and valuable.
They can't really be converted easily either, as the needs of office space and the needs of any other kind of useable building are very different, we're talking more than even a major remodel here if we wanted them to be residential or something.
I imagine the market will find some kind of use for them eventually, the locations are extremely valuable, but it's difficult to foresee what that might be. Until then the problem will be inflicting some pain on the banking and real estate sectors.
WFH isn’t even a thing in Malaysia everyone has been asked to go back. Even in countries like Aus and US it went from being the norm to being a perk ie. a privilege, predominantly used to attract younger talent
And occasionally some big corporation run by boomer old boys club would also take away that privilege because apparently Gen Y and Gen Z are “lazy”
Donno leh, I mean, WFH isn't that big here yet. But I guess there are other factors like operation downsizing and back office outsourcing might also be killing office spaces.