City&Country: Family Crest eyes upgraders for Ramal Villa

If you are a civil servant in Kajang, living in cramped quarters with thoughts of upgrading, Family Crest Sdn Bhd has its sights on you. Managing director Kenneth Lee tells City & Country that the company’s maiden project, Ramal Villa in Sungai Ramal Dalam, Kajang, is designed to cater for this demographic.

Ramal Villa will comprise 71 units of semi-detached and cluster homes, save for a lone bungalow near the entrance to the development, on 8.2 acres of freehold land opposite Taman Sri Ramal, an area easily accessible via the Kajang SILK Highway.

The guarded scheme has a GDV of RM60 million and the homes are priced from RM868,000 to RM1.69 million. The smallest units are the cluster homes known as the Courtyard Villas, which have land areas starting from 36ft by 65ft and built-ups from 3,170 sq ft.

The Courtyard Villas are four homes linked together by a small square plot of land at the back of each villa. There is a home on each side of the square facing outwards. However, they also have rooftop gardens to compensate for the lack of garden space on the ground, says Lee.

“The rooftop gardens are a modern concept that is aimed at fostering ties among neighbours as the space allows them to chat and have social gatherings, as well as talk to each other as they would if they had a regular compound,” he explains.

Meanwhile, the semidees — called the Generations — are pricier, starting from RM1.09 million for land areas starting from 36ft by 80ft and built-ups from 3,800 sq ft. The semidees are linked either at the side or at the back.

Lastly, the only bungalow in Ramal Villa has a land area of 46ft by 80ft and built-up of 4,090 sq ft with a price tag of RM1.28 million.

So far, about 50% of the homes have been taken up since its preview in January — something Family Crest is very pleased with.

Lee believes that there is pent-up demand for more luxurious homes in Kajang, as the company’s own research indicates a fairly sizeable catchment of senior civil servants with the money and inclination to move into bigger dwellings, especially in the Sungai Ramal area.

Family Crest’s foray into the upscale market in Kajang may also be partly motivated by the moves of the bigger boys into the area — Sime Darby Property Bhd’s 600.46-acre Saujana Impian township in Hulu Langat, near Kajang town; Mutiara Goodyear Development Bhd’s 68.6-acre gated-and-guarded Nadayu 92; and Naza TTDI Sdn Bhd’s 113-acre guarded TTDI Grove township in Kajang.

There is also Kajang stalwart Metro Kajang Holdings Bhd with its 270-acre freehold gated and guarded township, Kajang 2.

Although Ramal Villa is Family Crest’s maiden venture into property development, the project is by no means Lee’s first.

He was previously the project manager of One Selayang, a 10.6-acre leasehold mixed-use development in Selayang with a GDV of RM80 million. It comprised six blocks of 4½-storey shop-apartments, with 64 shops on the ground floor and 448 apartment units on the upper floors. It was completed in August 2008.

Lee’s family, via Pembinaan Leow Tuck Chui & Sons Sdn Bhd, has been involved in construction since the early 1970s with a broad range of projects covering residential, office and retail. Their earliest project was an ammunition factory in Batu Arang, Selangor.

Currently, their construction projects include MK Land Holdings Bhd’s Rafflesia, comprising 460 units of 3½-storey semidee bungalows as well as a 36-storey block of apartments in Damansara Perdana and two 22-storey condominium blocks for Platinum Victory Sdn Bhd in Setapak, Kuala Lumpur.

What’s next?
Family Crest’s modus operandi of targeting homeowners looking for an upgrade extends to its other development plans — a gated and guarded bungalow development in Section 13, Shah Alam, and a light-industrial project in Bandar Bukit Puchong.

The eight-acre gated-and-guarded scheme comprising 56 bungalows within the 412-acre Kelab Golf Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah in Shah Alam has an estimated GDV of RM130 million to RM150 million.
“These homes are targeted at the existing residents of Section 13 as well as expatriates of multinational corporations in the area,” says Lee. The company aims to launch the project this year-end.

Meanwhile, Family Crest is planning for 40 to 70 units of light-industrial units in Puchong. It has still not firmed up the project’s GDV as it has not decided on the number of units. The project is awaiting approval and is targeted to launch in 3Q this year.

The company is now scouting for more land and has its sights on the Sentul area as it hopes to embark on its first high-rise residential project in 2013 in the Sentul-Batu Caves vicinity in Kuala Lumpur.

“Sentul is one of the few places in the Klang Valley that still has large-enough tracts of freehold land for development,” Lee explains.

It helps that YTL Land and Development Bhd has already blazed a trail in Sentul with its high-end condos in the area and there are already signs of pent-up demand in the area for high-rise dwellings, says Lee, adding that Family Crest is still scouting for land in the area and nothing has been firmed up yet. Nevertheless, the developer has three projects to keep it busy over the next three years.

This article appeared in City & Country, the property pullout of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 861, June 6-12, 2011