Written by June Wong
What is Perfection of Transfer and Charge? It is important to understand what it is and why it is important for property owners to proceed with the Perfection of Transfer and Charge.
What is Perfection of Transfer and Charge?
Most people think that when they purchase a new property from the developer, the property belongs to them once they have signed the Sale and Purchase Agreement (“SPA”) and have received the keys to the vacant property, however, that is only half of the process. The truth is that without the Perfection of Transfer and Charge, the property title is still under the developer’s name instead of the individual owner.
The Perfection of Transfer is the process of transferring the ownership of the property from the developer’s name to you as the property owner.
The next question is how would it affect you as the property owner if your name is not on the registered title?
- If your name is not registered in the title, the land office does not acknowledge you as the owner /buyer and the National Land Code 1965 does not regard you as the registered proprietor. What you have is only the beneficial ownership. Hence, you cannot exercise all rights and title as a registered proprietor. One of the rights as a registered proprietor is that if you are selling your property, there will be delay as you need to request the Developer to transfer the property directly to your potential buyers. If the Developer refused to do so, you need to start the process of perfection before you have the right to sell the property to potential buyers as the registered proprietor of the property. A potential buyer may not want to wait for such long period of process and they may also face difficulties in getting loan approval on the basis that banks are often reluctant to grant loans where strata titles either have not been issued or are issued but not yet perfected.
- If the developer or the proprietor of the land (master title) upon which your unit is erected is wound up or dies, the whole perfection process became complicated. If the Developer is wound up or an individual proprietor is bankrupt, the liquidator will take over, but there are liquidator fees incurred and this process will be long and exhausting.
- Further, if you have taken up a mortgage to finance the purchase of the property, you would have given your undertaking to the Bank to conduct the perfection of transfer and charge process upon issuance of the title, through signing of various Bank’s documents with the Bank’s solicitors. If you refused to do so, the solicitors will notify the Bank. In this case, the Bank, upon advise of the solicitors, may choose to exercise the Power of Attorney granted by you to execute the Memorandum of Transfer and then proceed to register the charge in favour of the Bank. If this happen, all additional costs will be borne by you.
- Lastly, one of the consequences of not perfecting the transfer of the strata title within the specific period as informed by the developer, is the imposition by the developer of an additional storage charge on the property owner. Some developers may impose storage charges that ranges between RM 100 to RM 150 per month, for every month of failure or delay to effect the Perfection of Transfer and Charge.
To conclude, it is very important for property owners to have an issued title registered in your name to prove your indefeasible ownership of the property i.e. full ownership of the property which cannot be defeated, revoked, or made void, and it also allow you to fully exercise the rights over your property, including voting on the management affairs of the development and also disposing it with greater ease.
