Conversion tables for commonly used property area measurement units around the world

Different regions of the world could be using different measurement units to express how big/small is a property or land area.

When you book a 12 tsubos hotel suite, are you able to imagine how roughly big is it?

When you rent a 6 tatamis unit for short stay, do you have any idea how big is the unit?

When you buy a 1,200 square feet apartment unit, do you know how many square meters is that?

Their conversions are as follows:

• 1 tsubo = 2 tatamis
• 1 tsubo = 35.58 square feet
• 1 tsubo = 3.31 square meter

• 1 square feet = 0.0281 tsubo
• 1 square feet = 0.0929 square meter

• 1 square meter = 0.3025 tsubo
• 1 square meter = 10.7639 square feet

and for larger piece of land area, we commonly used either hectar or acre, as follows:

• 1 hectar = 2.4711 acres
• 1 acre = 0.4047 hectar

Here are some conversion tables among them, for your easy reference...

Investing in Kenanga Digital Investing (KDI)

Kenanga Digital Investing (KDI) has been around for a few months since early 2022, and I have just joint on the bandwagon last week.

KDI is a robo-advisory investment platform under Kenanga Investment Bank. It can be accessed either using web browser to its website, or via its mobile app available for Android and iOS.

FYI, this is the same Kenanga Investment Bank which has another popular investment platform called Rakuten Trade for online stock investment.

I just put in the minimum starting fund requirement of RM100 in KDI Save and RM250 in KDI Invest respectively for a trial to test its performance. I've used my friend's referral code during registration and got RM10 as a result. Therefore, my invested amount in KDI Invest has become RM250 + RM10 = RM260.

After invested for about a week, this is my portfolio performance so far. 

My KDI Save has gained RM0.08 (0.08%) from RM100, equivalent to 2.92% p.a over a period of 10 days.

My KDI Invest has gained RM2.03 (0.78%) from RM260, equivalent to 28.49% p.a. over a period of 8 days.

I would say, this investment result is pretty impressive. Hope that KDI can keep up this kind of performance for a long period of time.

Currently, KDI only has 2 investment products: KDI Save and KDI Invest.

KDI Save is similar to Opus Money Plus Fund (MPF), Touch n Go (TNG) GO+, StashAway Simple, and other money market fund (MMF). It is quite impossible to incur losses, and its return is expected to be just slightly higher than the bank's fixed deposit rate. This is a kind of investment of low risk low return.

KDI Save's return is daily calculated and daily credited into your account. Currently, for an investment amount of RM100, you can get RM0.01 per day. KDI does not incur any management fee, pretty similar to fixed deposit savings with bank.

KDI Invest is an A.I. operated ETF investment fund. It invests into ETF funds listed in the US market, which coverage is around the world.

The investment profit or loss of KDI Invest is daily updated in its returns value. Being an ETF fund, its fluctuation is pretty small.

You can decide your KDI Invest portfolio risk profile to be set as either Very Conservative, Conservative, Balanced, Growth or Aggressive Growth. That will determine the level of fluctuation of your daily profit or loss.

Invested amount of RM3,000 or less in KDI Invest is free from fund management fee. More than that, there will be a management fee of 0.3% to 0.7% per annum. On top of that, there is also an ETF transaction fee of 0.2% to 0.4%. per annum. This amount of fund charges is considered very minimal, compared with the charges of majority of the mutual funds in the market.

Both Malaysian and non-Malaysian who has bank account in Malaysia can invest with KDI. You can sign up your account in their website or via their mobile app.

If you want to get an additional RM10 in your KDI Invest account, you can sign up using this referral code: 114053

After signing up, before you can gain access to KDI and start investing, you need to wait for 1 or 2 days for the processing of your KYC verification. You will receive an email from KDI once your account application is approved.

Please remember that, in order to get your RM10 for using my referral code: 114053, you are required to transfer a minimum of RM250 from your bank account to KDI Invest within 30 days upon account creation. If your KDI Invest account is not activated with an initial investment after the expiry date, you will miss your opportunity of getting that RM10.

EPF declared 6.10% (conventional) / 5.65% (shariah) dividend for 2021

After an even longer waiting time than last year, the Employees Provident Fund (EPF, a.k.a. KWSP) has finally declared the dividend rate for financial year 2021.

For year 2021, the dividend declared for conventional account is 6.10% while for Shariah account is 5.65%. The dividend will be credited into members' account soon, and you can check for it by login into your EPF i-Account.

Year 2021 was the 5th year of dividend declaration for Shariah account, while dividend for conventional account has been declared annually since 1952. The dividend for Shariah account in all the years from 2017 to 2021 were lower than the dividend for conventional account of the same year.

The 6.10% dividend for EPF conventional account in 2021 is 17.31% higher than the 5.20%  dividend declared for 2020 (last year).

Calculation: (6.10-5.20)/5.20 = 0.90/5.20 = 17.31%

It is 7.96% higher than the 5.65% Shariah dividend declared for the same year.

Calculation: (6.10-5.65)/5.65 = 0.45/5.65 = 7.96%

In year 2021, there are quite a lot of people has taken out a portion of their EPF savings through i-Sinar, i-Lestari and i-Citra schemes. Hopefully, their money withdrawn from EPF had put in good use. Otherwise, it would be wiser to leave the money with EPF to enjoy the 6.10% dividend.

Online stock filtering and screening by inventory turnover and receivables turnover

Cash flow is critical in running all businesses. Companies without healthy cash flow are very likely to go into financial trouble sooner or later.

In normal business operations, there are several factors that have great impact to the cash flow of the company, including:

• How fast can the company sell out its goods?
• How fast can the company collect the full payment from its customers?

The first factor can be rephrased in layman terms as "how fast can the company make money through its operations?", which is no doubt, the faster the better. This can be reviewed by its inventory turnover rate.

When the company's goods are stored in the warehouse or display rack, there is storage cost involved. The value of the goods could also be depreciated as they are approaching their shelflife expiry, or when newer goods are introduced to the market which becomes more attractive to the customers. Most importantly, the goods can only bring revenue to the company after they are sold (or leased) to customers.

The formula to calculate inventory turnover is:

Inventory turnover = Cost of goods sold / Average value of inventory

Low inventory turnover rate indicates:

• Weak sales
• Over-stocking (too much goods produced or brought in)

This can be resulting from poor marketing and/or poor sales to clear out the inventory effectively. This can also be due to lack of customers' purchasing interest to the goods, which could be:

• Price is set too high
• Product quality is too low
• Low demand

High inventory turnover rate indicates:

• Strong sales
• Insufficient inventory (not a good sign)

This can be resulting from effective marketing and/or aggressive sales. This can also be due to:

• Price is set too low
• Product is good that customers are willing to pay for its price
• High demand

Even if a company achieved a consistently high inventory turnover rate, its cash flow is yet affected by its receivables turnover rate.

There are generally 3 ways a business collect money from its customers:

• Advanced (prepaid) collection - customer paid before receiving the goods.
• Cash term collection - customer pay upon goods delivery.
• Credit term collection - customer is given interest-free period to make payment within a timeline (normally 7-days, 14-days, 30-days, 60-days, etc.) after receiving the goods.

The money that customers owe to the company, normally due to credit terms, is called receivables. It is a common sense that high receivables will tighten up the company's cash flow, and, on the other hand, advanced payment collection will have positive impact on the company's cash flow.

The common formula for receivables turnover is:

Receivables turnover = Total credit sales / Average accounts receivables

However, the formula used in Rakuten Trade Stock Screener is:

Receivables turnover = Total revenue / Average accounts receivables

This could be due to the difficulty in separating the credit sales from the revenue with the financial information made available to the investors.

A high receivables turnover rate indicates that the company is effective in collecting back the money owed by customers. A low receivables turnover rate is normally a red alert to investors and bankers.

Here is an example to perform stock filtering and screening in Rakuten Trade based on the 2 turnover rates as mentioned above.

Login to Rakuten Trade online trading website, select the Stock Screener menu, add a new filtering criterion, and select Receivables Turnover (%). Set its minimum to 10%.

Then, add in another filtering criterion Inventory Turnover (%). Set its minimum to 10%.

You should be able to get a list of around 40-50 matching stock counters on your screen at this moment.

Note that inventory turnover is generally industry-related, and you should compare the inventory turnover rate of a company with its peers in the same industry. For example, we expect a high inventory turnover rate in the FMCG industry.

If you don't have a Rakuten Trade account to access to the Stock Screener above, you can use this link to open a new Rakuten Trade account for free, including no charge for opening new CDS account. By opening account with the link, you can get 500 RT Points within 30 days upon your account activation. Beside that, if you start your trading within the first 10 business days after account activation, your first online trading brokerage fee will be rebated as additional RT Points as well.

Online stock filtering and screening by profit margins and profit growth

Beside analysing stock counters investability using Return of Equity (ROE) and Return of Assets (ROA), it is also imperative in fundamental analysis to evaluate the business profitability of the stock counters. This can be achieved by looking into their profit margins and profit growth rate.

Operating profit is the profit (i.e. revenue minus the cost of goods sold) derived from the company's core business operations. Operating profit margin is the percentage of operating profit portion divided by total revenue.

A company with higher operating profit margin usually has more room to give discount (i.e. temporary lowering the profit margin in order to secure a deal), and therefore more financially healthy.

Companies which are able to maintain a high operating profit margin all the time are usually having high competition barrier, protecting them from being forced into price war with competitors. 

The operating profit margin is usually going along with the industry. Industries with generally high profit margin including high technology, cosmetics, premium consumer brands, etc. If a company's operating profit margin is above its industry average, it indicates that its management team is more capable in bringing in business profit than its industry peers.

Pretax profit is the profit that takes into account both operating income and non-operating income. Examples of non-operating income including investment gains, forex gains, profit from selling out fixed assets, etc. Pretax profit is also known as earnings before interest and tax (EBIT).

Usually, a company will have pretax profit margin that is slightly lower than its operating profit margin. If its pretax profit margin is higher than its operating profit margin, it indicates that the company is making more profit from non-operating revenue than its core business revenue.

Here is an example to perform stock filtering and screening in Rakuten Trade based on profit margins.

Login to Rakuten Trade online trading website, select the Stock Screener menu, add a new filtering criterion, and select Operating Margin (%). Set its minimum to 35%.

Then, add in another filtering criterion Pretax Margin (%). Set its minimum to 30%.

Beside having good profit margins, we might also want to see the company's profit growth year by year. Therefore, select the 3rd filtering criterion Pretax Profit Growth Rate (%) and set its minimum to 10%.

You will instantly get the list of matching stocks on your screen, which is around 40 to 50 counters at the time being.

Combined with our 2 filters of ROE and ROA, the list will be left with only around 10 counters.

You will see some rubber glove counters in the list. The rubber glove industry has been enjoying an exceptional good profit margin over the past 2 years. The question you need to ask as an investor is that: does this good profit margin sustainable, at least for another upcoming year?

Note that companies with low profit margin does not necessary mean that their industry is not profitable, provided that they are able to generate their profit by high volume of sales. Example of such industries including grocery trading, essential food trading, etc.

If you don't have a Rakuten Trade account to access to the Stock Screener above, you can use this link to open a new Rakuten Trade account for free, including no charge for opening new CDS account. By opening account with the link, you can get 500 RT Points within 30 days upon your account activation. Beside that, if you start your trading within the first 10 business days after account activation, your first online trading brokerage fee will be rebated as additional RT Points as well.

Online stock filtering and screening by ROE and ROA

In fundamental analysis, Return of Equity (ROE) and Return of Assets (ROA) are among the most important indicators used to evaluate the investability of targetted stock counters.

There are generally 4 components that make up the shareholders' equity:

• The shares that are sold out to the shareholders, and tradable in the market.
• The shares that are repurchased by the company and kept as treasury shares.
• Company's profit that is reinvested into the business as retained earnings.
• Additional paid-in capital pumped into the company by its shareholders.

In short, shareholders' equity is the money that the company's shareholder had invested into its business, together with the retained earnings from the company's business profit.

ROE is therefore a measurement to evaluate how effective is the company's management team in managing the business and bringing in annual profit to the company.

ROE = Net Profit / Shareholder Equity

The main different between ROE and ROA is that, ROE does not take into account the financial leverage or debt of the company, whereas ROA includes it.

As you might have aware of the basic financial equation as illustrated in the diagram below:

Total Assets = Shareholders' Equity + Total Liabilities

The company needs assets to run its business. The assets can be funded either from shareholders' equity, or from 3rd parties (non-shareholders) as liabilities, for example, in the form of financing loans.

ROA is a measurement to evaluate how effective is the company's management team in utilizing the company's assets to make profit.

ROA = Net Profit / Total Assets

ROA = Net Profit / (Shareholder Equity + Liabilities)

For those companies that are in net cash position (without any debts), its ROE = ROA.

For those companies with liabilities, its ROE is normally higher than ROA, as assets are increased by taking debt.

As a benchmark, if the ROA is lower than bond return rate or even fixed deposit return rate, the shareholders might as well put their money (and borrowed money) in those low-risk money-generating financial instruments, rather than in the business, which is more risky.

When picking target stocks for investment from thousands of counters in the stock market, one of the initial fundamental shortlisting methods is to filter the target stocks to those that meeting the criteria of ROE > 20% and ROA > 15%.

In Rakuten Trade, you can easily do your shortlisting with just a few mouse clicks.

You just need to login to Rakuten Trade online trading website, select the Stock Screener menu, add a new filtering criterion, and select ROE (%).

After that, do the same to select another filtering criterion ROA (%).

Set the minimum of ROE to 20%, and the minimum of ROA to 15%.

You will instantly get the list of matching stocks on your screen, which is around 30 to 40 counters at the time being.

If you don't have a Rakuten Trade account to access to the Stock Screener above, you can use this link to open a new Rakuten Trade account for free, including no charge for opening new CDS account. By opening account with the link, you can get 500 RT Points within 30 days upon your account activation. Beside that, if you start your trading within the first 10 business days after account activation, your first online trading brokerage fee will be rebated as additional RT Points as well.

How to use RT Points in Rakuten Trade to offset brokerage fee

Rakuten Trade is currently the first and the only Malaysian stockbroking online platform with a loyalty point system and also allows offset of stock trading brokerage fee by using your accumulated RT Points.

With this mechanism, if you have enough RT Points in your account, you can literally trade with zero brokerage fee when you wholly offset it with your RT Points.

Each RT Points carries a value of RM0.01. As such, if you have 1,000 RT Points, that is equivalent to RM10 value that you can use to pay for brokerage fee.

Rakuten Trade offers 3 different types of stock trading accounts: Cash Upfront, Contra, and RakuMargin. Each of them will have a separate CDS number, but you can access to all of them using a single Rakuten Trade user account.

Normally, a brokerage firm will charge you RM10 for each new CDS number account opening, but opening stock trading account with Rakuten Trade (including the CDS account) is free of charge and can be completed wholly online without the need to fill up paper forms or meeting in person.

If you use this link to open a new Rakuten Trade account, you can get 500 RT Points within 30 days upon your account activation. Beside that, if you start your trading within the first 10 business days after account activation, your first online trading brokerage fee will be rebated as additional RT Points as well.

The brokerage fee of Rakuten Trade online platform is among the cheapest in Malaysia, ranging from a minimum of RM7 to a maximum of RM100. If you trade in large amount per transaction, the maximum cap of RM100 will be a very attractive rate.

If you do day trading (buying and selling the same share within the same day) using your contra account, the brokerage fee for your selling transaction will also be rebated.

Below are some of the ways to accumulate RT Points:

• Refer your friends to Rakuten Trade (500 RT Points each)
• Trading brokerage fee (RM2 = 1 RT Point)
• Deposit at least RM5,000 into your trading account within 5 business days after account activation (150 RT Points for each type of accounts)
• Transfer shares from your other CDS to your Rakuten Trade CDS (150 RT Points)
• Participate in Rakuten Trade's online and offline events, seminars, talks, survey, etc.

Online trading with Rakuten Trade can be performed either with the Rakuten Trade web platform or the iSPEED.my mobile app.

To offset your brokerage fee with your RT Points, make sure you select the "Use RT Pts to lower Brokerage" option in your Buy/Sell order, before you click on the Confirm button.

The same applies in iSPEED.my mobile app.

Beside able to use for brokerage offsetting, you can also transfer your RT Points to AirAsia BIG, Bonuslink or Boost at a 1:1 conversion rate.

Webinar: Syariah & ESG investing (by BIMB) Malaysia economic outlook (by PNB)

There will be a free webinar on next Tuesday night in Zoom by Rakuten Trade, about Shariah & ESG (environmental, social & governance) Investing - by panelist from Bank Islam Malaysia Bhd (BIMB) Chief Economist Dr. Mohd Afzanizam Abdul Rashid, and also Malaysia Economic Outlook in 2022 - by panelist from Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB) Head of Research Mohd Redza Abdul Rahman.

Topic: Shariah & ESG Investing and Malaysia Economic Outlook

Date: Tuesday 14 September 2021

Time: 08:00 PM

Meeting ID: 959 2522 3469

Passcode: 674853

You can click this link to join the webinar at that time.

Rakuten Trade is a wholly online Bursa Malaysia stock trading platform, a joint venture between Kenanga Investment Bank and Japanese-based Rakuten Securities, which has been in service since 2017.

You can use this link to open free stock trading account with Rakuten Trade, and get 500 RT points upon account activation. The RT points can be used to offset your stock trading brokerage fee.

 

Phillip Investment Conference 2021 - Sept 11 live online (promo code for free ticket)

FYI, Phillip Capital who manages eUnittrust.com.my and Phillip Mutual Berhad, is organizing the 11th Phillip Investment Conference 2021.

The theme for this year is "Road to Investment: Turning The Corner".

Due to the current pandemic situation, the conference will be held online.

Date: Saturday 11 September 2021

Time: 9:00am to 6:00pm

Venue: LIVE Online Conference at www.phillipinvestmentconference2021.com.my

Ticket Price: RM138 (early bird price: RM108)

Use this promo code to redeem for FREE admission ticket: PCELEEUT

You can collect accreditation points with this event:

• SIDC – Continuing Professional Education (CPE) Points  
• FIMM – Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Points 
• MFPC – Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Points 
• FPAM – Continuing Education (CE) Points

 Click here to register for this event.

How much can you earn with Touch n Go eWallet GO+ account?

By now, you should be aware that there is a daily return earning account called GO+ inside Touch n Go (TNG) eWallet, which maintains a separate balance from the normal eWallet balance.

Unlike the normal TNG eWallet balance which has zero return, this GO+ balance enables you to earn daily return. Your balance will be seamlessly used to invest in money market fund operated by Principal Asset Management Berhad, which is a joint venture between Principal Financial Group and CIMB Group. 

Touch n Go itself is a wholly-owned subsidiary of CIMB Group, while TNG eWallet is a joint venture with Ant Financial.

You need to go through the eKYC procedure to activate the GO+ feature in TNG eWallet. If you haven't done so, and plan to activate it, you can use this referral code "7shwuw" during your GO+ activation.

You can cash in your GO+ account either directly from your bank account using FPX, or from your eWallet balance. You can cash out your GO+ money, also either directly to your bank account or to your eWallet balance. 

There is minimum and maximum daily limit for the 2 types of cash in and cash out, as should in the table below.

Your GO+ account also has a maximum balance limit of RM9,500 only. When you have reached the limit, you can no longer cash in more money to your GO+ account, but the balance inside your account will still earn daily return and continue to be added to your balance.

The daily return rate of your GO+ account is estimated to be within the range of 1.2% p.a. and 2.4% p.a. Most of the current time, it is between 1.4% p.a. and 1.5% p.a.

The return is daily rest, and the cut-off time is 4pm everyday. The daily return will be credited into your GO+ account around 1am in the next day.

So, how much return can you expect in your GO+ account? You can refer to the table below.

If your GO+ balance is below RM200, your daily return will be negligible. Therefore, it is advisable for you to maintain your GO+ balance above RM200 to have some meaningful return.

 

If your account balance is at RM9,500 and the daily return rate is at 2.4% p.a., you will earn about 62.47 sen each day.

Let's multiply the earning return by 30, you can then estimate how much you can roughly earn per month with an average daily return rate as listed in the table below.

The return amount might not be very impressive, but bear in mind that this rate is actually much better than bank savings account.

EPF declared 5.2% (conventional) / 4.9% (shariah) dividend for 2020

After a long time waiting, the Employees Provident Fund (EPF, a.k.a. KWSP) has finally declared the dividend rate for financial year 2020.

For year 2020, the dividend declared for conventional account is 5.2% while for Shariah account is 4.9%. The dividend has already credited into members' account, and you can check for it by login into your EPF i-Account.

Year 2020 was the 4th year of dividend declaration for Shariah account, while dividend for conventional account has been declared annually since 1952. The dividend for Shariah account in all the years from 2017 to 2020 were lower than the dividend for conventional account of the same year.

The 5.20% dividend for EPF conventional account in 2020 is 4.59% lower than the 5.45%  dividend declared for 2019 (last year).

Calculation: (5.20-5.45)/5.45 = -0.25/5.45 = -4.59%

It is 6.12% higher than the 4.90% Shariah dividend declared for the same year.

Calculation: (5.20-4.90)/4.90 = 0.30/4.90 = 6.12%

The table below shows the historical EPF dividend payout rate since 2000, for you to judge yourself whether the dividend payout rate in 2020 is satisfactory or not.

Tips to rent out condo / apartment unit with good rental return

Despite the current relatively soft rental market, it is still possible to have above-average rental return for your invested new condominium / apartment unit.

I am sharing the tips below based on my own experience, which worked well with me, and hopefully will work with you too.

Tip #1: Choose lower unit when buying new condominium / apartment

It is a common developer's practice that the higher the floor, the more expensive will be the unit of the same layout type.

Higher floor has better scenery view, which can see further away. If you save your cost on this by buying a lower unit, you can use the saved money to do better renovation, and also to furnish the unit with more furniture and electrical appliance.

In addition, lower unit is normally nearer to the car park and also to the Ground Floor. In the event of a long waiting lift, or lift under maintenance, you have the advantage of using the staircase to reach your car park or Ground Floor, without having to walk down too many floors.

This is also of advantage to your tenant during fire drill exercise, as there will be fewer floors to walk down to the evacuation area.

Tip #2: Choose a unit that less likely to be blocked by neighbouring building

When you choose your unit, make sure that it's view won't be blocked by neighbouring building, either presently or in the future.

This is because blocked unit has much lesser scenery view, less privacy as it can be seen from the other building, and dimmer sunlight.

You can ensure that your view won't be blocked by future development by choosing a unit that is facing the sea, or a lake, or a river, or low-rise landed properties, or golf field. Avoid facing a vacant land, which you won't know if there is another high-rise building erected in front of you in the future.

Tip #3: Choose smaller unit with 2 bedrooms or 3 bedrooms

Smaller unit has a cheaper selling price than larger counterparts in the same building. As the building maintenance fee and sinking fund is directly proportional to the area taken by the unit, you can also enjoy a cheaper monthly maintenance fee and sinking fund by investing in a smaller unit.

The ideal size is between 800 sqft to 1000 sqft. Depends on the floorplan layout, it is possible for you to partition a 2 bedrooms unit into 3 bedrooms. If that is the case, you will be of more competitive advantage to invest in a 2 bedrooms unit, having the option to convert it into a 3 bedrooms unit if required by your tenant.

Smaller unit is easier to get tenant who are either individual, couple without kid, or small family. You will have better bargaining power on the rental price, since your cost is lower.

For larger unit, your demand will be from larger family, or you will need to allow for sub-renting. Otherwise, since your cost is higher, if you are not willing to lower down your rental price to be on par with the smaller unit's rental price, it will be more difficult for you to secure a tenant.

Tip #4: Choose corner unit

Based on my own experience, usually the smaller units in a condominium / apartment are also corner units.

Chosing corner unit has the following advantages:

• You will have more windows, brighter sunlight, and more external views.
• All your rooms are likely to have external views. For intermediate units, it is common that one or more rooms will have corridor view, or even without any window.

Tip #5: Choose a bare unit

Certain development projects allow buyers to choose whether to let the developer to furnish the unit with built-in furniture and kitchen appliance, or to leave it as bare unit.

For investment purpose, it is strongly advised to go for bare unit, because:

• Every developer renovated unit will have same type of furnishing, making them look the same to the potential tenants who view the unit. There will be no difference and uniqueness.
• You can't control the quality and material used by the developer's contractor who furnishes the unit. In many occasions, I found people complained about substandard furnishing they got, and they regretted for not choosing a bare unit.
• By having a bare unit, you have good control on getting your trusted renovation contractor and/or interior designer to provide good quality furniture and fitting, nice looking design, and having a unique design different from other units. You also avoided the situation of having portion of standard renovation that you dislike.

Tip #6: Make sure your unit's electricity tariff is of residential rate

If you are buying a residential unit in a service apartment, it is very likely that your electricity tariff by default is of commercial rate, which is much higher than the residential rate. You can apply for the tariff conversion online pretty easily by following the steps as written in this article.

Your tenant will be happier to know that the electricity tariff of your unit is of residential rate rather than commercial rate.

Tip #7: Renovate and furnish your unit into fully furnished or close to fully furnished

This is the key of getting a relatively better rental than your neighbours in the same building. Your unit needs to make a difference and need to be more tempting to your potential tenant.

Your renovation and furnishing need to be practical for daily living. You need to supply your tenant with all the daily living essentials, such as ceiling fans, air-conds, sufficient lighting, refrigerator with sufficient capacity, washing machine, drying machine (if it is difficult to find place to dry clothes with direct sunlight), kitchen cabinets, wardrobes, etc.

Although you might not need to choose to supply with high-end electrical appliance, it is better to provide good quality and branded one. Firstly, they are more presentable to your tenant. Secondly, the chances of breakdown are probably lower, and in case of warranty service is needed, you are likely to have better after-sales service from branded products.

It is a very good selling point if you could make your unit a comfortable and convenient place to live in, with the comfy feel of "home" to your tenant. It needs to be presentable and honorable for your tenant to welcome his/her guests visiting to your unit, a.k.a. your tenant's sweet home.

To give you an idea, below are 2 pictures of the kitchen area of 2 of my invested units respectively.

Tip #8: Take nice photos and videos to advertise your unit

Whether you want to rent out your unit by yourself, or through property renting platform such as SpeedHome, or using property agents, you need to take nice photos and videos to advertise your unit.

You will need altogether 3 sets of photos and videos:

• Your unit
• Highlight your unique selling points.
• Highlight what's your difference compared with other units.
• Highlight its security features, such as: digital door lock, invisible grilles, etc.
• Highlight its privacy features, such as: curtain & blinds, soundproof, etc.
• Provide good impression to potential tenant to fell that "this is the comfy home to live in".

• Your condominium/apartment
• Highlight your building's unique selling points compared with other neighbouring buildings.
• Highlight how presentable is it to visitors - parking, visitor waiting area, OKU considerations, etc.
• Showcase the common facilities - swimming pool, sauna, gym room, children playground, recreational facilities, sports facilities, social facilities, etc.
• Showcase the security and privacy.
• Showcase the convenience.
• Showcase the friendliness of residents, quality of management office and security guards, etc.
• Interesting events, functions and happenings in your community - festivals celebration, parties, marriage occasions, BBQ, educational events, etc.
• Available high-speed broadband Internet service providers, the more choices the merrier - UniFi, Time, Maxis, Astro, Fiber@Home, etc.

• The nearby surroundings of your condominium/apartment
• Convenience stores
• Eateries and restaurants
• Sport facilities - badminton, tennis, basketball, volleyball, soccer, golf, stadium, etc.
• Recreation places - parks, lake, riverside, hiking route, etc.
• Clinics and shops
• Marts, morning market, night market, ...
• Shopping mall, commercial area, banks, ATM machines, ...
• Kindergartens, schools, colleges, universities, daycare centres, tuition centres, ...
• Medical centre, hospitals, police station, fire brigade, ...
• LRT/MRT stations
• Traffic condition
• Surrounding community

With all these in place, I believe you will be able to get a good tenant with a good rental return too.

38 KLSE stocks that show continuous net profit growth

As I mentioned before, Rakuten Trade has a handy and useful Stock Screener function which includes Detailed Analysis powered by Thomson Reuters.

You can use this link to open a new Rakuten Trade account for free.

We can find the following 38 stocks with net profit chart that shows continuous growth over the recent years and forecasted to continue growing in the upcoming 2 years, by a quick screening through the Detailed Analysis. This is useful to perform initial filtering for investment stock picking.

Among the 38 stocks, 32 of them show consistent continuous net profit growth, while I opined that another 6 worth to add into this list although their graph is not as perfect as the 32.

The 32 stocks, sorted by their counter number, are as follow. Note that the price information at the top right corner of the graphs is the last matched price before market closing on Wednesday 19 August 2020.

0001 SCOMNET

0002 KOTRA

0021 GHLSYS

0037 RGB

0080 STRAITS

0128 FRONTKN

0169 SMTRACK

0176 KRONO

0200 REVENUE

0208 GREATEC

0215 SLVEST

0218 ACO

0219 RL

0220 OVH

0221 TCS

03017 UNIWALL

3034 HAPSENG

4731 SCIENTX

5008 HARISON

5077 MAYBULK

5102 GCB

5156 XDL

5279 SERBADK

7013 HUBLINE

7029 MASTER

7084 QL

7160 PENTA

7181 ARBB

7277 DIALOG

9296 RCECAP

9687 IDEAL

9792 SEG

and the other 6 stocks are:

5250 SEM

5292 UWC

7034 TGUAN

7091 UNIMECH

7148 DPHARMA

7153 KOSSAN

Disclaimer: This article is intended for sharing of point of view only. It is not an advice or recommendation to buy or sell any of the mentioned stock counters. You should do your own homework before trading in Bursa Malaysia.