Resumen
Rental housing has given positive impacts on the overall economic development of a city as well as the country. It is an alternative that mutually benefits the landlords and tenants. Landlords earn additional income as house owners while tenants who unable to afford to own a house has another alternative to stay. However, the absence of firm regulations related to the tenancy agreement between landlord and tenant has resulted in recurrent and repeated disputes over a long span of years. Thus, this study aims to analyze the landlord?s perception towards the introduction of the Residential Tenancy Act in governing tenancy matters. This study sought to achieve three (3) objectives, which are (1) To analyze landlords? acceptance or refusal towards the introduction of the Residential Tenancy Act, (2) To identify the impacts of new proposed act towards landlords, and (3) To identify rising issues and challenges faced by the government in regulating Residential Tenancy Act in Malaysia. This study undergoes quantitative analysis where descriptive analysis been made from questionnaire survey with landlords in Gombak district. A total of 50 samples were taken from landlords owning houses within Gombak district by using a self-administered questionnaire survey. The main finding of this study indicates that 70% of the respondents agreed on the introduction of the Residential Tenancy Act while the other 30% objected. The factor of refusal includes less awareness about the terminologies in the Residential Tenancy act, longer experience in managing rental housing and extensive process in solving disputes among landlords and tenants. The term on deposit payment is the main term agreed by most of the landlords to be incorporated in Residential Tenancy Act followed by the rental amount to be paid by tenant (including an increase of rental amount for the next few years). Therefore, this study has recommended strategies to strengthen the introduction of the Residential Tenancy Act to increase the landlord?s acceptance.