Nah, guide for your friend, scroll down to item 3 "Minimum property price for foreign investment in 2023" in the link and read onwards from there:

https://www.iproperty.com.my/guides/foreign...ete-guide-12332

My dua sen for investment:

The high price restrictions for foreigners buying Malaysian property makes investing via direct purchase in market very difficult to sustain.

The main market for that price point will be high-income executives, of which local execs will be more likely to just buy their own property or rent from locals at a much more favorable price (since current market for both buying and renting is already a bit soft), while foreign execs do not consider Malaysia a very attractive destination to stay/work in relative to other countries in SEA, because we're neither the cheapest to live in nor are we the most developed, on top of being relatively not as foreigner/non-Muslim friendly. At least for the near future lah.

Whether or not this improves, who can say, but we're still poor in competition to attract/retain high-pay execs.

There are other ways to roll that money given the large amount and his foreigner status. Money market, ETFs etc.

Property in Malaysia has not quite come down from the 2014 high and is still relatively high, which keeps instalment payment on the high end compared to the rental average which is still soft/weak.

Whether Malaysia is able to attract China investment is a big question mark given China's culture being very not Muslim friendly and Malaysia politics still heavily cater to Muslim culture. We have people who complain about having alcohol in convenience stores (there's another ethics discussion about easily accessible alcohol but that's a separate issue), or having a "pig" zodiac year....

This post has been edited by DragonReine: May 16 2023, 12:04 PM

Another couple of things for consideration (pessimistic ones):

1) AirBnB originally developed as a "stay with host that will show you around/give a friendly neighborhood feel", but has become a short-term stay platform that end up cater to travellers that travel in groups, but cannot afford (or don't feel it's worth) to book suites/multiple rooms in hotels. This kind of also means that the target market has shifted to the budget conscious, which pushes down asking prices to compete against budget hotels that also offer similarly low prices with the benefits of a concierge & other services that AirBnBs usually don't have.

The result is that there is a perception of Airbnb attracting "lower class" people that don't care for and will be inconsiderate of facilities (because they don't stay there long term and want to squeeze as much as they can out of facilities use), like what happened with Arte Mont Kiara or many other "investment grade" projects.

Those that have higher percentage of own-stay owners will often move to block/restrict Airbnb, while those that have higher percentage of investor owners will show wear and tear after several years. Investors also notoriously will not pay much for maintenance and/or flip the property early, so maintenance fund often have shortage which causes even more breakdowns.

2) Foreign execs who come here to stay because of work reasons are often subsidized by their company. If accomodations are subsidized, usually the company will choose to deal with hotels and "proper" service apartments run by hospitality groups that offer long term stay packages, because they are more confident in paying corporate-managed fees (which are more transparent about pricing with proper invoicing) than dealing with privately owned Airbnb/rental.

Co-working/digital nomad spaces have become a moderately popular business thing in recent years, so you have places like Komune Living/Komune Wellness and Living (managed by UOA's hospitality arm) and JL Co-Living that offer all the comforts of a hotel at prices that compete with the higher end rentals, with the benefit of "free" utilities, cleaning services, laundry etc.

Personally I've stayed for short term rental at some of these places for work reasons, and with the convenience offered I find it very hard from a business perspective to justify dealing with a nebulous landlord of questionable reputation vs dealing with a company that is easily held accountable if things go wrong, when prices offered are similar or better.

Could easily be Singaporean, or Malaysian descent but family had migrated so not citizen dy LMAO but expat doesn't mean good @ English lah, maybe they're also just good at code-switching

Regardless, unless rajin² background check on forumer, just take at face value n stick to topic.

This post has been edited by DragonReine: May 17 2023, 11:00 AM