We love property. It’s in our name! We know that the rest of Malaysia loves property too. But just how many properties are there in Malaysia?
Malaysia’s property stock stretches from shining temples to engineering marvels like Exchange 106, right down to simple and affordable homes.
It includes commercial buildings, industrial factories, residential developments, as well as many weird and wonderful buildings beside.
Enough talk, it’s time to get down and dirty with the numbers, and explore just how many properties Malaysia has in its portfolio!
Profiling Malaysia’s Property Stock
According to the Malaysia Property Market Centre (NAPIC), there are almost 7 million properties in Malaysia!
That number includes almost 5.8 million residential properties, alongside offices, shopping complexes, shops, serviced apartments, industrial buildings, and hotels.
It’s fascinating to explore the numbers and see what that means in reality. Did you know, there are 10 residential properties in Malaysia to every shop, for example? Let’s take a look at the numbers and see how it breaks down!
Property Type |
Number Of Units In Malaysia |
Residential | 5,775,095 |
Shop | 534,032 |
Serviced Apartment | 263,220 |
Industrial | 117,526 |
SOHO (Small Office, Home Office) | 43,282 |
Hotel | 3,423 |
Purpose-Built Office | 2,548 |
Shopping Complexes | 1,042 |
Total | 6,740,168 |
Those figures hide some big differences though. Your average shopping complex is obviously a lot bigger than your average apartment (which is a good thing, because how would you keep all those rooms clean!?).
Shopping complexes covered a whopping 16,769,150 square metres of retail space in the first half of 2020. That’s an awful lot of bubble tea shops! Of that space, three-quarters is made up by shopping centres, 17.1% by hypermarkets, and 8.1% by arcades.
Want to know where the most shopping is? 22.1% of all shopping complex space in Malaysia is in Selangor. That’s the place to be for the shopaholics out there, it seems!
Wrestling With Residential Property Stock
Ok, let’s face it, residential property is where a lot of the excitement is. The NAPIC figures paint a pretty picture of how that property stock looks throughout Malaysia.
It might not seem like it if you’re a big city lights kind of person, but almost 70% of houses in Malaysia fall under the landed property category. Just 30.7% of property is stratified property such as apartment complexes or condos.
NAPIC’s analysis also reveals that an additional 462,028 units of residential property are identified under "planned supply" for the future.
That adds to the 5,775,095 of existing stock to tip us over that six million mark in the near future. Let’s explore a breakdown of what that residential landscape looks like today.
Landed Property
2-3 Storey Terraced
1,291,971
22.4%
Single-Storey Terraced
1,075,205
18.6%
Low-Cost House
689,116
11.9%
Detached
486,765
8.4%
Single-Storey Semi-Detached
213,654
3.7%
2-3 Storey Semi-Detached
206,372
3.6%
Cluster
41,710
0.7%
Stratified Property
Condominium/Apartment
920,617
15.9%
Low-Cost Flat
474,332
8.2%
Flat
331,198
5.7%
Townhouse
44,155
0.8%
Did you realise that terraced housing was the most popular housing type in Malaysia? It makes up 40% of the total property stock in 2020. That maybe explains why there are over 100,000 terrace houses for sale on PropertyGuru today!
When it comes to stratified property, it’s perhaps less of a surprise that the condominium and apartment property type wins out.
That makes up more than half of all stratified property stock, and over 15% of the total property stock in Malaysia. There are over 130,000 apartments and condos for sale on PropertyGuru today.
Where Are All These Residential Properties?
We’ve had a look at the ‘what’, now it’s time to look at the ‘where’. So just where are all these residential properties in Malaysia? Let’s break it down by region.
Selangor is the unsurprising champion of residential units, home to over 1.5 million of Malaysia’s residential properties. Johor comes in a distant second place, with almost 850,000 residential properties. Time to explore the full details.
There you have it! The volume of residential stock varies significantly throughout Malaysia, from 12,705 units registered in Labuan through to the almost 1.6 million registered in Selangor.
What’s for certain is that there’s a whole country of amazing property out there for sale. Thanks to PropertyGuru, you know where to start looking.
Need more Malaysian property insight? Explore The Different Types Of Properties And Houses In Malaysia to brush up on your knowledge!
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