Cacafonix

Hi,

I've been doing some research on living costs and found some info about rent on numbeo.com. According to them, the typical cost of renting a 1-bed city centre apartment (in MYR) is:

Penang 950 (I assume this means Penang island but it doesn't say)
KL 2500
KK 710

These figures are quite a bit lower than I was expecting based on a recent trip. Can anybody let me know how realistic / unrealistic they are, or to put it another way what would you get in those places for those amounts? I haven't found much online about this.

Also, is a typical tenancy 6 or 12 months, and are you really looking at hotels / serviced apartments for periods of say 3 months at a time?

Thanks in advance. I need to do some number crunching but it won't tell me much if the numbers are wrong...

JC3

Hi again Cacafonix,

How's the singing coming along?

For rental prices on Penang Island I recommend you go to iProperty.com : Asia's Leading Online Property Group, select ‘Rent’ , select 'Penang', then select the areas where most expats live e.g. Tanjung Tokong, Tanjung Bungah, Batu Ferringhi, and then key-in your min /max budget. Then hit Search. (You can do the same for KL and KK of course, but it’s easier once to narrow down the area(s) that you want to live in).

In Penang I believe most landlords would prefer a one year rental term (the norm), but because there is a vast oversupply of apartments for rent (thousands) in Penang, some may be happy to accept shorter term rentals. Remember, everything’s negotiable!

If you were renting for a year I think you could negotiate about 15-40% off the asking price. If only renting for three months getting a discount off the advertised asking price will be a tougher call.

On Penang Island serviced apartments are certainly an option, but I think you’ll get a better place for less if you negotiate with a private landlord.

You could also try the holiday rentals websites. For a three month rental in Penang perhaps you could negotiate 50%+ off the weekly rate. Some landlords would be delighted. A lot less hassle for them than weekly rentals.

Good luck!

JC3

Cacafonix

Hi JC3,

The singing is going great guns thanks. I live pretty much cheek-by-jowl with my neighbours in a converted old building and they love it so much they clubbed together to get me lessons.

Thanks a lot for that info. I found that the cost of living over there is not so low as to cancel out the cost of your flights and accommodation if you are going for 2-3 months. Unless you sell up, it seems that kind of peripatetic lifestyle is going to cost you more. Still, life is short and you can't take it with you...

I did pass a bunch of apparently English expats coming out of a wine bar more or less opposite the Blue Mansion about 10 days ago. Forum members perhaps?

bakedbean

I think there was one of those expat "mingles" somewhere in town.

My experience, and I am currently looking to rent for a while, is that Yes there are rentals out there. Some that are advertised on the popular property websites do not actually exist Some are advertised with wrong photographs....that is damn annoying when you turn up at a property and it's completely different, and the co-agent doesn't seem to think it matters.

There are a lot of seriously bad units out there. Maybe I'm fussy but I've seen places I wouldn't live in for free.

I am actually finding it (surprisingly) not much different to when I (we) were looking for rental places some 6 or 7 years ago.

The thing is, and we have discussed on here before, is that there is a different mentality with holding a property. It doesn't actually cost much to leave a property empty, so owners do, and (unless they have a mortgage to pay) they really don't care. It's a long term investment which will appreciate (at least so far in Penang).

You really have to hunt out the good properties.

SushiFan

JC3 already mentioned a good website. Alternatively you could use Malaysia Property and Real Estate, Property for Sale/Rent | PropertyGuru Malaysia
This website also gives you a search engine where you can indicate the size, number of rooms, and many other parameters which are important to your decision making process.

Epicurious

The figure of 2500 is exactly what I pay for a serviced one bedroom apartment in a nice area of KL (but not in the most expensive areas). There are cheaper units in the same building, on lower floors. Trying to get a six month lease was really difficult and I finally committed to a year.

There's a huge amount of building going on in KL and I can't imagine where they will find the people to fill all the new units. I would thus expect rental prices to fall and negotiation of short term leases to become somewhat easier in future.

I echo BB's comments about the unreliability of agents' adverts.