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SUMMARY
Forest City is finally making a comeback, but the recovery is much stronger in tourism, financial activity and government-backed business development than in its residential property market.
The old “ghost city” label came from a real mismatch: tens of thousands of homes had been built and largely sold, yet only a small fraction were occupied. That gap has narrowed, but it has not disappeared.
The biggest change is that Malaysia is no longer asking Forest City to succeed mainly as a giant housing project. Special Financial Zone status, the wider Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone and duty-free status are giving the existing development a new economic purpose.
Business interest is becoming harder to dismiss as pure promotion. Forest City has accumulated around 260 investor enquiries, while the family-office program has progressed from expressions of interest to operating offices managing more than RM700 million.
Visitor activity has recovered faster than residential activity. Millions of coastal visits, strong hotel traffic and more than 100,000 golfers show that Forest City can attract people even before it proves that large numbers want to live there permanently.
The population also appears to have risen substantially from the roughly 8,000 to 9,000 residents reported several years ago. But even a population near 20,000 remains very low against roughly 26,000 completed homes and the original ambition of around 700,000 residents.
The property market is still the weak link. Recent Forest City resales number only in the dozens per year, median prices remain below the broader Johor serviced-residence benchmark, and transactions at similar-sized units can still occur at very different prices.
Some of the policies designed to bring foreign buyers back may actually reinforce the split between Forest City’s revival and its resale market. The dedicated MM2H route and lower foreign-purchase threshold can support new developer sales without necessarily creating liquidity for existing owners.
Johor’s broader boom improves Forest City’s odds, but the benefits are indirect. The RTS Link, data centres, manufacturing investment and Singapore integration make southern Johor more valuable overall; Forest City still has to persuade residents and employers to choose its location over central Johor Bahru and other established nodes.
The comeback becomes much more convincing if the next phase looks less policy-driven: deeper resale volumes, more permanent households, offices filling with actual employers, family-office assets continuing beyond the initial incentives and businesses choosing Forest City because the ecosystem works, not simply because the tax treatment is attractive.
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Was Forest City really a ghost city?
Forest City really did have a severe occupancy problem, and that remains the starting point for judging any comeback today.
Country Garden told CNA that roughly 28,000 homes had been completed and more than 80% sold, while only about 9,000 people were actually living there. Forest City had originally been presented as a four-island city capable of housing around 700,000 people.
Those numbers explain why the “ghost city” label stuck. The strange part was that Forest City had sold plenty of property on paper. What it lacked was people living in those homes.
Even today, that distinction is crucial. Forest City’s developer says the project now has roughly 26,000 completed units, around 80% sold and close to 20,000 residents. The population figure deserves caution because the same 2026 company material also refers elsewhere to more than 15,000 residents. Earlier reporting also cited roughly 28,000 completed homes, so these occupancy ratios should not be treated as perfectly precise.
Still, either recent population estimate would represent a meaningful improvement from the 8,000 to 9,000 residents commonly reported several years earlier.
Even at 20,000 residents, though, we would still have fewer than one resident per completed home. Forest City has clearly filled up somewhat, but there is still a huge gap between property ownership and actual occupation.
| Forest City measure | Earlier reported level | Recent reported level | What it tells us |
|---|---|---|---|
| Original population target | ~700,000 | Unchanged master-plan ambition | Shows how enormous the original project was |
| Completed homes | ~28,000 in earlier reporting | ~26,000 in recent developer data | Tens of thousands of units already exist |
| Homes sold | More than 80% | Around 80% | Sales were never the whole problem |
| Residents | ~8,000–9,000 | Developer says 15,000–20,000 | Occupancy appears to be improving |
| Residents per completed home | ~0.3 | Roughly 0.6–0.8 | Still extremely low for a normal residential city |
Why is Forest City suddenly relevant again?
Forest City is relevant again because Malaysia has given the project a new job instead of simply trying to sell more apartments.
The original Forest City model relied heavily on international property buyers, particularly mainland Chinese buyers. Chinese capital controls, political uncertainty in Malaysia, Covid-era border restrictions and Country Garden’s financial crisis all hit that model.
Malaysia has since repositioned Forest City as a Special Financial Zone and placed it inside the wider Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone. Pulau Satu has also become a duty-free island.
That changes what Forest City is actually trying to become.
These days, the sales pitch increasingly revolves around wealth management, fintech, regional services, family offices, international residents and businesses that want access to Johor while remaining close to Singapore.
The incentives are unusually strong. Qualifying companies in selected financial activities can receive a 5% corporate tax rate. Eligible knowledge workers can benefit from a 15% personal tax rate under the wider JS-SEZ framework. Qualifying single-family-office investment vehicles in Forest City can receive a 0% income-tax rate.
The current Forest City is being tested as an economic cluster built on top of an already-developed but underoccupied property project. That is a much more plausible use of what already exists than simply restarting the old sales machine.
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Are companies actually interested in Forest City’s Special Financial Zone?
Yes. Forest City’s Special Financial Zone is attracting enough business interest that we can no longer dismiss it as another relaunch announcement.
Invest Johor reported in June 2026 that the Invest Malaysia Facilitation Centre-Johor had received 260 cumulative enquiries related to the Forest City zone. Forty-eight of those arrived between January and April alone.
The enquiries cover financial institutions, business services and single-family offices, with roughly half coming from Malaysian investors. Invest Johor also said several companies had reached advanced negotiations or feasibility studies, with potential investments under discussion worth billions of ringgit.
The number becomes more interesting when we look at the trajectory. Earlier official briefings referred to a little over 200 enquiries. The figure then moved to 260, while the conversation broadened beyond family offices into fintech, digital businesses, green technology, AI-related activities and regional business services.
An enquiry is obviously much weaker than an investment. Invest Johor itself acknowledged that many of the 260 have not converted.
Still, 260 potential investors are enough to show that Forest City has regained attention from businesses. The tougher test now is conversion.
Are Forest City’s family offices becoming a real business?
Yes. Forest City’s family-office program has moved from tax incentives and expressions of interest into actual operating firms with substantial assets.
This is probably the strongest evidence of a genuine economic comeback so far.
When the Securities Commission formalised the scheme, it said more than 30 expressions of interest had been received. Six families had obtained conditional approval with close to RM400 million of indicative assets under management.
By April 2026, the Securities Commission said nine family offices had been secured with about RM670 million under management.
Then came a stronger confirmation. In June 2026, Maybank told The Business Times that early single-family offices it had helped establish in Forest City were already operating and collectively held more than RM700 million in assets under management.
We have gone from enquiries, to approvals, to registered offices, to hundreds of millions of ringgit being managed. That progression is more useful than any single headline number.
Forest City is still targeting RM2 billion of family-office assets by the end of 2026. More than RM700 million would put the early ecosystem above one-third of that target.
The incentives are powerful enough to explain some of the interest. Qualifying family-office vehicles can receive zero income tax for an initial ten-year period, with another ten years potentially available. They must meet minimum asset, staffing, spending and local-investment conditions.
A family office can manage RM100 million with a small team, so large AUM figures should not be confused with large-scale job creation.
| Forest City family-office progress | Reported level | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| Expressions of interest | 30+ | Initial demand appeared |
| Early conditional approvals | 6 families | Interest passed into regulatory processing |
| Indicative AUM at that stage | ~RM400m | Capital became measurable |
| Family offices reported by SC in April 2026 | 9 | Pipeline continued converting |
| Reported AUM in April | ~RM670m | Capital base expanded |
| Operating AUM reported by Maybank in June | RM700m+ | Offices were operating rather than waiting |
| Official end-2026 target | RM2bn | Forest City still needs roughly another 3x from the early operating base |
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Is Forest City actually busy now, and is duty-free status helping?
Yes. Forest City today receives enough visitors that describing the entire place as deserted has become misleading, and duty-free status gives people another reason to come.
The latest figures released by Forest City show roughly four million coastal visits during 2025, more than 100,000 golfers, 57 major golf tournaments and over 260,000 guests across its two hotels.
Those are company-reported figures, so we should treat them as operating data from the project rather than an independent visitor census. Even with that caveat, the scale is hard to ignore.
Four million annual coastal visits works out to almost 11,000 visits per day on average. More than 260,000 hotel guests equal over 700 guests per day across the two hotels. The golf courses attracted the equivalent of more than 270 players per day.
Forest City has also turned leisure into a recurring business rather than an occasional event. Its Classic Course ranked 36th in Asia in the 2026 Asia Top 100 and retained its position as Malaysia’s highest-ranked course for a seventh consecutive year.
Pulau Satu also became Malaysia’s fifth duty-free island following legislation passed in 2024. Forest City has an unusual advantage over Malaysia’s better-known duty-free islands because visitors can drive there.
That fits well with what Forest City is already becoming. The project has a four-kilometre coastline, two championship golf courses, two hotels, restaurants, retail, events and easy road access from the Malaysia-Singapore Second Link. Duty-free retail adds another reason to combine those activities in one trip.
The visitor comeback is already convincing. Whether those visits eventually produce more second-home buyers or permanent residents is still much less clear.
Are more people actually living in Forest City now?
Yes, Forest City appears to have gained residents, but we still do not have a clean independent population count.
Forest City currently says close to 20,000 people live there, compared with the roughly 8,000 to 9,000 residents widely reported around 2023. CNA has also recently used a figure of roughly 20,000 residents.
We would normally call that a very strong recovery. A move from 9,000 to 20,000 would mean the resident population had more than doubled.
There is a data-quality problem, though. Forest City’s own 2026 material says “close to 20,000” residents in one place and “more than 15,000” elsewhere. Without an official census covering the development, claiming a precise growth rate would be false precision.
The broad direction is clearer than the exact number. Forest City seems considerably more populated these days.
Scale remains the uncomfortable part. Around 20,000 residents across approximately 26,000 completed units equals roughly 0.77 person per home. Even a fairly modest household size would imply that many apartments are still vacant, intermittently occupied or used primarily as investment properties.
Compared with the original 700,000-person vision, 20,000 people would amount to less than 3% of the target.
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Are Forest City condo prices finally going up?
No. Forest City condo prices currently show trading activity and occasional expensive deals, but we do not see a convincing broad price recovery yet.
The freshest Brickz data is unusually useful here because it records transactions after stamp duty on the sale and purchase agreement has been paid.
Between July 2025 and June 2026, Brickz records 37 non-landed Forest City transactions with a median price of RM318,000 and a median RM527 per sq ft.
Expanding the window by one month gives 42 serviced-residence transactions between June 2025 and June 2026, with a median price around RM329,000 and RM535 per sq ft.
Individual 2026 sales show how uneven the market remains. Brickz recorded a 603 sq ft unit at RM318,000, or RM527 per sq ft, in May. Another 603 sq ft unit sold for RM240,000, or RM398 per sq ft, in April. A 517 sq ft unit changed hands for RM210,000, around RM406 per sq ft, in March.
At the opposite end, an 818 sq ft serviced residence sold for RM1 million, equivalent to RM1,222 per sq ft.
The latest Forest City median is also slightly below the RM567 per sq ft median across all Johor serviced-residence transactions over the same July-to-June period.
If the Special Financial Zone had already triggered a residential boom, the evidence should look much cleaner than this.
| Recent market measure | Forest City | Comparison / range | What we see |
|---|---|---|---|
| Non-landed median price | RM318,000 | Jul 2025–Jun 2026 | Affordable absolute pricing |
| Non-landed median psf | RM527 | Johor serviced residences: RM567 | Forest City still sits below state median |
| Recorded transactions | 37 | 12 months | Market is trading but remains small |
| 603 sq ft April 2026 sale | RM398 psf | RM240,000 | Low-end resale still exists |
| 603 sq ft May 2026 sale | RM527 psf | RM318,000 | Around current median |
| 818 sq ft March 2026 sale | RM1,222 psf | RM1m | Premium deals create huge dispersion |
Can Forest City owners actually resell their apartments easily?
No. Forest City has a functioning resale market today, but liquidity is still one of the project's biggest weaknesses.
Brickz records only 37 Forest City non-landed sales between July 2025 and June 2026.
The comparison with nearby markets is revealing. Over the same period, Country Garden Danga Bay recorded 201 serviced-residence transactions. R&F Tanjung Puteri recorded 103. Hijauan Medini recorded 73.
Forest City managed 37.
That does not make Forest City completely illiquid. In fact, its 37 transactions placed it among the more actively traded individual serviced-residence projects in Johor. The problem comes from comparing those sales with the extraordinary size of Forest City itself.
The development says it has roughly 26,000 completed homes.
Thirty-seven recorded non-landed transactions against tens of thousands of existing units is a tiny turnover rate. Even if Brickz misses some deals because of reporting lags or classification differences, the order of magnitude remains weak.
For existing owners, finding a buyer can matter as much as the theoretical market value.
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Is Forest City becoming more attractive to foreign buyers again?
Yes, but Forest City’s new foreign-buyer strategy still helps developer inventory more directly than existing owners trying to resell.
Forest City has several advantages today that did not exist during the worst years of the project. It has Special Financial Zone incentives, duty-free status, a dedicated MM2H route and a lower foreign-purchase threshold than buyers typically encounter elsewhere in Johor.
Forest City’s own current marketing highlights special approval allowing foreigners to purchase property from RM500,000.
The MM2H angle is particularly important. Under the Special Economic Zone and Special Financial Zone category, Forest City is the designated Johor location for the property-purchase requirement. Buyers using that route must generally purchase eligible property directly from a developer.
That should help Forest City clear unsold developer stock.
For existing owners, however, the effect is weaker. A visa-linked buyer channel that sends purchasers toward primary developer units does little for an owner trying to sell an apartment on the secondary market.
The old dependence on foreign capital also remains worth remembering. Historical housing data showed that roughly 5,266 of the first 5,344 Forest City sales went to foreign buyers, close to 99%.
Will Johor’s boom finally pull Forest City up with it?
Probably, but Forest City still has to capture Johor’s growth rather than simply sit beside it.
Southern Johor is in a much stronger position today than when Forest City entered crisis. The Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone has formalised deeper economic cooperation with Singapore, while data centres, manufacturing, logistics and other investments have poured into the state.
Forest City now sits inside that bigger economic story rather than trying to manufacture its own story from scratch.
A family office based in Forest City can access Singapore while operating from a lower-cost Malaysian base. Financial and digital businesses can potentially recruit from the wider Johor labour market. International residents can use Singapore for business while living on the Malaysian side.
But we should not attribute every Johor investment to Forest City.
A data centre built around Kulai does not suddenly fill a Forest City condo. A manufacturing investment near Pasir Gudang does not create an obvious commuting pattern to Pulau Satu. Central Johor Bahru, Iskandar Puteri, Nusajaya and other locations all compete for the same growth.
Forest City now has a much stronger regional backdrop. The remaining question is how much of that growth it can actually capture.
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Will the Singapore RTS Link make Forest City much more valuable?
The RTS Link should help Forest City, but probably less than property marketing around Johor sometimes implies.
The Johor Bahru-Singapore RTS Link is getting close to opening. Malaysia’s transport minister said in April 2026 that the project remained on track for a January 2027 launch. Singapore’s authorities have described capacity of up to 10,000 passengers per hour in each direction, with a train journey of roughly five minutes between Woodlands North and Bukit Chagar.
That will dramatically improve cross-border travel for Johor Bahru.
Forest City does not have an RTS station.
Bukit Chagar is in central Johor Bahru, while Forest City sits far to the west near the Second Link. A Forest City resident would still have to travel into the city centre before taking the RTS.
Forest City’s more natural Singapore connection is therefore Tuas and the Malaysia-Singapore Second Link. Shuttle services toward the border and better road connections arguably matter more to everyday Forest City residents than the RTS itself.
The RTS should still improve Johor’s overall appeal, but we would not value Forest City as though a Singapore-linked station were opening beside it.
Did Forest City’s attempt to attract tech people actually work?
Not yet. Forest City has attracted genuine tech-community interest, but one of its most visible experiments recently ended badly.
Balaji Srinivasan, the former Coinbase chief technology officer, chose Forest City for his Network School, a residential community built around technology, entrepreneurship and crypto culture.
For Forest City, this was exactly the kind of use case the revival strategy needs. An international community was taking underused real estate and filling it with people who could live and work remotely while building businesses.
Then the experiment ran into Malaysian regulation.
The Network School closed its Forest City operation in July 2026 after authorities identified licensing problems. The episode received more attention after controversy over foreign participants and scrutiny from Malaysian officials.
The idea has not disappeared. Monochrome Asset Management CEO Jeff Yew subsequently discussed turning the former Network School location into an AI and blockchain hub for entrepreneurs, according to Business Insider.
For now, the Network School episode is a setback. Forest City wants to become a home for international digital businesses, and its highest-profile experiment in exactly that direction failed to stick.
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Is Country Garden still a major risk for Forest City?
Country Garden remains a risk, but Forest City is in a much safer financial position today than it was during the developer’s debt crisis.
There have been two important changes.
Country Garden’s roughly US$17.7 billion offshore debt restructuring became effective at the end of 2025 after receiving court approval. A winding-up petition against the group was then dismissed in February 2026.
The Malaysian subsidiary also looks much less fragile. RAM Ratings upgraded Country Garden Real Estate from B3 to B1 with a stable outlook in March 2026.
RAM said external debt at the Malaysian business had fallen from roughly RM1 billion at the end of 2023 to RM191.1 million by the middle of 2025. Unrestricted cash was around RM230 million by mid-November 2025.
Those are large changes in a relatively short period.
Still, a B1 rating hardly describes a bulletproof developer. Country Garden’s group-level finances remain weak enough to constrain the Malaysian subsidiary.
There is another important change happening behind the scenes. Country Garden agreed to transfer its Forest City interests to Concrete Win, a company associated with chair Yang Huiyan’s controlling shareholder group. RAM said the transaction was expected to reduce Country Garden Real Estate’s need to keep committing capital to Forest City.
Forest City’s future therefore looks increasingly separated from the old Country Garden growth model.
Is Forest City building thousands of new condos again?
No. Forest City’s comeback currently depends much more on filling the city that already exists than restarting its original construction machine.
The old Forest City vision was enormous: four artificial islands, a vast reclaimed area and a future population of around 700,000.
Only one major island was developed to anything close to the density originally imagined. Much of the master plan remains unrealised.
And large-scale residential construction has not returned in a way that resembles the early Forest City boom.
That is probably a good thing.
Forest City already has roughly 26,000 completed units while resident population estimates remain somewhere around the mid-teens to 20,000. Adding another huge batch of apartments before existing stock fills up would make the oversupply problem worse.
For now, apartment occupancy, resale transactions and office demand matter more than new towers.
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Can people actually live a normal life in Forest City now?
Yes, Forest City is much more liveable these days, although it still feels more like a large resort township than a fully developed city.
The development has restaurants, retail, medical services, hotels, recreational facilities, a coastline, golf courses and an international school.
Forest City International School has operated since 2018 and now serves an international student body. Forest City also says more than 100 retail outlets operate across its commercial areas.
Office activity has begun to appear as well. Recent developer material says the first 50,000 sq ft of office space has reached around 59% occupancy, while asking rents have increased from RM1.50 to RM5.50 per sq ft.
We would treat those office figures cautiously because they come directly from Forest City and cover a relatively small initial area.
Still, they are worth watching. A project with 26,000 homes needs a much larger everyday employment base if it is going to feel like a normal city rather than a destination people mainly visit.
What would prove that Forest City’s comeback has really worked?
Forest City’s comeback will become convincing when ordinary private demand starts reinforcing the government-driven revival.
We already have evidence that people are visiting. We have evidence that family offices are operating. We have hundreds of investor enquiries. Population seems to be rising.
The missing evidence sits mostly in the property market and everyday economy.
We want to see annual resale transactions climb substantially above the current dozens of deals. Comparable condo prices should rise consistently rather than jumping between RM400 and RM1,200 per sq ft depending on the transaction. More apartments should be occupied by permanent households.
The RM700 million-plus family-office AUM reported by Maybank should keep moving toward and eventually beyond the RM2 billion official target. More importantly, those firms should bring lawyers, accountants, bankers, technology workers and other professionals into Forest City.
Office occupancy will matter more as the available space expands. Retail should increasingly depend on residents and workers rather than weekend visitors.
And eventually we should see companies choosing Forest City even when a tax incentive is not the main reason.
| What we would watch | Forest City today | What a real comeback would look like |
|---|---|---|
| Permanent residents | Probably rising, exact count uncertain | Sustained independently measurable growth |
| Family-office AUM | RM700m+ reported by Maybank-assisted offices | RM2bn target reached, then continued growth |
| Investor pipeline | 260 enquiries | More enquiries converting into operating businesses |
| Residential resales | Dozens per year | Much deeper turnover relative to 26,000 units |
| Condo prices | Highly dispersed | Broad appreciation in comparable units |
| Offices | Early occupancy appearing | Multiple buildings filling with real employers |
| Tourism | Already strong | Repeat traffic supporting profitable businesses |
| Economic dependence | Heavy government incentives | More companies choosing Forest City organically |
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So, is Forest City finally making a comeback?
Yes. Forest City is clearly making a comeback today, but the revival is much stronger as an economic and leisure destination than as a residential property market.
Calling Forest City an abandoned ghost city now feels outdated.
Roughly four million coastal visits, more than 100,000 golfers and over 260,000 hotel guests show that large numbers of people are using the place. Permanent population appears substantially higher than it was several years ago. The Special Financial Zone has attracted 260 investor enquiries. Family offices have moved from expressions of interest to actual operations, with Maybank reporting more than RM700 million under management among early offices.
Country Garden’s immediate financial danger has also eased considerably.
Taken together, that is a real turnaround.
The property evidence is much less impressive. Only 37 non-landed transactions appeared in the latest 12-month Brickz data despite Forest City having around 26,000 completed units. The median price was RM527 per sq ft, below the RM567 median for Johor serviced residences overall, and individual Forest City deals still span an enormous price range.
So the comeback is real, but incomplete.
Forest City has already proved that it can attract visitors, policy support and some high-value financial activity. It has yet to prove that enough people genuinely want to buy existing homes, live there permanently and build ordinary businesses there.
If that happens, Forest City will have found a second life that looks very different from Country Garden’s original 700,000-person vision.
OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis tests whether Forest City is genuinely making a comeback based on the evidence available today. Because there is no single statistic that can answer that question, we separate the project into the main areas that would have to improve for the recovery to be meaningful: population and occupancy, business formation, investment conversion, tourism and everyday activity, residential demand and liquidity, connectivity, and the financial position behind the development.
We give more weight to observable outcomes than to intentions. Operating businesses carry more weight than investor enquiries, completed transactions more than asking prices, permanent residents more than homes sold, and Forest City-specific activity more than investment happening elsewhere in Johor.
Where credible sources report different figures, particularly for Forest City’s current population and completed housing stock, we use the range to judge the direction and scale of the change rather than forcing a single precise estimate. That is why the analysis is more confident that occupancy has improved than it is about the exact number of residents.
For the Special Financial Zone, we distinguish between interest and conversion. Invest Johor’s investor enquiries show that businesses are looking at Forest City, while Securities Commission approvals and Maybank’s reporting on operating family offices provide stronger evidence that some of that interest has moved into real financial activity.
Tourism and leisure activity are treated separately from permanent occupancy. Forest City’s visitor, hotel and golf figures help establish whether the development is being used, but they do not by themselves prove that its residential market has recovered.
For housing, we focus on completed transactions rather than developer asking prices or property listings. Brickz transaction data is used to assess Forest City’s median price, price per square foot, transaction volume and resale liquidity, with broader Johor serviced residences and nearby developments used as comparisons.
The wider Johor boom is treated as a supporting factor rather than direct Forest City demand. The Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone, the RTS Link and investment elsewhere in southern Johor can improve Forest City’s regional backdrop, but we only count them as part of Forest City’s comeback when there is evidence that activity is actually reaching the development.
Country Garden’s financial position is assessed using its debt restructuring, court proceedings and RAM Ratings’ assessment of the Malaysian subsidiary. These changes reduce the immediate developer risk compared with the crisis period, although they do not remove it.
Key sources used for this analysis include CNA on Forest City’s earlier occupancy and housing figures, CNA on its more recent population and redevelopment, Malaysia’s Ministry of Finance on JS-SEZ incentives, the Securities Commission Malaysia on the family-office framework, the Securities Commission on early approvals and indicative assets, the Securities Commission on subsequent family-office progress, Invest Johor on investor enquiries, Brickz on Forest City transactions, Brickz on the wider Johor serviced-residence market, MOTAC on the Forest City MM2H property rules, Singapore’s Ministry of Transport on the RTS Link, RAM Ratings on Country Garden Real Estate, and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange filing confirming dismissal of Country Garden’s winding-up petition.
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