Is it too late to buy property near the Johor RTS?

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Is it already too late to buy property near the Johor RTS?

No, it is still possible to buy well near the Johor RTS today, but the period when almost any Bukit Chagar property could ride the infrastructure story upward is largely behind us.

The timing has completely changed. Buyers who entered several years ago were taking a bet on whether the Johor Bahru-Singapore RTS Link would actually get built on schedule. Buyers entering now can see trains, completed station infrastructure and a system in its final testing phase. The project has become much safer, and nearby property prices have adjusted accordingly.

The remaining opportunity comes from what happens after people start using the railway every day. The RTS could create a much deeper rental market among people who live in Johor and work in Singapore, make central Johor Bahru more attractive to owner-occupiers and bring more economic activity around Bukit Chagar. Those effects still have room to develop.

But we would no longer buy a condo simply because an agent can point to the RTS on a map. Current transaction prices already show a huge difference between ordinary Johor Bahru high-rises and some of the best-connected projects.

So there is still money to be made, but buyers now have to get the building, unit and price right.

Has the Johor RTS already been priced into nearby condos?

A lot of the Johor RTS premium is already in nearby property prices, especially in buildings that genuinely sit within walking distance of Bukit Chagar.

Brickz's latest 12-month transaction data puts the median Johor Bahru non-landed home at RM500,888, or RM494 per sq ft. The upper quartile starts around RM700 per sq ft.

Compare that with the immediate city-centre market. R&F Tanjung Puteri recorded 103 transactions in the same broad dataset at a median RM1,072 per sq ft. TriTower's smaller recent transaction sample reached a median RM1,255 per sq ft for deals recorded between April 2025 and April 2026.

We should be careful with TriTower because only five transactions sit in that latest Brickz sample. Still, the size of the gap is hard to ignore. Even R&F, where the sample is much larger, trades well above the wider city's high-rise market.

The RTS is no secret waiting to be discovered. People already pay heavily for border access and central JB convenience.

What has not been settled yet is how much more renters and owner-occupiers will pay once the railway becomes part of their normal routine.

Recent transaction evidence	Median price	Median psf	What we see
Johor Bahru non-landed	RM500,888	RM494	Broad high-rise benchmark
Johor Bahru non-landed upper quartile	RM720,000	RM700	Top quarter begins well below prime RTS pricing
R&F Tanjung Puteri	RM962,585	RM1,072	Large border-location premium already exists
TriTower latest small sample	RM1.19m	RM1,255	Immediate Bukit Chagar stock can trade far higher

Has anything changed around the Johor RTS recently?

Yes. The Johor RTS has moved from a construction story into an operational-readiness story, which makes the investment case much easier to judge today.

During the latest official site visit, Malaysia's transport minister said the station and rail infrastructure on the Malaysian side had been completed and the project had entered its final testing phase. Journalists were already able to ride an RTS train between Bukit Chagar and Woodlands North.

That removes a lot of the old uncertainty. Several years ago, an investor still had to worry about construction delays, political disagreement, engineering problems and whether the project would survive another change in government. Those risks have now fallen sharply.

A few things remain unresolved. The official passenger fare has yet to be jointly announced by Malaysia and Singapore, and the governments have also held back the final launch date. The operating target remains early 2027.

There are also practical improvements happening around Bukit Chagar itself. The station is being linked directly with buses, taxis and nearby commercial areas, while a new connection with KTM services is planned. Malaysia has also been working on traffic dispersal around central JB because tens of thousands of new daily rail journeys could otherwise move congestion from the Causeway into the streets surrounding the station.

At this stage, we are much less worried about whether the RTS will exist and much more interested in how people behave once it opens.

Will the Johor RTS actually make commuting to Singapore much better?

Yes, the Johor RTS should make living in Johor and working in Singapore considerably easier, and that is the strongest reason nearby property can still gain value.

The rail journey itself is expected to take only several minutes between Bukit Chagar and Woodlands North. More importantly, passengers will clear both Malaysian and Singapore immigration before boarding rather than going through another border process after crossing.

Malaysian authorities currently want passengers entering Bukit Chagar station to be able to reach the train within about 25 minutes, including security and immigration procedures. The system is designed for up to 10,000 passengers per hour in each direction during peak periods, with roughly 40,000 passengers a day expected when operations begin.

For property, reliability matters even more than the headline train time. Someone deciding whether to live in JB does not care that Singapore is geographically close if the border can turn a normal commute into an unpredictable ordeal.

The RTS should reduce that uncertainty substantially.

The fare could still affect who uses the service most often. Malaysia and Singapore have yet to publish the final price. A relatively high fare would matter to lower-paid daily commuters, while professionals saving much more by living in Johor would probably be less sensitive.

So we think the commuter-housing thesis is real. The remaining question is where that demand lands.

RTS feature	Current position	Property relevance	Our reading
Cross-border rail journey	Several minutes	Makes daily commuting practical	Strong positive
Peak capacity	10,000 passengers/hour/direction	Large potential user pool	Strong positive
Initial projected ridership	About 40,000/day	Meaningful compared with the small Bukit Chagar housing market	Strong positive
Immigration	Both countries cleared before boarding	Reduces border uncertainty	Probably more important than train speed
Fare	Still awaiting joint announcement	Could change commuter mix	Remaining uncertainty

How close to Bukit Chagar does an RTS property really need to be?

For an RTS investment today, a genuinely easy walk to Bukit Chagar is worth paying for; a vague "near RTS" address several kilometres away usually is not.

Once the railway starts operating, people will quickly learn which condos are actually convenient.

A tenant commuting five days a week notices whether the station is a sheltered five-minute walk away. The same tenant also notices a 15-minute walk involving major roads, tropical heat and heavy rain. And if a Grab ride is needed just to reach the RTS, much of the advantage disappears.

We expect the property market around the RTS to become more selective after opening, rather than less selective.

Before opening, developers can market projects using a radius on a map. After opening, residents compare actual door-to-platform time.

That should favour developments around Bukit Chagar, JB Sentral and practical pedestrian connections much more than projects that merely sit somewhere inside greater central Johor Bahru.

We would rather pay a sensible premium for real walkability than get a cheaper condo whose RTS connection exists mainly in the sales presentation.

Do current rents near the Johor RTS justify today's property prices?

Current rents support buying near the Johor RTS at the right price, but they do not support paying any price just to own a unit beside the station.

PropertyGuru's current TriTower rental market shows studios around the mid-RM2,000s per month and larger three-bedroom units around RM4,000 to RM4,800. A recently listed 668 sq ft studio was asking RM2,600, while several 1,340 sq ft three-bedroom units were around RM4,000.

R&F Princess Cove shows a similar pattern. Recent smaller units have appeared around RM2,400 to RM2,700, two-bedroom units around RM2,700 to RM3,500 and larger units around RM3,600 to above RM5,000.

These are asking rents, so we should not pretend every landlord actually closes at those levels. The listing portals also contain duplicate agent advertisements.

Even so, the numbers give us a useful ceiling for valuation.

Take a unit producing RM4,000 a month. At a RM900,000 purchase price, the gross yield is 5.3%. At RM1.2 million, it falls to 4%. At RM1.5 million, the same rent produces only 3.2%.

Once maintenance fees, vacancy, agent commissions, furnishing, repairs and other ownership costs come out, the net yield is obviously lower.

That is why we would be uncomfortable paying a very large RTS premium today unless the unit already commands unusually strong rent.

Purchase price	Monthly rent	Annual rent	Gross yield
RM800,000	RM3,500	RM42,000	5.3%
RM900,000	RM4,000	RM48,000	5.3%
RM1,000,000	RM4,000	RM48,000	4.8%
RM1,200,000	RM4,000	RM48,000	4.0%
RM1,500,000	RM4,000	RM48,000	3.2%

Could rents near the Johor RTS jump after the railway opens?

Rents around Bukit Chagar could rise after the RTS opens, but there are already too many competing apartments for us to assume a huge jump.

The demand side is easy to understand. A Malaysian earning Singapore dollars could suddenly live beside Bukit Chagar and make the border crossing by rail. Singapore-based workers who previously considered central JB too inconvenient may also become potential tenants.

The reference point for these tenants is interesting. RM3,000 or RM4,000 a month sounds expensive within Johor, yet the same housing cost looks much cheaper when compared with private accommodation across the border.

That creates room for rental growth.

Supply is the brake.

PropertyGuru currently displays more than 130 rental results at TriTower across its apartment, condo and serviced-residence categories. Some are duplicates, so we cannot treat that as 130 vacant homes, but it does show how aggressively landlords compete for tenants.

R&F Princess Cove creates even more competition. Its second phase alone currently has more than 200 condominium rental advertisements on iProperty, alongside a large existing rental pool in the earlier phases.

The RTS can bring thousands of new potential renters into central JB while landlords still struggle to raise rents if several thousand similar apartments chase those tenants at the same time.

We would underwrite a purchase using a realistic rent available today. Any meaningful post-opening increase should improve the return rather than be required to make the purchase work.

Is Johor Bahru building too many condos for the RTS boom?

Yes, Johor's huge high-rise supply is the biggest reason we would avoid buying a generic RTS-area condo today.

The wider Johor market already contains a lot of apartments. NAPIC-based figures compiled by PropNex put the state's cumulative high-rise residential supply at roughly 184,000 units in 2025, up by more than 30,000 units from 2021.

The demand numbers became softer at the same time. High-rise transaction volume dropped from 8,173 units in 2024 to 6,908 in 2025, down 15.5%. Transaction value fell about 16%, while the average transaction price stayed around RM540,000.

Unsold inventory also moved in the wrong direction, increasing from 8.2% to 8.8% of high-rise stock.

Research from Olive Tree Property Consultants paints an even clearer picture of what is coming. It counted more than 70,000 future high-rise units in Johor at the end of 2025, alongside around 10,560 unsold completed high-rise homes and another 8,435 unsold units still under construction.

The RTS will certainly increase demand around central Johor Bahru. We simply do not think one railway can turn every apartment in this supply wave into scarce property.

Scarcity exists around the best station access. There is very little scarcity in Johor's overall condo stock.

Johor high-rise indicator	Earlier level	Latest cited level	Direction
Cumulative high-rise supply	About 153,800 in 2021	About 184,200 in 2025	Up more than 30,000
Annual high-rise transactions	8,173 in 2024	6,908 in 2025	Down 15.5%
Unsold share	8.2%	8.8%	Higher
Unsold completed high-rise units	—	About 10,560	Large existing stock
Unsold units under construction	6,180 one quarter earlier	8,435	Up about 36%

Is Johor Bahru property actually strong right now?

Johor property is currently much stronger than the old "oversupplied ghost-city" reputation suggests, although condos are clearly the weaker part of the story.

Brickz's latest 12-month dataset records 1,749 residential transactions across Johor Bahru at a median RM580,000. The non-landed segment alone recorded more than 1,000 transactions across 114 projects.

At state level, Johor also remains one of Malaysia's biggest housing markets. NAPIC recorded 42,566 residential transactions in 2025 worth RM20.94 billion. Volume was basically flat compared with the previous year, while transaction value edged higher.

The economic backdrop has become much more interesting too.

MIDA recently reported RM126.9 billion of approved investment in Johor from 2025 through the first quarter of 2026. Within the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone, the government has said 57% of cumulative approved investment had already moved into implementation.

That is real economic activity rather than a property-sales narrative.

The uncomfortable part is that strong Johor investment and strong Johor condo returns are not automatically the same thing. New factories, data centres and logistics facilities can increase employment without sending every new worker into a RM1 million apartment beside Bukit Chagar.

So we are bullish on Johor's economic direction these days while remaining much more selective about high-rise property.

Could the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone create another leg up for RTS property?

Yes, the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone could eventually create more lasting housing demand around the RTS than the initial excitement of the railway opening.

The RTS mainly changes how quickly people can move between Johor Bahru and Singapore. The JS-SEZ is trying to change how businesses operate across the same border.

The Malaysian government wants the zone to attract higher-value manufacturing, digital businesses, logistics, financial services and other industries that can use Johor's lower costs alongside Singapore's capital, infrastructure and international connections.

The numbers are already large enough to take seriously. Government figures put approved JS-SEZ investment at RM76.98 billion in 2025, with another RM5.49 billion during the first quarter of 2026.

The next step is execution. Announced investment does not pay rent. Factories, offices and jobs do.

If enough of these projects become operational, central JB could gain more managers, specialists, suppliers and people whose work routinely crosses the border. Those residents are exactly the type most likely to pay extra for an apartment with fast access to Singapore.

For a five- or ten-year investor, we think that gradual economic integration is a better reason to own good central JB property than trying to predict a short price spike immediately after the RTS opens.

Are early Johor RTS buyers the only ones who will make serious money?

Early RTS buyers captured the easiest gains, but later buyers can still do well if actual commuter demand pushes rents and resale demand higher.

The earlier trade was straightforward. Every major construction milestone removed some probability that the RTS would fail, be postponed indefinitely or become politically contentious again. Buyers who accepted those risks could purchase before the market had full confidence.

That discount has mostly disappeared.

A buyer entering today needs another source of return. Rental growth is one possibility. Better occupancy is another. A larger owner-occupier market could also make good developments easier to resell.

There may even be further price appreciation if Bukit Chagar grows into a genuine transport and business district rather than functioning mainly as an international station.

But the hurdle is higher now.

An early buyer mainly needed the railway to get built. Today's investor needs people to pay more to live near it.

We think they probably will in the best buildings. We are much less convinced they will do so across every project currently attaching "RTS" to its marketing.

Is an older resale condo better than a new RTS launch now?

A well-priced resale condo currently gives us a cleaner RTS investment than many expensive new launches because we can already see what tenants, owners and previous buyers are willing to pay.

TriTower illustrates the advantage. It has existed for years, so buyers can inspect the building, check maintenance quality, compare layouts, examine completed transactions and see real rental advertisements.

Its current sales market is also surprisingly wide. PropertyGuru recently showed asking prices ranging from around RM620,000 for an 882 sq ft unit to above RM1.5 million for larger units. Brickz's stamped transactions sit in a different range again.

That variation immediately gives an investor something useful to negotiate against.

With a new launch, the developer controls the initial price and usually sells the future story at the same time. The advertised price may already assume higher RTS rents, better connectivity and future capital appreciation several years ahead.

New projects can still be better investments when they have exceptional station integration, better layouts or materially superior buildings. But buyers need a reason for paying the new-build premium.

These days, we would rather buy a good resale unit at a price that works on current rent than pay a developer today for most of the appreciation we hope to receive tomorrow.

When does an RTS condo become too expensive to buy?

An RTS condo starts looking expensive to us when the gross yield falls toward the low-3% range while the buyer is still relying heavily on future appreciation.

Suppose a unit can realistically rent for RM4,000 a month.

At RM900,000, the gross yield is about 5.3%. There is enough income to absorb some costs and still leave the investor with a reasonable starting point.

At RM1.2 million, the yield falls to 4%.

At RM1.5 million, we are down near 3.2% before maintenance, vacancies, furnishing, repairs and transaction costs.

At that point, the investment becomes heavily dependent on the next buyer paying more.

This worries us in Johor because plenty of new high-rise competition is coming. A 3% gross yield can make sense for genuinely scarce real estate in a supply-constrained global city. It is harder to justify when dozens of comparable units are available within the same development and thousands more are being built across the surrounding market.

We would accept a lower yield for exceptional walking access and a building with a strong tenant following. We would demand a much better yield for anything less special.

Example	Purchase price	Rent/month	Gross yield	Our reaction
Attractive starting point	RM850,000	RM4,000	5.6%	Interesting
Still workable	RM1.0m	RM4,000	4.8%	Depends on unit
Premium valuation	RM1.2m	RM4,000	4.0%	Needs genuine quality
Appreciation-heavy	RM1.4m	RM4,000	3.4%	Harder to justify
Very stretched	RM1.5m	RM4,000	3.2%	We would usually pass

What kind of property near the Johor RTS still looks worth buying?

The best RTS property to buy now is a genuinely walkable unit where today's rent already makes sense and the purchase price leaves some of the future upside for us.

Real station access comes first. We want a route that somebody would happily walk every morning, including during heavy rain.

Then we look at the unit itself. Efficient studios, one-bedroom apartments and practical two-bedroom units can work well for commuters. A huge family unit may have a smaller tenant pool even when the building is equally close to Bukit Chagar.

The building also needs to compete after more supply arrives. Management quality, lifts, security, maintenance, noise, furnishing and the condition of common areas become very obvious once tenants can compare several nearby projects on the same afternoon.

Price comes last and decides whether all those advantages produce a good investment.

For foreign buyers, this becomes even more important because Johor generally imposes a RM1 million minimum purchase threshold on qualifying foreign residential acquisitions, alongside state approval requirements and related charges. That removes many cheaper JB units from the foreign buyer's opportunity set and pushes them toward the premium part of the market.

Malaysian buyers have much more room to search below that threshold.

Our ideal purchase today is fairly boring: strong access, good building, useful layout, real rental demand and a price we can defend using recent transactions.

That is much safer than buying whatever project currently has the loudest RTS advertising campaign.

Should you buy before the Johor RTS opens or wait until after?

We would buy before the RTS opens only when the property already works at today's price; otherwise, waiting for real ridership and rental evidence is perfectly reasonable.

Buyers who wait will learn a lot.

We will see how long passengers actually need to clear Bukit Chagar, what the final fare is, whether morning queues become a problem, how quickly the service fills up and how many Singapore-linked workers genuinely choose to live in JB.

We will also see which condos gain tenants first.

That information has value, especially in a market with so much new supply.

The cost of waiting is that the best properties could become more expensive if the RTS performs extremely well. But we would rather miss the first few percentage points of appreciation than buy a weak property just because opening day is approaching.

The calendar should not force the purchase.

A genuinely good unit at a sensible valuation is attractive now. An overpriced one remains overpriced even with trains running outside.

So is it too late to buy property near the Johor RTS?

No, it is not too late to buy property near the Johor RTS, but buyers arriving now have missed most of the easy infrastructure trade.

The railway itself has become a very credible catalyst. Malaysian infrastructure is essentially complete, trains are undergoing final testing and the system is moving toward passenger operations. Cross-border travel should become far more predictable, giving thousands of people a new reason to consider living in central Johor Bahru.

That can still raise rents, occupancy and resale demand.

Prices, however, have already moved. The broader Johor Bahru non-landed market currently sits around RM494 per sq ft, while established border-area projects can trade around RM900 to above RM1,000 per sq ft. Buyers are clearly paying for connectivity before regular passenger service has even begun.

At the same time, Johor is carrying a huge high-rise pipeline. Thousands of existing apartments are competing for tenants and tens of thousands more are planned or under construction.

Our conclusion is quite sharp.

The best RTS properties can still be good buys today. Generic condos sold at a large "RTS premium" are becoming increasingly difficult to justify.

Earlier investors were paid for taking infrastructure risk. Buyers now need to make money from the property itself.

If we can get genuine walking access to Bukit Chagar, a building tenants already like, a sensible current yield and a transaction price that does not assume years of future appreciation, we would still buy.

If the numbers only work after assuming that the RTS sends rents and prices sharply higher, we would walk away.

The Johor RTS opportunity is still alive. The easy part has already happened.

Who is the author of this content?

BAMBOOROUTES

A team specialized in real estate investing in APAC countries (Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, etc.).

We are a team of financial experts, legal professionals, developers, and local real estate specialists dedicated to helping people like you avoid mistakes when investing in real estate in a foreign place, particularly in Johor. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can check our presentation page.