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SUMMARY
Yes, rents in Malaysia are still rising, but the national rental boom has cooled sharply and the strongest increases are now concentrated in a fairly small number of markets.
Official rental data put national rent inflation at only around the mid-1% range. That is enough to rule out a broad rental downturn, but it is a long way from the rapid increases tenants experienced during the earlier post-pandemic reset.
Kuala Lumpur tells a very different story from the national average. Prime markets such as KLCC, Bangsar and Mont’Kiara are still producing annual rent increases of roughly 6% to 7%, and those gains have persisted across several quarters rather than appearing as one-off spikes.
The split is increasingly about property type as well as location. Scarce terrace houses in mature neighbourhoods such as SS2, Putra Heights and TTDI have often recorded stronger rent growth than ordinary high-rise units surrounded by competing supply.
Malaysia can therefore have plenty of housing and still have real rental shortages. Thousands of additional condos do not solve the problem for a family that specifically wants a landed home, a large apartment near an international school or a well-managed unit in a prime employment district.
Selangor is especially uneven. A state-level average can look weak while individual landed neighbourhoods record rent increases close to or above 10%, which makes broad averages a poor guide for a specific property.
Johor Bahru has not experienced a citywide RTS-driven rental surge yet. Selected neighbourhoods are already moving, but the stronger case is still forward-looking: the biggest gains should accrue to homes that make commuting through Bukit Chagar genuinely convenient.
Penang looks steadier. Employment around Bayan Lepas, Bayan Baru, Batu Kawan and nearby industrial areas keeps rental demand healthy, but the latest evidence supports selective increases rather than a broad state-wide jump.
The biggest brake on the market is supply. Malaysia has a large high-rise base, substantial new development and plenty of units competing for similar tenants, while Kuala Lumpur in particular already has an unusually high share of apartments, condominiums and serviced apartments.
Affordability is the other ceiling. Prime and corporate tenants can absorb another 6% or 7% increase, but ordinary salaried renters have much less room, so landlords targeting the mass market cannot keep lifting rents indefinitely without losing tenants to cheaper locations, smaller units or shared housing.
The result is a more selective rental cycle than Malaysia had a few years ago. National rents are still edging upward, while prime Kuala Lumpur, scarce landed housing and a handful of employment- or infrastructure-driven locations remain capable of much stronger growth.
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Are rents in Malaysia still rising?
Yes, rents in Malaysia are still rising today, although the national increase has slowed to a fairly modest pace.
The cleanest nationwide evidence comes from the Department of Statistics Malaysia. In its latest available consumer-price data, the broader housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels category was up 1.4% year on year. More importantly for tenants, DOSM’s detailed rental series had actual housing rents still rising by around 1.5% year on year earlier in 2026.
That already tells us something useful. Malaysia has not entered a national rental downturn. Tenants are still paying more on average than they were a year earlier. What has changed is the speed.
A separate transaction-based dataset from IQI had already caught that slowdown. Its national average rent fell from RM2,052 in the final quarter of 2024 to RM2,020 in the first quarter of 2025, even though it remained 5.2% higher than one year earlier. The annual increase was still visible because rents had climbed sharply before that quarter; the quarterly decline showed that the market was starting to level off.
So the best description of Malaysia today is still rising, but much more slowly than during the earlier rental reset.
| Rental measure | Latest useful reading | Direction | What it tells us |
|---|---|---|---|
| DOSM actual housing rent | About +1.5% YoY | Up | Tenants are still paying more nationally |
| DOSM broader housing category | +1.4% YoY | Up | Housing costs are still increasing |
| IQI Malaysia average rent | RM2,020/month | -1.6% QoQ | Short-term growth had already cooled |
| IQI Malaysia average rent | +5.2% YoY | Up | Rents remained well above the previous year |
Why does Malaysia’s rental market feel hotter than the national data?
Malaysia’s rental market feels much hotter because some of the places people talk about most are still seeing rent increases several times larger than the national average.
Kuala Lumpur is the obvious example. Savills’ latest Klang Valley monitor found that rents for the two-bedroom high-rise units it tracks rose 7.3% year on year in KLCC, 6% in Bangsar and 6.3% in Mont’Kiara.
Those are completely different numbers from the roughly 1%–2% rise seen in Malaysia’s broad rental data.
The gap also explains why personal experience can be misleading. Someone renewing a lease in Mont’Kiara may genuinely be facing another meaningful rent increase. A tenant in a weaker high-rise market elsewhere in Malaysia may see almost no change. Both experiences are real.
We therefore need to separate Malaysia’s national rental trend from the much faster movement in a handful of high-demand submarkets.
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Did the big rise in Malaysian rents already happen?
Yes, much of Malaysia’s largest post-pandemic rent increase appears to be behind us.
IQI’s numbers show the turning point quite clearly. National rents were still 5.2% higher year on year in early 2025, while falling 1.6% from the previous quarter. When an annual number remains strong and the newest quarter has already softened, we are usually looking at the tail end of an earlier rise.
The subsequent official rent data reinforce that reading. Actual housing rents were still increasing in 2026, though at only around the mid-1% range.
That is a major slowdown from the much larger increases previously recorded in selected projects and neighbourhoods.
Landlords are still raising rents in plenty of places. There just is not enough evidence anymore to describe Malaysia as a broadly fast-rising rental market.
Is Kuala Lumpur still seeing strong rent increases?
Yes, Kuala Lumpur is still one of the strongest rental markets in Malaysia, especially in established prime neighbourhoods.
Savills’ 1Q2026 monitor is quite decisive. Two-bedroom high-rise rents rose 7.3% year on year in KLCC, 6% in Bangsar and 6.3% in Mont’Kiara.
The trend has also lasted longer than a single quarter. Savills had already recorded increases of 7.5%, 7.6% and 6.3% respectively in those same three markets at the end of 2025. One quarter earlier, Bangsar was still running at roughly 8.1%.
That repetition is more convincing than one unusually strong observation. Prime Kuala Lumpur has been producing above-national rent growth quarter after quarter.
The size of the premium matters too. A 6%–7% annual increase is roughly four times the pace of Malaysia’s recent actual-rent inflation.
| Kuala Lumpur market | Latest YoY rent growth | Previous monitored reading | Current picture |
|---|---|---|---|
| KLCC | +7.3% | +7.5% | Still strong |
| Bangsar | +6.0% | +7.6% | Cooling slightly, still high |
| Mont’Kiara | +6.3% | +6.3% | Remarkably steady |
| Malaysia actual housing rent | About +1.5% | Similar low-single-digit pace | Much slower nationally |
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Why are KLCC, Bangsar and Mont’Kiara rents still climbing?
Rents in KLCC, Bangsar and Mont’Kiara are still climbing because these neighbourhoods attract tenant groups with more spending power and offer housing that is harder to replace elsewhere.
The tenant base is unusually important here. Savills continues to point to expatriates and high-net-worth residents in KLCC and Mont’Kiara, while Bangsar remains popular with professionals and expatriates.
Mont’Kiara also has a very specific ecosystem around international schools, larger family apartments, restaurants and expatriate services. A tenant choosing the area for those reasons does not necessarily see a cheaper condo 15 kilometres away as a real substitute.
KLCC is even more specialised. Corporate tenants and affluent renters often care heavily about central location, building quality and management. Bangsar has a similar location advantage, combined with mature amenities and limited room to create large amounts of equivalent housing.
This helps explain why new high-rise supply elsewhere in Greater KL has not stopped these three markets from producing repeated 6%–8% rent increases.
Is Selangor rent still rising too?
Some Selangor rents are rising quickly these days, although the state is much more uneven than Kuala Lumpur.
Earlier IQI data showed how different the two markets could be: Kuala Lumpur’s average rent was up 6.1% year on year while Selangor’s was down 3.1%.
At neighbourhood level, however, Savills has found much stronger results. In its recent Klang Valley monitoring, rents for two-storey terraces in SS2 rose 12.2% year on year to around RM2,300 per month. Putra Heights increased 8.6% to roughly RM1,900.
Earlier NAPIC figures had already identified similar pockets. Bandar Rimbayu recorded a 16.4% increase, Bandar Tropicana Aman 15.5%, Bandar Mahkota Banting 12.5% and Taman Cheras Perdana 10.7%.
A Selangor-wide average is therefore not much use for judging a particular home. Some mature landed neighbourhoods have been rising very fast while plenty of high-rise stock remains easy to replace.
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Are landed homes in Malaysia getting more expensive to rent than condos?
In several Malaysian markets, landed homes are now showing stronger rental growth than ordinary high-rise units.
The pattern appears repeatedly. NAPIC’s regional work found rent increases across selected landed schemes in the north while many high-rise rents remained stable or recorded only small changes.
Klang Valley data point in the same direction. Recent Savills monitoring found annual rent gains of 12.2% in SS2, 8.6% in Putra Heights, 7% in Taman Midah and 4.6% in TTDI.
The supply difference is straightforward. A family looking for a terrace house in one particular school catchment or mature neighbourhood usually has a fairly short list of alternatives. A tenant looking for a two-bedroom condo may be able to compare dozens of similar buildings.
Bank Negara’s latest property review makes the broader supply imbalance visible too. House-price growth in 2025 was being driven mainly by landed homes, where supply was relatively tighter than in the high-rise market.
That scarcity is increasingly showing up in rents as well.
| Landed market | Recent rent change | Approximate current rent | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| SS2 | +12.2% YoY | RM2,300 | Very strong |
| Putra Heights | +8.6% YoY | RM1,900 | Strong |
| Taman Midah | +7.0% YoY | RM2,000 | Strong |
| TTDI | +4.6% YoY | RM3,400 | Moderate |
| Lucky Garden, Bangsar | +3.1% YoY | — | Still rising |
Are Johor Bahru rents surging because of the RTS Link?
Johor Bahru rents are not surging across the city yet, even with the RTS Link getting closer.
NAPIC’s full-year 2025 review described Johor’s overall residential rental market as stable. That is a useful reality check because expectations around the Johor Bahru-Singapore Rapid Transit System were already extremely strong by then.
Some individual schemes have clearly moved. Taman Impian Emas saw one monitored terrace rent increase from RM1,800 to RM2,000 per month, while a semi-detached home there rose from RM2,500 to RM2,800. Horizon Hills moved from roughly RM3,600 to RM3,800, and a Taman Bukit Indah cluster home increased from RM3,000 to RM3,200.
These are meaningful increases, generally in the 6%–12% range. They still represent selected locations rather than a citywide repricing.
Johor Bahru currently looks like a market where proximity and commuting convenience increasingly decide who gets the rent growth.
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Could the RTS push Johor Bahru rents much higher?
Yes, the RTS could push rents higher around the best-connected parts of Johor Bahru once commuting to Singapore becomes easier.
The economic logic is powerful. Johor housing costs remain far below Singapore’s, creating a big incentive for workers who are willing to live across the border.
The RTS should remove part of the pain that currently comes with that choice. Areas offering easy access to Bukit Chagar can therefore attract a larger pool of cross-border tenants.
We still would not apply that thesis to every condominium in Johor Bahru. The city has a large pipeline of high-rise and serviced-apartment stock, so landlords in poorly connected developments may continue competing mainly on price.
The strongest rental effect should be concentrated around genuinely practical commuter locations.
Are Penang rents still going up?
Penang rents are still firm today, with the clearest strength around employment hubs rather than across the entire state.
Nawawi Tie Leung’s latest Penang monitor described rental demand as healthy around Bayan Lepas, Bayan Baru, Relau and Sungai Ara, where multinational employers and the industrial cluster attract engineers, technicians and managers.
It found well-maintained high-rise rents in those areas generally stable, with selected projects posting small increases when vacancy was tight.
Batu Kawan is creating another rental node on the mainland. Its industrial parks and expanding technology employment base are supporting housing demand, while areas around Universiti Sains Malaysia and expatriate neighbourhoods such as Tanjong Tokong and Gurney remain active for different tenant groups.
So Penang has rental demand, but the freshest evidence points to stability with selective increases rather than rapid state-wide rent inflation.
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Is Malaysia’s condo oversupply still holding rents down?
Yes, Malaysia’s large pool of high-rise housing is still limiting how aggressively many condo landlords can raise rents.
Bank Negara’s latest financial stability review found that unsold housing increased during 2025. The stock was still only about 2.5% of total housing, although nearly two-fifths of those unsold units had already been sitting for at least three years.
The incoming pipeline is more striking. Developers launched 94,674 new residential units in 2024, up from 66,576 in 2023. That works out to an increase of about 42% in one year.
Kuala Lumpur is especially exposed to high-rise competition. Khazanah Research Institute calculated that apartments and condominiums made up about 45% of the city’s housing stock in the third quarter of 2025, while serviced apartments contributed another 20%.
Together, those two categories represented roughly 65% of Kuala Lumpur’s stock.
Many of those homes are natural rental properties. That gives tenants plenty of choices whenever multiple buildings compete for the same profile of renter.
| Supply indicator | Latest figure | Comparison | Why it matters for rent |
|---|---|---|---|
| New residential launches | 94,674 | 66,576 in 2023 | About 42% more new supply |
| Unsold housing share | 2.5% | 2.3% earlier in 2025 | Supply mismatch persists |
| Unsold for 3+ years | Nearly 40% of unsold stock | — | Some inventory is structurally difficult |
| KL apartments/condos | 45% of stock | — | Huge high-rise base |
| KL serviced apartments | 20% of stock | — | Adds more rental competition |
| Combined KL high-rise categories | ~65% | — | Most tenants have alternatives |
If Malaysia has so many condos, why are some rents still rising fast?
Some Malaysian rents keep rising because extra housing supply is often in the wrong building, wrong neighbourhood or wrong property type for the tenants creating the strongest demand.
A new small serviced apartment on the edge of Greater Kuala Lumpur does very little for a family looking for a three-bedroom home near an international school in Mont’Kiara.
The same problem appears with landed housing. Adding hundreds of high-rise units cannot create more terrace houses in SS2 or TTDI.
KRI’s Kuala Lumpur data make the abundance of high-rise housing obvious, yet Savills still records 6%–7% rent growth in KLCC, Bangsar and Mont’Kiara.
Malaysia has plenty of housing overall and genuine scarcity in very specific pockets. That is enough to keep selected rents moving quickly even while the national average cools.
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Can Malaysian tenants still afford higher rents?
For many Malaysian tenants, affordability is already tight enough to limit further large rent increases.
Khazanah Research Institute tested Kuala Lumpur rental affordability using a monthly salary of RM3,687 and a common benchmark that housing should cost no more than 30% of income.
Out of 420 apartment, condominium and serviced-apartment projects in its dataset, only 45 fell within that affordability range. That is barely 11%.
Affordable rents for that worker were roughly RM700 to RM1,100 per month. Among the 109 serviced-apartment projects examined, only five met the threshold.
This is where the mass market runs into a wall. A landlord targeting local salaried tenants eventually reaches the point where people move farther out, share, downgrade or simply reject the unit.
Higher-income and corporate tenants give prime neighbourhoods more room to raise rents. The mass market has far less flexibility.
| KRI affordability measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Monthly salary tested | RM3,687 |
| Projects examined | 420 |
| Projects affordable at 30% threshold | 45 |
| Share affordable | About 10.7% |
| Affordable rent range | RM700–RM1,100 |
| Serviced apartments affordable | 5 out of 109 |
Are high house prices keeping more Malaysians in the rental market?
Yes, expensive homeownership is helping to keep Malaysia’s rental demand strong.
Bank Negara reported that Malaysian house prices were still rising in 2025, although growth had slowed to 2.3% year on year by the third quarter. Homes priced below RM500,000 still accounted for about three-quarters of residential transactions.
That price distribution shows where the bulk of demand sits. Many households are highly price-sensitive, and buyers who cannot find a suitable home within budget remain renters for longer.
Financing appears available overall, so the constraint is not simply access to mortgages. Affordability, deposit requirements and the location of reasonably priced homes still keep a large group of households on the rental side of the market.
This gives Malaysian rents a solid demand floor even when new supply prevents landlords from pushing prices sharply higher.
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Are Malaysian landlords making much better rental yields now?
Higher rents are helping Malaysian landlords, although many prime properties still produce fairly modest yields because purchase prices are also high.
Savills’ recent landed-home monitoring gives us a good example. TTDI terrace rents rose to roughly RM3,400 per month, yet the indicated gross yield remained around 2.4%. Lucky Garden in Bangsar was around 2.3%, OUG around 2.7% and Taman Midah around 3%.
A landlord can therefore receive 5% or 7% more rent while still earning a fairly low yield on the property's market value.
Mont’Kiara performs somewhat better within prime Kuala Lumpur, according to Savills, because rent levels compare more favourably with purchase prices.
Johor can also look more attractive on this calculation because homes cost much less than comparable Kuala Lumpur properties while selected rents are still rising.
Rent growth helps returns, though purchase price remains just as important.
Could Malaysia’s huge housing pipeline stop rents from rising?
Malaysia’s housing pipeline should keep ordinary rent growth under pressure, especially in high-rise markets with lots of similar units.
The roughly 42% jump in new residential launches between 2023 and 2024 is large enough to matter for the next few years.
A big pipeline creates more competition whenever those units are delivered into markets that already have plenty of investor-owned condos. Landlords then have fewer opportunities to raise rents aggressively because tenants can move to another building.
The effect will be weaker in markets where incoming housing does not match tenant demand. New studios do little for families seeking landed homes, while a project far from employment centres cannot fully compete with one next to them.
For Malaysia overall, this supply picture makes another broad rental surge difficult to justify right now.
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What could make Malaysian rents start rising faster again?
Malaysian rents could accelerate again if job growth and household demand begin absorbing new housing faster than developers can add it.
Johor Bahru has one obvious catalyst in the RTS and deeper Singapore integration.
Penang has another through industrial expansion around Bayan Lepas and Batu Kawan. Nawawi Tie Leung continues to link rental demand there directly to engineers, technicians and managerial workers employed around industrial hubs.
Kuala Lumpur already shows what tight demand can do in prime locations. KLCC, Bangsar and Mont’Kiara have repeatedly recorded rent growth far above the national average.
If those kinds of local shortages spread into a larger number of cities and neighbourhoods, Malaysia’s national rental numbers would start moving faster again.
For now, that spread has not happened.
So, are rents in Malaysia still rising today?
Yes, Malaysian rents are still rising today, though the broad rental boom has clearly cooled and most of the interesting growth is now concentrated in specific places.
The latest official evidence keeps national housing rent inflation in positive territory at around the mid-1% range. That gives us a clear answer to the basic question: Malaysian rents have not started falling overall.
Prime Kuala Lumpur is much hotter. Savills’ freshest monitor still has KLCC at +7.3% year on year, Bangsar at +6% and Mont’Kiara at +6.3%. Selangor has produced even bigger increases in selected landed neighbourhoods. Penang currently looks steadier, with employment hubs supporting rental demand and only selected projects moving higher. Johor is broadly stable for now, with the RTS giving the best-connected parts of Johor Bahru a credible path to stronger growth.
At the same time, Malaysia has a large high-rise supply base, a heavy development pipeline and a serious affordability ceiling for ordinary tenants. Those three constraints make another nationwide rent spike hard to see today.
Our conclusion is quite firm: rents in Malaysia are still rising, but Malaysia has moved into a much more selective rental cycle. Prime Kuala Lumpur, scarce landed homes and a few employment- or infrastructure-driven hotspots can still deliver strong increases. Across the country as a whole, rent growth has slowed considerably.
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OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis tests whether rents in Malaysia are still rising by separating the national rental trend from the local markets that can behave very differently from it. We looked at national rental direction and momentum, Kuala Lumpur and Selangor submarkets, landed versus high-rise housing, Johor and Penang, housing supply, affordability, rental yields and demand catalysts such as employment and transport.
Official Department of Statistics Malaysia data anchor the national conclusion. We used the consumer-price series for actual housing rents and the broader housing category to establish whether rents are still increasing nationally, while IQI’s rental data help show how quarterly momentum had already cooled even while annual growth remained positive.
For Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, we relied mainly on Savills’ Klang Valley Residential Property Monitor and compared several consecutive editions rather than treating one quarter as decisive. That is particularly important for KLCC, Bangsar and Mont’Kiara, where repeated annual increases provide stronger evidence than a single unusually strong reading.
NAPIC regional and national property reports were used to test the differences between landed and high-rise rental markets and to assess Johor. We treated neighbourhood-level rent changes as evidence for those specific locations, not as proof that an entire state or city was moving at the same pace.
Supply and affordability were assessed separately from rent movements. Bank Negara Malaysia’s Financial Stability Review provides the residential launch, unsold-stock and broader supply-demand context, while Khazanah Research Institute provides the Kuala Lumpur housing-stock and rental-affordability analysis. Those datasets help explain why high-rise competition can restrain ordinary rents even while scarce neighbourhoods continue to rise.
The Johor Bahru RTS is treated as a demand catalyst rather than evidence that rents have already surged. MRT Corp’s project information establishes the transport link itself; the actual rental-market assessment comes from NAPIC’s Johor data. For Penang, Nawawi Tie Leung’s market monitoring is used to connect rental demand with employment around Bayan Lepas, Bayan Baru, Relau, Sungai Ara and Batu Kawan.
We did not combine these datasets into a single rental-growth score because they answer different questions. National CPI data establish direction, market monitors reveal local divergence, supply data test competitive pressure, affordability data show how much room tenants have to absorb further increases, and infrastructure or employment evidence helps identify where stronger rental demand could emerge next.
Key sources used for this analysis include: Department of Statistics Malaysia’s July 2026 Consumer Price Index, DOSM’s May 2026 CPI report, DOSM’s April 2026 CPI report, IQI on Malaysia’s Q1 2025 rental market, IQI’s Malaysia Property Market Insights, Savills’ Klang Valley Residential Property Monitor 1Q2026 via The Edge Malaysia, Savills’ 4Q2025 monitor, Savills’ 3Q2025 monitor, NAPIC’s Property Market Report 2025, NAPIC’s Southern Region Property Market Report 2025, NAPIC’s Northern Region Property Market Report 2025, Bank Negara Malaysia’s Financial Stability Review 2H2025, Khazanah Research Institute’s Kuala Lumpur rental-affordability analysis, KRI’s research on serviced-apartment supply, MRT Corp’s Johor Bahru–Singapore RTS Link project page, Nawawi Tie Leung’s Penang Housing Property Monitor 4Q2025 via The Edge Malaysia, and Knight Frank Malaysia’s Real Estate Highlights 2026.
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