Can Foreigners Buy Property in Malaysia? The Price Floor and State Consent Explained

A buyer from Hong Kong agrees to pay RM1.8 million for a semi-detached house in Petaling Jaya. The financing is arranged, the seller is willing, the price clears every threshold anyone quoted online. The deal still cannot complete until a state government office in Shah Alam decides — at its own discretion — whether to let a foreigner hold that title at all.

That second step surprises people who only read the price-floor headlines. Buying property in Malaysia as a foreigner runs through two separate gates, and clearing one says nothing about the other.

Two gates, not one

The first gate is a minimum price. Malaysia has no single national floor — each state sets its own, and some split it by district, by zone, or by whether the property is landed or stratified (condos, apartments, serviced residences).

The second gate is written consent from the State Authority, required for every foreign acquisition regardless of price, under the National Land Code 1965 (Act 56, now consolidated as Act 828). Land falls under the state list in Malaysia’s federal structure — see how power is divided between federal and state government — which is exactly why the numbers and the paperwork differ from state to state rather than following one federal rulebook.

Clearing the price floor gets a foreign buyer to the point of applying. It does not guarantee the state says yes.

The legal backbone: sections 433A to 433E

The operative rule sits in section 433B of the National Land Code: a dealing in land — a transfer, a lease, a charge — in favour of a non-citizen or a foreign company may only be effected after the State Authority has approved it in writing. Section 433C makes the consequence explicit: any dealing completed in contravention of 433B is null and void.

This is a federal statute that hands the actual decision to state-level authorities — in Peninsular Malaysia, the State Authority acting through the state’s Pejabat Tanah (land office), or the Federal Territories’ land office acting on behalf of the Federal Territories Minister for Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan.

Two points worth flagging before assuming this article covers the whole country:

• Sabah and Sarawak are not covered by the National Land Code. Both operate their own separate land legislation and their own separate rules on non-citizen land dealings, so the framework below describes Peninsular Malaysia and the Federal Territories.
• The scope of section 433B has widened over time. Foreign companies acquiring industrial land were once exempted from needing consent; a later amendment to the Code closed that carve-out, so today State Authority approval is required across land categories, not just residential.

Gate one: the state’s minimum price

Every state publishes (or circulates through its land office) its own floor for foreign purchases, and revises it periodically. As a concrete, officially sourced example, an official written reply from the Dewan Negeri Selangor set out Selangor’s structure by zone:

Category	Zone 1–2 (Petaling, Gombak, Hulu Langat, Sepang, Klang, Kuala Selangor, Kuala Langat)	Zone 3 (Hulu Selangor, Sabak Bernam)
Residential	RM2,000,000	RM1,000,000
Commercial & industrial	RM3,000,000	RM3,000,000

Treat that table as illustrative of how a state structures its floor, not as a number to carry into a live transaction — Selangor and every other state revise these figures, and a purchase agreement signed today should be checked against the current circular from the relevant state land office, not against a guide (including this one).

The Federal Territories run on a different, federally-set track. Under the Economic Planning Unit’s Guideline on the Acquisition of Properties, revised in line with the 2014 Budget, the minimum value for a property in Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya or Labuan acquired by a foreign interest was set at RM1,000,000 per unit. This is the figure most often quoted online as “the” Malaysian minimum — but it is specifically a Federal Territories figure, not a national one, and it sits alongside the separate state-by-state floors described above for everywhere else in the Peninsula.

What’s excluded no matter the price

Some property is off-limits to foreign buyers however much they offer:

• Malay Reserved Land. Under the Malay Reservation Enactments — state-level laws going back to the Federated Malay States era — any transfer, lease or charge of Malay Reserved Land in favour of a non-Malay is void. This is a separate, older restriction from the National Land Code’s consent regime, and it applies to Malaysian non-Malays too, not just foreigners.
• Land categorised for agriculture, which state authorities routinely exclude from foreign-consent applications as a matter of policy.
• Bumiputera-quota units and low-cost or affordable housing, categories that individual state housing policies reserve and that are not offered to foreign buyers as part of a development’s allocation.

None of these are negotiable by paying above the state’s minimum price — they sit outside the price-and-consent framework entirely.

Gate two: applying for State Authority consent

Once a property clears the price floor and isn’t in an excluded category, the buyer (usually through a conveyancing lawyer) applies in writing to the State Authority for consent to the dealing. A few practical realities worth setting expectations around:

• Approval is not automatic. The State Authority can decline an application — for example, where a scheme’s foreign-ownership allocation is already full, or where the state has an unpublished internal preference above its own gazetted floor.
• There is no single published turnaround time. Processing periods are commonly described by conveyancers as running from several weeks to a few months, but no state authority publishes a guaranteed service standard for this — build the uncertainty into a purchase timeline rather than assuming a fixed number of weeks.
• A separate, much larger threshold exists for very large or Bumiputera-diluting deals. The EPU’s own guideline requires its additional approval only where a property acquisition is priced above RM20 million and would dilute Bumiputera or government-agency ownership of that property, or where an indirect acquisition (through share purchase) changes control of a Bumiputera-held company whose property assets exceed RM20 million. An ordinary foreign purchase of a single home never reaches this second, much rarer approval layer.

The 2026 cost layer on top

Clearing both gates still leaves the tax bill. From 1 January 2026, non-citizens (excluding Malaysian permanent residents) and foreign-owned companies pay a flat 8% stamp duty on the transfer of residential property — double the earlier flat 4% rate — under Budget 2026’s tax measures. Commercial and industrial transfers are not affected by this change. For the full rate schedule across every instrument type, see Malaysia’s stamp duty rates by First Schedule item.

The other end of ownership carries its own foreigner-specific rate too: a non-citizen who later sells pays real property gains tax at a higher, flatter rate than citizens and permanent residents, without the same gradual taper for longer holding periods. See RPGT rates and how the gain is computed for the exact rates and the full holding-period ladder.

Common mistakes

Treating “RM1 million” as a national minimum. It’s the Federal Territories figure from a 2014 federal guideline, not a Malaysia-wide statutory floor. Every state sets, and periodically revises, its own number.

Assuming a high enough offer buys anything. Malay Reserved land, agricultural-category land, and Bumiputera-quota or low-cost units are excluded outright — price is irrelevant to these categories.

Confusing the National Land Code consent with EPU approval. State Authority consent under section 433B is required for essentially every foreign acquisition; EPU’s separate review only bites at the RM20 million Bumiputera-dilution threshold, which almost no individual home purchase reaches.

Assuming MM2H removes the need for state consent. The residential property that MM2H tiers require applicants to buy is an ordinary purchase in whichever state it sits in — it still has to clear that state’s minimum price and go through the same State Authority consent process as any other foreign buyer.

Applying Peninsular rules to Sabah or Sarawak. Both states run their own land legislation outside the National Land Code, with their own separate rules on non-citizen dealings — don’t assume a Peninsular state’s numbers or process carry over.

What’s next

Once title actually transfers into a foreign owner’s name, the ongoing obligations are the same ones every property owner in Malaysia faces — see assessment tax and quit rent, and who collects each one. For the two tax events that bracket ownership itself, see the stamp duty schedule on acquisition and RPGT on eventual disposal. And for the visa route that makes a property purchase compulsory rather than optional, see the four tiers of the MM2H long-stay visa.