Shop lots in Larkin, Johor Bahru
Johor Bahru’s main bus terminal moves a reported sixty thousand people a day. The highest raw footfall on this list, attached to the lowest spend per head.
- Ground floor rent
- RM2,800–5,000per month
- Median transacted
- —— psf · — deals
- Peak trading
- All day; departure and arrival waves
- Catchment
- Bus passengers, market traders and inner-city households
The map loads here on the published site.
If you have never been here
The 60-second orientation.
- Zone
- Inner Johor Bahru, transport hub
- Main commercial street
- Jalan Garuda
- Transaction window
- no published commercial transaction series — asking prices only
| Destination | Drive | Why it matters to a tenant |
|---|---|---|
| Larkin Sentral bus terminal | On it | The entire business case. Roughly 60,000 people a day. |
| JB City Centre | 6 min | The CBD; different market entirely. |
| Danga Bay / Stulang | 8 min | Waterfront precinct; weak demand. |
| Taman Pelangi | 8 min | The evening and supper alternative. |
| RTS Bukit Chagar | 8 min | Second-ring at best; not a direct beneficiary. |
Why this strip is busy
The demand engines — and what each one actually pays for.
Roughly sixty thousand people a day
Larkin Sentral is the highest raw footfall on this entire list. Nothing else comes close.
A captive waiting audience
Passengers with time to kill and nowhere to go are the easiest customer in retail — if your offer is fast and cheap.
Interstate and cross-border movement
Larkin serves long-distance routes. Travellers buy provisions, food, phone credit and gifts before boarding.
A market and inner-city layer
Larkin’s market and surrounding housing provide a resident trade underneath the transient one.
What Larkin actually looks like
Real, freely-licensed photographs of this area — with the licence on every caption.
Every photograph on this page is a real, freely-licensed image of this area, reused with attribution under its stated Creative Commons licence — not a stock photo and not generated. Licences are linked on each caption. If you own a better shot of your own shopfront here, send it to us and we will feature it with a credit and a link.
What Larkin has that the others do not
Not “advantages” — structural facts a competing location cannot copy.
Footfall that no retail development can buy
A bus terminal generates traffic as infrastructure, not as a marketing outcome. It cannot be competed away.
A captive audience with time
Waiting passengers convert at rates that street footfall never matches.
All-day trading, not a single peak
Bus schedules spread demand across the whole day rather than concentrating it in two hours.
Who actually walks past your door
Estimated share of retail spend, by ethnicity and customer type. Read the last row before you commit.
| Segment | Share | Per visit | When | Concepts that win them |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bus passengers — departing and arriving | 35–45% | RM8–25 | All day, schedule-driven | Grab-and-go food, drinks, phone top-up, snacks, gifts |
| Malay travellers and households | 38–43% | RM10–28 | All day; strong in festive seasons | Halal food, mini-mart, pharmacy, prayer-adjacent services |
| Migrant workers | 18–25% | RM8–20 | Weekends and remittance days | Remittance, phone top-up, cheap food, groceries |
| Market traders and staff | 12–18% | RM8–22 | Early morning and midday | Breakfast, coffee, provision, hardware |
| Inner-city households | 15–20% | RM12–32 | Evenings and weekends | Groceries, clinics, pharmacy, kopitiam |
| Premium or destination trade | <3% | — | Effectively absent | Sixty thousand people a day, almost none of them shopping. |
Ethnic composition
2022 citizen electoral roll for the P.160 Johor Bahru federal constituency, which contains this precinct. The roll counts registered voters only — it excludes non-citizens (migrant workers, Singaporeans, expatriates) and everyone under 18. Source: ElectionData.MY.
The city seat is Malay-majority on the roll — 52.5% Malay and Bumiputera against 39.1% Chinese, and only 5.9% Indian, the lowest Indian share of the six Johor seats in this series. Two corrections follow: halal provision matters more in the CBD than the heritage shophouse frontages suggest, and an Indian-cuisine concept has a thinner resident base here than in Tebrau or Iskandar Puteri. The roll also understates the daily Singaporean crowd entirely. Roughly 60,000 people pass through the terminal daily, including a large interstate and migrant population on no roll. The bar describes who lives nearby, not who walks past your door.
Catchment and market depth
Scale indicators for this precinct.
Rent and price schedule
Market bands, September 2026. Corner, frontage and existing tenancy change everything.
| Level & position | Monthly rent | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|
| Ground floor | RM2,800–5,000 | Anchor F&B, retail, clinic, salon |
| 1st floor | RM1,100–2,200 | Studio, tuition, spa, private dining |
| 2nd floor | RM800–1,600 | Back office, storage, co-working |
| Whole block | RM4,500–8,000 | Multi-floor F&B, medical, corporate |
| Asset | Asking range | Gross yield |
|---|---|---|
| Shophouse, intermediate | RM1.1M–1.8M | 4.2–5.2% |
| Shophouse, corner | RM1.9M–2.6M | 4.2–5.2% |
| Reference: — recorded transactions at a median of — and — per sq ft (no published commercial transaction series — asking prices only). Source: brickz.my, from JPPH transaction data. | ||
What is missing — the opportunity list
Compiled from listings, directories and on-the-ground survey. Absence of evidence is not proof of absence — verify before you commit.
The honest assessment
Every agent will tell you the first column. Read the second one twice.
- The highest raw footfall on this list. Roughly sixty thousand people a day.
- A captive audience with time to spend. Waiting passengers convert far above street rates.
- All-day demand, not a single peak. Bus schedules spread trade across the whole day.
- Infrastructure footfall nobody can compete away. A terminal generates traffic structurally.
- The lowest spend per head against the highest footfall. RM8–25 a head. Sixty thousand people a day is not sixty thousand customers.
- No published transaction data. We could not retrieve a commercial series for Larkin. Every price here is an asking price — commission a valuation.
- Position within the terminal decides everything. A unit on the concourse and a unit two hundred metres away are completely different businesses. Walk it at 7am and 6pm.
- Transient customers do not come back. There is almost no repeat business. Every sale is a first sale, which caps your margin strategy.
- Environment and security. A busy transport hub carries the operating realities of one. Budget for it and visit at night.
How it compares with the other JB strips
Ground-floor asking rents from live portal listings, September 2026.
| Strip | GF rent / month | Who shops there | Parking | Pick it if |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mount Austin | RM3,800–9,500 | Dense local Chinese Malaysian; highest weekday volume in JB | Congested | Your model needs volume seven days a week and you can live without parking. |
| Bukit Indah | RM2,500–4,200 | AEON-anchored footfall plus Singaporean day-trippers | Adequate | You want an Eco Botanic customer at roughly half the rent. |
| Eco Botanic | RM6,000–15,000 | Singaporean weekenders, EduCity students, expat families | Free, ample | You want high basket size and can survive a soft Monday–Thursday. |
| Taman Molek | RM4,500–15,000 | Affluent Chinese Malaysian, expat and Singaporean | Tight | You are an evening or bar operator with an existing following. |
| Sutera Utama | RM3,500–25,000 | Affluent Skudai households; the state’s highest median price | Adequate | You sell premium and need a catchment that pays for it. |
| Johor Jaya | RM2,200–4,500 | 66,000 residents; the most balanced ethnic mix in JB | Adequate | You want the healthiest yield and the deepest deal flow. |
| City Centre / IIBD | RM5,000–13,000 | Singaporean walk-in via CIQ; RTS terminus January 2027 | Paid / limited | You want walk-in cross-border traffic and will pay for the story. |
Ground-floor asking rents from live portal listings, September 2026. Expect 5–15% negotiation room on any of them. We will tell you honestly when another strip is the better commercial decision for your concept.
Buying, not renting? Same area, the residential side — NAPIC registered transactions, median price, median PSF and the 12-month move: Larkin landed data → · condos · industrial
What it actually costs to open here
Rent is the number everyone quotes. It is rarely the number that kills the deal — the fit-out is.
| Item | Amount (RM) | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Fit-out — full F&B with kitchen | 231,000 – 539,000 | RM150–350 psf on 1,540 sq ft. Kitchen exhaust, grease trap and M&E are what push it up. |
| Fit-out — basic retail (indicative) | 150,000 – 280,000 | Mid-range commercial guidance; no retail-specific Malaysian benchmark is published. |
| Deposits — 2 months + 1 advance + ½ utility | 13,650 | The Malaysian “2 + 1 + ½” convention, payable before you touch the unit. |
| Stamp duty on the tenancy | 187 (1 yr) / 561 (3 yr) | RM1 per RM250 of annual rent for ≤1 year; RM3 for 1–3 years. The RM2,400 exemption was abolished in January 2025. |
| Legal fee — tenancy agreement | 1,170 | Solicitors Remuneration Order 2023, Second Schedule: for a tenancy at RM10,000/month or less, 30% of one month rent (min RM500). Above RM10,000/month the rate steps down to 15–25%. A lease (term over three years, common on commercial units) is charged separately and higher — 60% of one month rent up to RM10,000, then 30–50%. |
| Agent commission | 0 | 1.25 months rent, paid by the landlord by convention. A tenant paying this is being overcharged. |
| TNB three-phase connection + deposit | 4,300 – 6,900 | RM1,700 connection plus RM2,600–5,200 deposit at 10–20 kW. Deposit earns 2.5% p.a. and is refundable. |
| Licences — premise + signboard, first year | Budget 700 – 1,200 | Premise licence fees are set by your own council (MBJB / MBIP / MBPG / MPKu) by business type and floor area — confirm with them. Signboard licence RM200–400. This line is a planning allowance, not a quoted fee. |
| Sdn Bhd incorporation | 1,000 | SSM fee. A foreigner cannot register a sole proprietorship. |
| Realistic total before you sell anything — F&B | 253,650 – 573,650 | Plus opening stock, POS, signage design, insurance and 3 months working capital. |
Cost model, licences, the full FAQ and sources & method are on one page: the Johor Bahru shop lot guide.
Two ways we can help
We hold ready units here that are never listed publicly, and current developer rebate sheets for the new phases.
Tell us the concept. We will send matching units within 24 hours.
Most good ground-floor units in Larkin change hands before they are advertised. Send us your trade, floor area, budget and target opening date, and we will come back with what is actually available — including units where the current tenant is quietly looking to assign.
- Off-market and tenancy-assignment units
- Floor plans, actual outgoings and licensing feasibility
- Foreign-buyer and non-resident tenancy guidance
Or WhatsApp / call +60 10-906 6685 · email
No fee to tenants and buyers. Reply within one working day.
Get the current new-launch rebate sheet for this corridor.
New commercial phases carry incentives that are never published — early-bird discounts, rebates, rent guarantees and fit-out allowances that shift monthly. We will send you the live sheet with the yield maths done.
- Live rebate and package comparison across projects
- Net yield modelling after outgoings and financing
- Foreign purchase threshold and state consent levy notes
Or WhatsApp / call +60 10-906 6685 · see new launches
Includes the RM1M foreign-buyer floor and the 3% state consent levy for Johor commercial property.
Questions people actually ask
Short, direct answers.