Sabah
Three verified developments are listed here for Sabah, and all three are in Kota Kinabalu. Only one publishes a price — Residensi Bayu Damai, at RM484,310 to RM971,800 on the permit, 762 units of 697 to 1,132 sq ft on a 999-year lease. The Bedrock at Jesselton Docklands, commercial suites in two towers inside a 35-acre masterplan, and The V by Jesselton, a Yayasan Sabah joint venture at Likas Bay with 18 published layouts from 425 to 1,090 sq ft, publish neither price nor tenure.
Sabah does not run on peninsular law, and that is the single most important thing on this page. Land here is governed by the Sabah Land Ordinance (Cap. 68), so titles are Country Lease or Town Lease rather than the freehold and leasehold categories used in Johor, Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. Section 433B of the National Land Code, the state-consent provision that applies across the whole peninsula, does not apply in Sabah. Consent comes from the state Housing Controller rather than KPKT, and commercial property is open to a foreign buyer only through a Malaysian-registered company.
The non-citizen price floor is genuinely disputed and this site will not pretend otherwise. The Malaysian Bar's conveyancing circular states RM1,000,000. A 2022 state directive circulating widely is said to set RM600,000 for strata and RM1,000,000 for landed, but that document has no text layer and cannot be verified. Both numbers are published here and neither is chosen. Until the Housing Controller confirms your unit in writing, plan on the higher figure.
3 projects
Frequently asked questions
What is the minimum price for a foreigner buying property in Sabah?
Two published figures contradict each other, so here are both. The Bar Council Conveyancing Practice Committee's state-by-state table records Sabah's minimum purchase price for residential property acquired by a non-citizen as RM1,000,000. A separate and widely quoted figure of RM600,000 for high-rise strata, with RM1,000,000 for landed, is attributed to a 2022 state circular that I have not been able to read in text form.
I will not average them, pick the convenient one, or borrow a number from the peninsula. The gap is not academic. At Residensi Bayu Damai the highest gazetted price is RM971,800: under the first figure not one of its 762 units is transactable to a non-citizen, short by RM28,200, and under the second, effectively the whole development is open.
So the answer is a process rather than a number. Instruct a Sabah conveyancing solicitor to obtain written confirmation from the Sabah Lands and Surveys Department for the specific unit, type and price you intend to buy, before you pay a booking fee. Foreign interest includes Malaysian permanent residents.
Why does a Sabah project talk about Country Lease instead of freehold?
Because Sabah does not use the National Land Code. Titles here are issued under the Sabah Land Ordinance (Cap. 68) as Country Lease or Town Lease, which is why a Sabah development describes a term of years where a peninsular one would say freehold or 99-year leasehold.
One consequence matters if you have read up on buying in Kuala Lumpur or Johor: section 433B of the National Land Code, the consent provision governing transfers to non-citizens on the peninsula, does not apply in Sabah or Sarawak. Sabah runs its own State Authority consent, and the sequence and paperwork are not the same.
Ask for the title number, then have a Sabah solicitor read the title itself — the class of lease, the unexpired term, the expressed conditions, and any restriction in interest. The restriction in interest is the endorsement that decides whether a transfer to a non-citizen can be registered at all.
Can a foreigner buy commercial property in Sabah?
Not as an individual. Sabah commercial property is recorded as restricted to foreign companies incorporated in Malaysia, and that restriction is expressly extended to property intended for tourism use. The threshold recorded alongside it is RM1,000,000.
That matters more here than it sounds, because two of the three Sabah developments on this site sit in or near that classification. The Bedrock at Jesselton Docklands is described by its own developer as commercial suites. The V by Jesselton includes a Corporate Suites component alongside its residential towers.
Before anything else, get the developer to state in writing which title category your specific unit falls under. Residential and commercial are not interchangeable words here — they decide whether you can hold the title in your own name at all.
What do the three Sabah projects here actually publish?
Only one of the three publishes a full statutory set. Residensi Bayu Damai gives a developer licence (06-2029/06788), an advertising and sale permit (06-2029/05106), a 999-year lease, 762 units, and a gazetted price band of RM484,310 to RM971,800, with 30% of units reserved for Bumiputera buyers at a 5% discount.
The Bedrock at Jesselton Docklands publishes no tenure, no built-up areas, no unit count and no price; the unit counter on its own official page renders as zero. The V by Jesselton publishes 18 layouts from 425 to 1,090 sq ft on a 10-acre site in a joint venture with Yayasan Sabah, but no tenure, no unit count and no completion date.
Where a developer publishes no tenure, third-party listings will fill the gap with the word leasehold. A listing site is not a title search. Ask for the permit and the title, and remember that in Sabah the correct answer will be a Country Lease or Town Lease with a stated unexpired term.
Is Kota Kinabalu oversupplied?
I do not have a Sabah-specific NAPIC figure I am willing to stand behind for the current quarter, and I would rather say so than quote one. Here is what can be sourced.
Nationally, NAPIC recorded 32,801 completed unsold residential units in the first quarter of 2026, a sixth consecutive quarterly increase. The five states carrying the largest overhang were named: Perak led at 4,063 and Penang was fifth at 3,165. Sabah was not among the five. Sabah's house price index contracted 2.3% in the same quarter, one of only two states to fall. A figure of 2,771 unsold completed units in Sabah circulates for the third quarter of 2025, but I could not trace it to a primary NAPIC document, so it is not presented here as verified.
Project-level absorption is more useful than a state average in any case. At Residensi Bayu Damai, 603 of 762 units were sold as at 3 June 2026, leaving roughly 21% unsold about two years after launch. That is a real number, and it is the one to negotiate against.