EXCHANGE 106 @ TRX

Not personally. A foreign individual cannot hold a qualifying commercial unit in Malaysia in their own name, and this is the single most important thing on this page.

The rule sits in the Ministry of Economy Guideline on the Acquisition of Properties, in force since 13 July 2022, which replaced the 2014 guideline. Paragraph 2.2(a) brings acquisitions by foreign interest of a commercial unit valued at RM1,000,000 and above within the guideline. Paragraph 4 then imposes the condition: for those acquisitions, the property must be registered under the name of a local company.

A local company is defined in the guideline as a company incorporated in Malaysia. So the practical answer is that a foreign buyer sets up or uses a Malaysian-incorporated company and the title goes into that company’s name, not into a personal name and not into an offshore vehicle.

Two definitions to read carefully. First, foreign interest includes a non-Malaysian individual, a permanent resident, a foreign company or institution, and any local company in which those parties hold more than 50% of the voting rights. A Malaysian company that is majority foreign-owned is still foreign interest. Second, a commercial unit is defined to include shop houses, shop offices, shop lots, office space, business space and showroom space — office floors are squarely inside it.

The guideline also states that the acquisition conditions must be complied with and notified to the Ministry of Economy before the property is transferred. That is a step in the timetable, not an afterthought. Take proper Malaysian legal advice on the structure before you sign anything, and do not let anyone talk you into a nominee arrangement.

No. It is a residential-only charge, and office space is not residential property.

The Finance Act 2025 inserted Item 32(ab) into the First Schedule of the Stamp Act 1949, charging RM8 for every RM100 of consideration or market value, whichever is greater, on transfers of residential property to non-citizens and foreign companies executed on or after 1 January 2026. The Act added a statutory definition of residential property: a house, condominium, apartment, flat, service apartment or SOHO solely to be used as a dwelling house.

An office floor in a Grade A tower is none of those things. Transfers of commercial property continue on the ordinary tiered scale of 1% to 4% for every buyer, citizen or not. Loan agreement duty also stays at 0.5% of the facility amount for everyone.

Do not read that as commercial being the cheaper option overall. What you save at the transfer counter you pay back annually in commercial assessment rates, commercial electricity and water tariffs, and a lower loan margin. Banks routinely lend less against commercial security than against a home, and for a foreign-controlled Malaysian company the margin is usually tighter still.

The honest summary: the 8% is a one-off you avoid, and the commercial cost base is a permanent one you take on. Model both over your intended holding period rather than reacting to the headline rate.

Everything I can verify about this tower is leasing activity, not sale activity, and that distinction matters more than most enquiries assume.

The building operates as a landlord-managed Grade A tower under Mulia Property Development, with a management office on Level 5, an in-house fit-out planning service offered free to tenants, and a published tenancy roster of multinational occupiers. The listings you will find for Exchange 106 on Malaysian portals are overwhelmingly offers of space to rent, quoted per square foot per month.

Whether individual floors carry strata titles and can be transferred to a third-party purchaser is not something the owner publishes, and I am not going to assert either way. It is the first question to put in writing before you spend money on legal advice: does the space carry a strata title, is the vendor the registered proprietor, and are there charges over the title.

If the answer is that the tower is held on a single master title and let floor by floor, then there is nothing here for a purchaser and the correct conversation is a leasing one — headcount, term, rent-free period, fit-out contribution, service charge and escalation.

Tell me which of the two you are actually trying to do. The advice, the documents and the approvals are entirely different, and mixing them up wastes months.

Mulia Property Development Sdn Bhd owns it. That company is 51% held by the Ministry of Finance through MKD Signature Sdn Bhd and 49% by Mulia International.

The history is public and it is unusual. The tower began life as the Signature Tower under the 1MDB-controlled Tun Razak Exchange master plan, with the development rights sold to Mulia Group in May 2015 and the land transacted at RM665 million. MoF Inc took the 51% stake in 2018. Reporting has covered both the repayment obligations attached to the ministry’s investment and a shareholder dispute between the two sides.

For a tenant this is closer to reassurance than to risk. A tower with a sovereign majority shareholder is not going to be abandoned mid-lease, and the building has been operating since 2019 with major multinational occupiers.

For a purchaser it is a due diligence checklist rather than a headline. Confirm the vendor entity on the sale documents, confirm any charges registered against the title, and understand who controls decisions on capital expenditure and building services, because that is what determines whether the lifts, the chillers and the facade are properly maintained over a twenty-year holding period.

None of this is a reason to walk away. It is a reason to have a Malaysian solicitor do a proper title and corporate search rather than relying on a brochure and a brand.

The most recent occupancy figures I am willing to attribute put the tower at 52% at the time Ant International was reported to be taking three floors, with the manager reported as expecting up to 70% by the end of 2025.

Nationally, the Valuation and Property Services Department reported private purpose-built office occupancy at 72.3% in the first quarter of 2026, against 72.0% a year earlier. That is a national figure across all private purpose-built offices, not a Kuala Lumpur city centre figure and not a Grade A figure. I could not find a 1Q2026 Kuala Lumpur office occupancy number from a source I am prepared to cite, so this page does not print one. If you need that number for a board paper, say so and I will go and get the underlying report rather than a summary of it.

What a building below the national average means in practice: negotiating leverage sits with the tenant. In a tower with vacant floors you can reasonably ask for a longer rent-free period, a fit-out contribution, a cap on service charge escalation and a break option. Landlords protect headline rent and give ground on incentives, so measure the deal on effective rent over the full term, not on the rate per square foot in the first line of the offer.

For a purchaser, occupancy is the whole investment case. A yield calculated on full occupancy in a tower that is not fully occupied is not a yield, it is a hope. Ask for the actual rent roll, the weighted average lease expiry, and the schedule of expiries over the next three years.

Three recurring items, and they are the reason commercial property looks cheaper at the transfer counter and is not always cheaper to hold.

Assessment rates. Local authority assessment is set by land use category, and commercial categories carry a higher rate than residential ones. Over a twenty-year hold this is not a rounding error.

Utilities. Electricity and water tariffs follow the category as well. A commercial tariff on a fully air-conditioned office floor, with a chiller load running through the working day, is a materially different bill from a residential tariff on an apartment.

Financing. Banks lend less against commercial security. Where a Malaysian owner-occupier of a home might see 90% loan to value, commercial lending is typically well below that, and a foreign-controlled Malaysian company will usually be assessed more conservatively again. That difference is capital you must find upfront, and capital has an opportunity cost.

For a non-resident receiving rent from Malaysian property there is a fourth item: rental income is taxed at a flat 30% for non-residents, without the reliefs a resident taxpayer gets. And on exit, real property gains tax for a non-citizen is 30% within five years and 10% from year six onwards, with no zero band. Build all four into the model before you compare a Kuala Lumpur office to anything in another market.

Start from headcount, not from view. The building publishes a suggested layout and a seat count for each of its five zones, and those numbers are the fastest way to filter.

Low Zone, Levels 6 to 21, plates of 31,045 to 34,154 sq ft, suggested layout 255 seats. Mid Zone, Levels 22 to 37, plates of 28,581 to 31,103 sq ft, 182 seats. High Zone, Levels 38 to 55, plates of 26,843 to 29,034 sq ft, 178 seats. Sky Zone 1, Levels 56 to 77, plates of 23,423 to 26,509 sq ft, 208 seats. Sky Zone 2, Levels 78 to 106, plates of 20,706 to 23,223 sq ft, 193 seats.

Two things to notice. First, the plate shrinks by about 40% from the base to the crown, so a requirement that fits on one floor in the Low Zone may need two floors in Sky Zone 2 — and two floors means an internal stair, two receptions or a split team. Second, the seat counts do not fall in step with the plate, because a suggested layout is a design assumption about density, not a property of the building. Never size a requirement from a marketing seat count.

The number to ask for instead is the efficiency ratio floor by floor: usable area divided by lettable area. As the plate shrinks upward and the core stays roughly constant, that ratio worsens. Two floors quoted at the same rent per square foot in different zones are not the same deal.

Send me your headcount, your desk standard in square feet per person, and whether you need everyone on one level. I will tell you which zones actually work and which ones only look like they do.

Because the images belong to the building’s owner and I only publish images once they are properly hosted here with the owner’s material as the source, and because no asking price for a purchase has been published by anybody I am willing to cite.

On images: the building publishes an extensive official set — facade and crown photography, lobby and atrium views, the sky lobby, and a zone plan and suggested layout drawing for each of the five vertical zones. I have catalogued that set with filenames, captions and alt text in both languages, and it goes onto this page the moment the images are uploaded properly rather than hotlinked.

On price: rental listings for this tower circulate widely on Malaysian portals with per square foot monthly figures attached. Those are agent asking rates on individual listings, not the landlord’s published schedule, and they move with incentives, floor and term. A sale price per square foot I have not seen published at all.

On the vacancy statistic that everybody quotes: I have printed the national purpose-built office occupancy of 72.3% for the first quarter of 2026 because I can attribute it to the Valuation and Property Services Department. I have not printed a Kuala Lumpur city centre figure for the same quarter, because I could not find one in a form I could stand behind. An office decision is worth more than a borrowed number.

Ask me for current terms and I will go to the leasing team and come back with what they will actually put in writing.

This page is the only one of the four that is not about a home, so start by deciding which side of that line you are on.

Read this page if the requirement is office space: a regional headquarters, a shared-service centre, or a commercial acquisition held through a Malaysian company. The governing rules here are the Ministry of Economy guideline, commercial assessment and tariffs, and occupancy — not bedrooms and not the 8% residential stamp duty.

Read the CORE Residence @ TRX page if you want to live inside the same master plan. Freehold, seven published layouts from 624 to 1,022 sq ft split between Tower 1 and Tower 2, and a developer that has published neither a unit count nor a completion date.

Read the Golden Crown Residence page if someone has offered you a TRX residential address that is not actually in TRX. That project is a 60-storey, 490-unit tower whose developer publishes its map pin on Jalan Ampang, and whose tenure is described inconsistently across sources.

Read the Aras Residences OUG page if you want a suburban family home rather than a city-centre investment. Taman OUG, twin 57-storey towers, 1,272 units, 850 to 1,062 sq ft, targeted for the fourth quarter of 2029, inside a 63-acre freehold township.