Paragon Gateway

They cannot. The highest price filed on either statutory permit is RM970,290, in Towers C and D. Johor requires a foreigner to pay at least RM1,000,000 for a strata unit. The scheme’s ceiling misses the threshold by RM29,710 – close enough to be frustrating, and absolutely binding.

I mention the exact shortfall because it invites a bad idea, and I would rather kill it here. Buyers sometimes ask whether the price can simply be written up to RM1,000,001 on the sale and purchase agreement. That is a misdeclaration to the state authority and to the stamp office, it does not create eligibility, and it exposes you to consequences far worse than missing out on a unit. The floor is on who may own, and no amount of paperwork restyling changes that.

If you hold a foreign passport, Johor’s other charges only apply once you clear the RM1 million bar in the first place: state consent, the foreign-buyer levy of 3% of the price or RM30,000 whichever is higher (since 1 July 2025) — and be careful with that minimum, because where the property is a serviced residence transacted below RM1 million the state scale charges RM50,000, not RM30,000, and Paragon Gateway’s entire permit band, RM348,653 to RM970,290, sits under RM1 million — and 8% stamp duty for non-citizens (since 1 January 2026). Tell me your budget and I will send you Johor Bahru projects whose price list actually opens above the threshold.

2,136 serviced apartment units across four towers, plus 48 retail lots. Tower A holds 699, Tower B holds 699, Tower C holds 369 and Tower D holds 369. Those figures come from Joland’s own project page and are corroborated by the two statutory permit panels on the project website, which list the counts tower by tower.

The split is the thing to sit with. Towers A and B together hold 1,398 units – nearly two-thirds of the scheme – and they are the two towers licensed first. Towers C and D are roughly half the size each. If lift waiting times, corridor traffic and lobby congestion matter to you, the smaller towers are the better bet, and they carry a slightly higher price band to match.

What the developer has not published is the storey count per tower, the number of units on each floor, or the number of lifts per core. Units per lift is the single number that decides your morning, and it is on the approved building plan rather than in any brochure. I ask for it before a client commits.

December 2027 is the expected completion date printed on both phase permits. That is the date that has legal weight, because liquidated ascertained damages under the sale and purchase agreement run from the statutory delivery period, not from a sales brochure.

Whether it is on schedule I cannot tell you from published sources, and I will not pretend otherwise. The developer’s website carries exactly two construction photographs, both dated 6 May 2024. As at 4 August 2026 there is no newer progress image, no percentage-of-completion figure and no topping-out announcement. Two years of publishing silence is not evidence of a problem, but it is the absence of evidence that things are fine.

So here is what I actually do rather than speculate. I go to Jalan Suria Utama and photograph the structure. I ask for the architect’s certified stage of works, which is the document your bank releases progress payments against. And I check the Phase 1 sales permit renewal, since the current one expires on 4 October 2026. If any of the three comes back uncomfortable, I tell you and you walk – that is what a buyer’s agent is for.

The developer’s website displays six residential layouts – A, B, C, D, D1 and E – and publishes a drawing for each. It does not publish the built-up area of any of them as text, which is why you will not find a square-foot figure on this page. I do not transcribe dimensions off a compressed image and present them as fact.

There is a second wrinkle worth knowing. The typical floor key plans on the same website are labelled for stacks A, E, F and L; B and C; D and K; G; and H and I. That is eleven letters against six displayed types. Either the website is incomplete or some letters denote stack positions rather than layouts – and the only way to settle it is the sales chart, which lists every type with its built-up, its bedroom count and its price.

That chart is what I ask for on your behalf, along with which stacks are still open and which face which way. Message me with the tower you are considering and I will send the type schedule and the drawings at full resolution.

If price is the constraint, Towers A and B – they start at RM348,653 against RM350,353 for C and D. If living quality is the constraint, Towers C and D, because 369 households per tower will always beat 699 at the lift lobby and in the car park ramp.

There is a timing argument too. Towers A and B were permitted in October 2023 and Towers C and D in March 2024, yet both phases carry the same December 2027 completion date. In practice, the phase licensed first is usually the phase that hands over first. If you need the keys sooner – or if you want to see one phase completed before the other is due – that sequencing is worth confirming with the sales team in writing.

What I would not do is choose from a floor plate. Within any tower, the stack decides your afternoon sun, your view, your noise from the podium and ultimately your resale price, and the spread between the best and worst stack is usually wider than the spread between towers. Go on site, stand where the building will stand, and look at what is in front of you.

Prices are on the statutory record and I have put them in full above: Tower A RM348,653 to RM958,290, Tower B RM348,653 to RM957,290, Towers C and D RM350,353 to RM970,290, with a 15% Bumiputera discount stated on both permit panels.

The maintenance charge is a different story – Paragon Premium has not published it anywhere, and neither the website nor the permit panels carry a rate. I am not going to repeat the per-square-foot numbers circulating on listing sites, because they disagree with each other and none of them names a source. On a scheme with 2,136 units and 48 retail lots sharing a podium, the charge structure also depends on how the retail component is apportioned, which is a question for the deed of mutual covenants rather than a brochure.

The payment schedule for a project under the Housing Development Act follows the statutory Third Schedule, with progress payments released by your bank against the architect’s certificates. I get the current price list, the stack chart and the developer’s stated maintenance rate direct from Paragon Premium – ask me and I will send you what is genuinely current on the day.

It should change how you buy, not necessarily whether you buy. NAPIC’s Q1 2026 figures put 19,263 completed unsold serviced apartments across Malaysia, worth RM16.52 billion, with Johor holding 9,972 of them – about half the national total and the largest overhang of any state.

Now do the arithmetic that is specific to this project. Paragon Gateway alone adds 2,136 units, all completing in the same month, December 2027. That is more than a fifth of the entire current Johor overhang landing on one parcel at one time. Even if the scheme is well sold, the units that were bought as investments come onto the rental market together, and any that were bought and later resold come onto the sale market together. A single scheme this size becomes its own micro-market, and it competes with itself before it competes with anyone else.

What this means in practice: expect rental rates in the building to find their floor early as owners undercut each other in year one, expect bank valuations on your first resale to be anchored to whatever transacts inside this scheme rather than to your purchase price, and plan a holding period that lets the initial rush clear. Buying the cheapest stack in the scheme is not the answer – buying a stack that is genuinely differentiated from the other 2,135 is.

Short version: Gateway is the cheap, big, further-out one; Signature Suites is the small, single-size, closer-in one; Paragon Suites @ CIQ is the finished one you can walk through today. Same group, three genuinely different products.

Side by side. Gateway: Taman Suria, 5.24 acres, four towers, 2,136 units plus 48 shops, RM348,653 to RM970,290, December 2027, roughly 4 km straight line from the RTS terminus. Signature Suites: Jalan Abdul Samad, 1.14 acres, one 32-storey tower, 484 units in just two sizes of 645 and 649 sq ft, RM581,400 to RM650,285, June 2029, 4.4 km from the RTS by the developer’s own table. Paragon Suites @ CIQ: Jalan Stulang Darat, 461 units, completed 2017, no developer stock left, subsale only, and the only one of the three within walking distance of the checkpoint.

Choose Gateway if your constraint is the entry price or the monthly instalment, and you are comfortable being one owner among 2,136 in a scheme that completes all at once. Choose Signature Suites if you want a small building and a simpler management structure and you can wait until 2029. Choose Paragon Suites @ CIQ if walking to the border matters more than everything else, and you would rather inspect a real unit, a real corridor and a real maintenance record than read a permit panel. Tell me which constraint is actually binding for you and the choice usually makes itself.

It is a serviced apartment, and the approved building plan reference on the statutory panel is MBJB/U/2023/14/BGN/5/KOM. Serviced apartments in Johor Bahru are normally built on commercially zoned land, and the practical consequences are the same wherever the product appears.

Three of them cost you money every year. Assessment, or cukai pintu, is usually levied at the commercial rate rather than the residential rate. Water and electricity are typically billed on commercial tariffs, and there is no domestic electricity subsidy band. Together these can add a few hundred ringgit a month against an identical residential-titled condominium, which is worth putting into your yield model before you sign, not after.

One more consequence sits on the financing side. Some banks apply a slightly lower margin of finance to serviced apartments than to residential-titled units, and a few treat them as commercial exposure altogether. Get a written indication from your own banker for the specific unit and price before you pay a booking fee – the answer varies more between banks than most buyers expect.