Residensi Bayu Damai

I genuinely cannot give you a settled answer, and I am going to explain the contradiction rather than pick the side that sells more units.

The Bar Council Conveyancing Practice Committee's own state-by-state table records Sabah's minimum purchase price for residential property acquired by a non-citizen as RM1,000,000. The highest gazetted price in this development is RM971,800. On that rule, not one of the 762 units is transactable by a foreigner, a Singaporean or a Malaysian permanent resident — short by RM28,200.

A different figure of RM600,000 for high-rise strata, with RM1,000,000 for landed, is widely quoted and attributed to a state circular. On that rule, effectively the whole development is open.

The developer’s own FAQ for Residensi Bayu Damai states that foreigners may buy at an SPA price of RM600,000 and above. That matches the lower figure, but it is the developer’s statement about its own project, not a ruling from the state — and the Bar Council table still shows RM1,000,000. Treat it as a reason to ask, not as the answer.

I could not reach any online Sabah housing or land register to resolve which is operative today, and I am not prepared to publish a guess on something this consequential.

So the answer is a process, not a number: instruct a Sabah conveyancing solicitor to obtain a 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. Sabah also requires State Authority consent on top of the price test.

Whatever the threshold turns out to be, also budget the flat 8% stamp duty applying to non-citizens on residential property since 1 January 2026, and note that real property gains tax for non-citizens is 30% for a disposal within five years and 10% from the sixth year, with no zero band.

It means there is no fixed handover date for the building, only a clock that starts on the day you sign.

Sign in September 2026 and 52 months lands in January 2031. Sign a year earlier and you get keys a year earlier. This is the standard formulation in a Malaysian sale and purchase agreement and it is the number your liquidated damages claim would be measured against if the developer is late.

Aggregator sites quote a Q4 2028 completion. That figure is not on the developer's own material and does not follow from the permit, so I have not used it.

Practical advice: work out your own 52-month date before you sign, and plan your financing, your rental cover and your rent-versus-own decision around that date rather than around a marketing year.

The permit band is the registered range the developer is legally bound within: RM484,310 at the bottom for a Type A, RM971,800 at the top for a Type D1. Marketing and aggregator copy quotes a narrower range of roughly RM509,800 to RM961,800.

Those are not the same thing and you should not treat them as interchangeable. The permit band is a legal outer boundary. The price that binds you is the one written into your sale and purchase agreement, and it can differ from the permit figure for the same type — compare the two before you sign.

The useful consequence is that you can check any quote you are given against the permit. If someone quotes you above the gazetted maximum for that type, ask why in writing.

I take the current price list and the remaining unsold stack list directly from the developer, and I will send both.

No, despite the name. “Residensi” is used widely in Malaysian project naming and it does not imply a state scheme here.

This is a private open-market development by FYT Land (KK) Sdn Bhd, under the BEDI Development and EXSIM umbrella. There is no income ceiling, no Sabah-resident-only rule and no state agency programme disclosed anywhere in the developer's material.

The only allocation restriction on the permit is the standard one: 30% of units reserved for Bumiputera purchasers. Whether that quota is released to the open market after a set period is not stated, and it is a fair question to ask if the unit you want is inside it.

Worry is the wrong word. Read the announcements is the right one, and here is what they say.

In June 2026 Bedi Berhad, Bursa stock code 6378 and formerly WMG Holdings Bhd, announced the acquisition of FYT Land (KK) Sdn Bhd from Bedi Development Sdn Bhd for an indicative RM21.27 million, finalised at around RM21.87 million. It is a related-party transaction: Bedi's managing director holds an interest through Bedi Development, and other parties hold indirect interests through EXSIM Borneo Sdn Bhd, which controls 52.5% of Bedi Berhad.

Business press reported that Bedi's gearing would rise to 1.36 times from 0.78 times once the target companies' borrowings are consolidated, with interim funding from internal funds and bank borrowings pending completion of a separate hypermarket disposal of up to RM46.19 million.

None of that is improper and related-party acquisitions are routine on Bursa. But a buyer whose completion date is 52 months away has a legitimate interest in the balance sheet of the group that will finish the building. The announcements are public. Read them, or ask me and I will send the references.

The reassuring counterweight: your money sits in a housing development account with RHB, and payments are made against certified construction stages, not into a general account.

It means the title was issued for a 999-year term under the Sabah Land Ordinance, Cap. 68 — Sabah has its own land law and does not use the National Land Code. Titles here are Country Lease or Town Lease rather than the freehold and 99-year leasehold categories familiar on the Peninsula.

For financing and resale purposes a 999-year term behaves as effectively perpetual. No bank is pricing tenure risk on a 900-plus year remainder.

There is relevant recent history. After a High Court ruling in March 2020, Sabah restored 999-year terms on 5,978 Country Lease titles, the practice in the 1990s of cutting 900 years off those leases having been held unlawful. That is background rather than a warning, but it is why Sabah tenure deserves an actual title search rather than an assumption.

Ask for the title number and have a Sabah conveyancing solicitor read the term and the commencement date. It is a short job and it removes the only real question about the tenure here.

Type C, and the permit lets you prove it rather than take my word for it.

Going from Type B at 834 sq ft to Type B1 at 898 sq ft costs about RM71,000 more at the band minimum for 64 extra square feet — roughly RM1,110 per additional square foot.

Going from Type B1 at 898 sq ft to Type C at 963 sq ft costs about RM45,000 more for 65 extra square feet — roughly RM692 per additional square foot, which is close to the entry price per square foot for the whole development.

So the B to B1 step is the expensive one and the B1 to C step is the cheap one. That does not automatically make C right for you — it depends on where the floor area lands and how many bedrooms you need — but it is the sort of arithmetic that is only possible because this developer published the whole schedule.

Send me the two or three types you are weighing and I will lay them out side by side with the current pricing rather than the permit band.

Less than most projects I write about, which is why the gaps are worth naming precisely. The storey count for each tower is not stated — aggregator sites say 39 for Tower A and 34 for Tower B, and I have not used those. The land area is not stated; 10.2 acres and 10.02 acres both circulate. The car park ratio is not stated. The maintenance fee is not stated — RM0.39 per square foot including sinking fund circulates on review sites and I could not trace it to any developer document. The construction completion percentage is not stated, only dated photographs.

One marketing claim I have deliberately not repeated: GreenRE certification. It appears in aggregator copy and not on bayudamai.com.my or exsim.com.my. Earthquake resistance was in the same category until the developer’s own FAQ (May 2024) addressed it: the developer states that the building is designed and checked against the Sabah code of practice for earthquake resistance. That is the developer’s statement, not an independent certificate — in a state with genuine seismic history, ask the developer which code and which engineer signed it off, and have your lawyer note the answer in writing.

Also not verified: the licence and permit numbers themselves. They are published by the developer, which is a great deal better than nothing, but I could not confirm them against a Sabah state register because none was reachable online. Your solicitor can.

I am going to be careful here, because I do not have a Sabah-specific NAPIC figure I can stand behind for the current quarter.

What I can tell you is the national picture and where Sabah is not. NAPIC recorded Malaysia's residential overhang at 32,801 completed unsold units in Q1 2026, the sixth consecutive quarterly increase. Five states were named as carrying the largest overhang — Perak led the country at 4,063 units and Penang was fifth at 3,165, with Johor, Selangor and Kuala Lumpur between them. Sabah was not among the five.

I have seen a figure of 2,771 unsold completed units in Sabah quoted for Q3 2025, but I could not trace it to a primary NAPIC document, so I am not presenting it as verified. Sabah's house price index also contracted 2.3% in Q1 2026, one of only two states to fall.

The project-specific number is more useful than any state average anyway: 603 of 762 units sold as at 3 June 2026, leaving about 159 unsold roughly two years after launch. Roughly 21% remaining at that point is a real absorption signal, and it is the number I would negotiate against.