Space Residency @ JB City Centre

Yes, but only at the top of the building, and the qualifying test is the price you actually pay, not the size of the unit.

Johor requires a non-citizen to pay at least RM1,000,000 for a strata unit and to obtain state consent. Space Residency clears that in a way most Johor buildings at this price point do not: the sale permit shows Block A priced up to RM1,443,000 and Block B up to RM3,854,400, and current sub-sale asking prices reach RM2,508,000. So the D, E, F and G plans and the higher-floor larger units are genuinely in play.

What is not in play is a 645 sq ft Type A asking RM600,000. No amount of paperwork turns that into an eligible purchase. Budget also for the Johor foreign buyer levy — 3% of price or RM30,000, whichever is higher, since 1 July 2025, with a RM50,000 minimum instead of RM30,000 where the property is a serviced residence transacted below RM1 million. Sub-sale asking prices here run from RM460,000 to RM2,508,000, so the building sits on both sides of RM1,000,000 and the tier follows the price on the transfer, not the layout. Then add the flat 8% stamp duty on non-citizens since 1 January 2026. On a RM1.2 million unit that is roughly RM36,000 of levy and RM96,000 of stamp duty before legal fees.

It needs unpacking before you panic, and it needs taking seriously after you do.

First the unpacking. That figure is a listing count on PropertyGuru, not a count of empty units. One apartment advertised by four agents appears four times. iProperty, which enforces listing rules differently, showed 143 rental listings and 63 sale listings for the same building on the same day. The truth sits somewhere between the two portals.

Now the part to take seriously. Even iProperty’s narrower count is 143 units chasing tenants in one building. That is a market where the marginal landlord wins on price, and where a unit that is not furnished, not high floor and not facing the right way sits empty for months. If your yield model assumes you let within four weeks at the asking rent, rebuild it.

Because it is young. PropertyGuru shows Transaction data is not available for Space Residency, which is normal for a scheme that only received its CCC in May 2024 — strata titles and registered transfers take time to work through, and the portals only display what has been publicly reported.

The practical consequence is uncomfortable: every price you can see online for this building is an asking price. Asking prices tell you what sellers hope for. They tell you nothing about what buyers agreed to.

The fix is to go to the source. Valuation and Property Services Department (JPPH) records show actual transacted prices, and a licensed valuer or a bank valuation will read them for a specific size band and floor. I order that before advising a client to offer, and I would rather do it for you than let you anchor on a number an agent typed into a listing.

Linbaq lists the Johor–Singapore Causeway under accessibility but publishes no distance figure for it, and I am not going to invent one. What the developer did instead is more informative than a number would have been: in January 2026 it paid for a free shuttle bus to the CIQ.

You do not fund a shuttle for a walkable address. This is a drive-or-ride location relative to the crossing, in the older Taman Abad commercial belt rather than the one-kilometre CIQ ring. PropertyGuru’s own description puts the city centre at roughly 10 to 15 minutes by car via Jalan Dato Jaafar.

If crossing daily is the whole reason you are buying in Johor Bahru, look at Bukit Meldrum or Tanjung Puteri instead — I have pages on both. If you are buying a completed freehold home next to a working mall and you will cross a few times a month, this location does that job well.

Six things, in this order, and all of them are only possible because the building exists.

One: ride the lifts at 8am on a weekday and count the wait, with eleven units a floor across sixty floors. Two: stand in the lobby for fifteen minutes and count how many people wheel suitcases in — that tells you the real short-stay density better than any by-law does. Three: ask the management office for the arrears percentage across the scheme, because a building with high arrears cannot maintain itself regardless of how good the facilities looked at handover.

Four: ask how service charges are split between the residential blocks, the hotel and the retail, and whether that split is fixed in the deed of mutual covenant. Five: walk the facilities deck on a Sunday afternoon rather than a Tuesday morning. Six: check what your specific stack faces — Taman Abad is dense, and an outlook onto a neighbouring wall costs you real money at resale.

Yes, and in a specific way that is worth understanding rather than fearing.

NAPIC’s Q1 2026 figures put Johor at 9,972 completed unsold serviced apartment units, the largest overhang of any state — Kuala Lumpur was 4,181 and Selangor 2,407. Nationally there were 19,263 completed unsold serviced apartments valued at RM16.52 billion, with 58.5% of that stock in the RM500,001 to RM1 million band.

Here is why that band matters to you personally. If you own a Type A or Type B at Space Residency, your resale buyer is choosing between your unit and thousands of developer units in the same price band that come with rebates, free legal fees and a fresh warranty. You cannot match a developer package, so you compete on the things a developer cannot offer: a finished building they can inspect, a mall next door that already trades, and a tenant already in place. Price accordingly, and do not expect a launch-price exit.

Both, and which one dominates depends entirely on which floor and which stack you buy.

The plus is real. A 4-star international hotel operating since December 2025 and a free-admission themed attraction that opened on 22 January 2026 mean the podium is occupied and lit rather than a row of shuttered lots — which is the failure mode of half the mixed-use podiums in Johor Bahru. Occupied retail also supports the service charge base.

The minus is also real and lands unevenly. Tourist footfall, coach drop-offs and hotel service vehicles all pass through the shared site. A unit on level 55 barely notices. A unit on level 12 above the attraction may notice a great deal. This is exactly the kind of thing you settle by visiting on a Saturday afternoon rather than by reading a brochure, and it is the reason I take buyers to a completed building at the busiest hour rather than the quietest.

Neither Linbaq nor the management office publishes the maintenance rate for Space Residency publicly, and the rate that circulates in listings is not consistent enough to repeat. I would rather leave a blank here than put a number on a page that a buyer might rely on.

What I can tell you is what makes up the bill in a scheme like this: the maintenance charge per share unit, the sinking fund contribution, quit rent and assessment on a serviced apartment title, and building insurance apportioned to your unit. In a mixed development the apportionment method between residential, hotel and retail matters as much as the headline rate.

Message me with the unit or the stack you are looking at. I will get the current rate and the last two years of the management account from the management office, and send you a monthly holding cost you can actually plan around.

Ask yourself one question: are you buying a building or a completion date?

At Space Residency you get keys now, a freehold title, a mall attached to the site and the ability to inspect everything before you pay. What you give up is distance to the crossing and the chance to buy at a launch price with a developer rebate package.

At a launch near the CIQ you get proximity to the checkpoint and the RTS, plus HDA protection and progressive payments — but you are buying a drawing, waiting three to five years, and carrying interest during construction. Neither answer is universally right. If the crossing is your daily commute, buy nearer it. If you want a home you can move into and a landlord position you can verify before you commit, a finished building wins, and this is one of the newer finished buildings in Johor Bahru.