Adison Serviced Apartments @ W City Larkinton

No. Not a single unit, in any phase. This is not a technicality and there is no workaround, so I am putting it first rather than burying it.

Johor requires a non-citizen to pay a minimum of RM1,000,000 for a strata property, with state consent on top. The APDL for this development sets out every approved price: Phase 1 runs RM428,800 to RM717,900, and Phases 3 to 6 run RM449,000 to RM833,000. The single highest approved price anywhere in the project is RM833,000 — RM167,000 short of the threshold.

You cannot bridge that by paying more. The threshold applies to the transaction, and the developer cannot sell above its APDL-approved ceiling. Nor does buying two units, or buying through a Malaysian nominee, make it legal — the second is a serious offence and I will not be part of it.

If you are a non-citizen and you like this location, the honest answer is that Larkin’s current new-build stock is priced below your floor. I will point you at the Johor Bahru projects that do clear RM1 million rather than waste your time here.

1,024 is the Phase 1 number, and it is the one WCT markets. The full permitted picture is larger.

Phase 1, legally named Residensi Laman Hijau, is four blocks on 8.26 acres: Block A 240 units, Block B 272, Block C 256, Block D 256 — 1,024 in total, plus 37 ground-floor commercial shop lots.

Phases 3, 4, 5 and 6 have separate advertising and sale permits already issued between December 2024 and January 2025, adding 224, 238, 224 and 210 units respectively — 896 more, for a permitted total of 1,920 apartments under one developer licence.

Why this matters: 1,920 units is a substantial supply block in one location, and the later phases are priced above the earlier ones with a completion date eight months later. If someone quotes you “1,024 units” as though that is the whole scheme, they are describing Phase 1 only. Ask which phase your unit sits in and what its permit number is — it is printed on the APDL.

Because they are measuring the same units with and without the air-conditioner ledge, and neither site says so.

The Adison project website lists Type A 501 sq ft, Type B 651 sq ft and Type C 791 sq ft, and states that these include an AC ledge of 15 sq ft for Type A and 17 sq ft for Types B and C. The WCT Land corporate site lists the same three layouts as 45, 59 and 72 square metres.

Do the arithmetic: 501 minus 15 is 486 sq ft, which is 45.2 sq m. 651 minus 17 is 634, which is 58.9 sq m. 791 minus 17 is 774, which is 71.9 sq m. The two sets match exactly once you take the ledge out. Nothing is wrong — the sites are quoting different bases.

For you this matters in two places. Your sale and purchase agreement states one specific area, and your price per square foot is meaningless unless you know which basis it uses. A 791 sq ft unit and a 774 sq ft unit at the same price are a 2% difference in psf — small, but it is exactly the kind of gap that makes two quotes look different when they are the same deal. Always ask which figure is on the SPA.

The APDL sets the approved band block by block. Phase 1: Block A RM441,000–RM717,900, Block B RM430,000–RM704,300, Block C RM436,700–RM712,100, Block D RM428,800–RM704,400. Phases 3–6: RM462,000–798,000, RM449,000–779,000, RM483,000–833,000 and RM469,000–813,000 respectively. A 15% Bumiputera discount applies where eligible.

There is a published conflict worth knowing. WCT Land’s corporate site advertises the project as “From RM382K”, while the lowest approved price on the APDL is RM428,800. I use the APDL figure, because the APDL is the document lodged with the authorities and the corporate site is marketing copy that may predate the current schedule. If a salesperson quotes you RM382,000, ask which permit that price sits under.

The maintenance fee and sinking fund rate have not been published by WCT anywhere I can find. On a 1,024-unit scheme with a single facilities deck and 37 shop lots, the split between residential and commercial contribution is worth asking about specifically, because shop lots and apartments are often charged on different bases.

Message me and I will get the live price list with unit numbers, the block plan, the developer’s stated maintenance rate and the current rebate package, and send you what the sales team actually puts in writing.

Both figures are in circulation, and neither party has published the route they measured.

WCT’s own project material states 5 km to the CIQ, JB Sentral and the upcoming RTS station, and 9 km to Woodlands Checkpoint. A major listing portal states 6 km for the same trip. The gap is one kilometre, which is small in absolute terms but tells you something about how loosely these numbers are produced in Johor marketing.

What is not in dispute: this is not a walk-to-the-border location and it does not pretend to be. WCT’s own copy describes it as “just 15 minutes from the Singapore-Johor border”, which is an off-peak drive, not a commute-hour drive. Anyone crossing daily at 6am should treat the border queue, not the distance, as the binding constraint.

On the RTS Link itself: civil works are targeted for completion by the end of 2026 and passenger service at Bukit Chagar is expected in early 2027, roughly five minutes to Woodlands North. Any material still saying 2026 is out of date.

My advice: drive it yourself on a weekday at the hour you would actually cross, from the Adison site to the CIQ, and time it. I will meet you there and do it with you if you want. One measured trip beats two contradictory map figures.

The APDL states an expected completion of April 2028 for Phase 1 and December 2028 for Phases 3 to 6. Those dates are on the permit, not in a brochure.

What stands behind them is worth more than the dates themselves. The building plan was approved by Majlis Bandaraya Johor Bahru under reference MBJB/U/2021/14/BGN/134/KOM(22) for Phase 1 and KOM(69) for the later phases. The land is charged to Malaysia Building Society Berhad, which means a regulated lender has done its own diligence on the scheme.

The bigger structural comfort is that the developer’s parent, WCT Holdings Berhad, is a listed construction group. On most Johor off-plan purchases the contractor is a third party the developer has to keep paying. Here the group builds for a living.

None of that is a guarantee. Under a standard Malaysian sale and purchase agreement for a serviced apartment, late delivery entitles you to liquidated damages calculated from the SPA date — read that clause and know what your remedy actually is before you sign, not after.

Adison itself has one facilities podium on Level 6, with fourteen items on WCT’s published plan: swimming pool, wading pool, jacuzzi, pool lounge, gym and yoga room, multipurpose hall, sunken amphitheatre, BBQ pit, playground, seating area, leisure area, decking, plaza and pavilion. At ground level there are 37 Adison commercial shop lots fronting the street.

It is a single-deck scheme. That is not a criticism — one well-maintained deck often works better than three thinly funded ones — but you should compare it on that basis rather than against towers advertising facilities across three levels.

Now the part that needs saying plainly. W City Larkinton’s masterplan shows a neighbourhood mall, a convention centre, a business tower, a convention hotel, a leisure hotel, the Skyon luxury residential tower and a second compact-residential phase called AdisonEast. None of those is built. None has an announced construction start. They are the reason the site is being marketed as a lifestyle centre, and they are also the reason to be careful.

Buy Adison on the strength of Adison: freehold, 500 m from a golf course, a Level 6 deck, shops at your door, and the cheapest freehold entry ticket in the JB city area. If the mall and the hotels arrive, that is upside. If they arrive in 2035, or not at all, you still need the purchase to make sense.

Better than most of what sells in Johor, and still worth reading properly.

The developer is WCT Green Sdn Bhd (201101001824), a subsidiary of WCT Land Sdn Bhd within WCT Holdings Berhad, listed on Bursa Malaysia under code 9679. Being listed means audited accounts, quarterly reporting and a public filing trail — none of which you get from a single-project private developer.

The issue to understand is gearing. WCT has carried heavy debt and has been reducing it by selling assets: in 2024–25 it proposed disposing of Bukit Tinggi Shopping Centre, Paradigm Mall Petaling Jaya and Paradigm Mall Johor Bahru for RM2.44 billion into a new Paradigm REIT, with shareholders approving the listing on 9 April 2025. The IPO was expected to raise about RM1.4 billion, most of it to repay group borrowings, and CIMB Securities’ published pro-forma estimate put net gearing falling from around 73% at FY2023 to about 33% afterwards.

Read that both ways. A group that can execute a RM2.44 billion asset monetisation has genuine institutional standing. A group that needs to sell its best retail assets to get its balance sheet where it wants it was carrying more debt than it was comfortable with. Both are true.

What I would do in your position: download WCT’s most recent annual report and quarterly result from Bursa before you sign — they are free and public — and look at net gearing, unbilled sales and the property division’s margin. That is a thirty-minute exercise that no brochure can substitute for.

It does not sink it, but it should change how you buy it and how long you plan to hold.

The scale first. NAPIC recorded Johor holding 9,477 unsold completed serviced apartment units worth RM8.35 billion at the end of 2025 — 50.5% of the national total of 18,752 units, and more than double the next worst state. A further 8,189 Johor units were unsold and still under construction, with 2,305 more unsold and not yet built. Nationally the count climbed again to 19,263 units worth RM16.52 billion in the first quarter of 2026.

Adison adds 1,920 permitted units to that pipeline in one location. That is the honest arithmetic and I am not going to dress it up.

Three things genuinely work in its favour, though. It is freehold, which most of the competing Larkin stock is not. It is priced below RM450,000 at entry, which puts it in the band Malaysian first-home buyers and local investors can actually finance — the overhang is heaviest in the RM500,000-and-above segment. And its permanent golf-course frontage is not a view that a competitor can build over.

Three things do not. There is no foreign demand at all at these prices. The masterplan amenities that would differentiate it are unbuilt. And 1,920 units means your eventual resale competes primarily with your own neighbours, which is the hardest kind of competition to win.

My position: this works as a long-hold owner-occupier purchase or as a yield play at a conservative rent, at the lowest entry price you can negotiate. It does not work as a two-year flip, and I will tell any client that before they book.