I moved to Johor Bahru after taking some time to examine where in Malaysia I wanted to live. You can follow my blog on living in Malaysia. I think the potential for Johor Bahru is great. In my effort to find a place to live I learned a bit about Johor Bahru’s housing options (I was looking mainly at condos).

I also found the housing (and living) information that I could find for expats is not as good as I would have found useful. So I will try to have this site fill in some of the gap between what I would have liked and what I found.

Here I will provide information on Johor Bahru, Johor state, housing options in Johor, information on finding housing, investing options for real estate in Johor and information about living in Johor Bahru. I will focus on expats as an audience to give the site a focus but hopefully a much wider audience can also find worthwhile information.

To some extent “expat” in the Malaysian real estate market is equated with luxury or costly housing. I must say I haven’t seen Johor Bahru housing that is really world class luxury, more it is more just expensive compared to local real estate (but I guess saying luxury means expensive is understood without just saying expensive). I am sure there is some luxury housing (in houses, I would guess – probably out near the 2nd link) but I am skeptical if there are condos, I may find some as I live here.

Singapore, sits right to the South of Johor Bahru and many people, expats – and others, live in Johor while working in Singapore.

Penang and Kuala Lumpor have much more material online for prospective expats (though really even they could do with much more good content, in my opinion). But I really like Johor Bahru much more, myself. I see the scope of this blog to be focused on real estate but as any real estate agent will tell you people want to know about quality of life options nearby when looking at housing so I will include quite a bit on that also. I think that is critical to making good choices for what housing options are right for you.

I think the next 10 years should be very economically dynamic for Johor Bahru (and on a wider scale, Johor state) with significant real estate interest. Great quality of life enhancements are possible and real estate investments have the potential to do very well if the government’s Iskandar initiative can be properly managed. The potential is great and the stage is set very well. The ability to cooperate with Singapore to find mutual beneficial opportunities leads me to believe the potential is as good as nearly anywhere in the world in the next decade or two. But potential can be wasted fairly easily so the future will tell how successfully the potential is realized.

Related: Online Resources for Living in Johor Bahru – Penang Condo Market