- Malaysia’s luxury real estate forest city has thousands of vacant apartments.
- I spent a night in one of these apartments and found it not to be as luxurious as the brand claims.
- Dozens of vacant rooms on the property are listed for rent on Airbnb.
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Forest City is an upscale development in southern Malaysia. Country Garden, China’s largest developer, spent $100 billion building the property.
I visited Forest City for the first time in May 2022, and it was a ghost town. I found a towering apartment complex spread over four square miles. From the white sandy beach, we could see the Strait of Johor and the silhouette of a factory. Western Singapore. At night, the windows of hundreds of apartment buildings remained dark. There were almost no cars on the road and only a few people on the beach.
Forest City predicts that about 700,000 people will live here over the next six years.For now, it is said that it is the only 9,000 residents.
In 2022, a security guard at a local apartment complex said there were 20 people living in the apartment complex. This made me curious to see what it would be like to spend a night in one of these apartments.
I returned to Forest City in March, eight years after its development.
I booked a condominium homestay through a property management company for S$70, or $52.Dozens of similar units listed airbnb For just $38 per night. The unit’s owner, based in China, declined to comment for this story, citing privacy reasons.
Take a peek inside thousands of available apartments in Forest City.
Country Garden did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Business Insider.