Can Taiwanese buy property in Malaysia? Yes, landed title included, with state approval every time.

Can a Taiwanese citizen buy property in Malaysia?

Yes. Part 33A of the National Land Code lets a non-citizen acquire land, including landed freehold, but only after the prior approval of the State Authority has been obtained on a written application. The approval can carry conditions and a levy, and a dealing done without it is null and void.

Three details inside that sentence do most of the damage to a timetable.

• Approval is per acquisition, applied for in writing, and section 433C makes a dealing that contravenes the approval requirement null and void.
• A levy, where one is imposed, must be paid in full within thirty days of service of the notice of approval, or the approval lapses under section 433G.
• A clean title is not evidence that consent is unnecessary. Several state entries restate that approval is required even where the title carries no restriction in interest.

Note too that an instrument executed by a non-citizen under a power of attorney can be void and incapable of registration where approval was required, under section 433F. That bears directly on an overseas buyer planning to complete remotely, and it is a question for a Malaysian lawyer before the plan is made rather than after.

The regime in full: Malaysia foreign land ownership, explained, and for apartments: strata title, explained.

Is there a minimum price a foreign buyer has to meet in Malaysia?

Yes, and it is set state by state rather than nationally. RM1,000,000 is the federal benchmark and the most common state figure, not the bottom of the range. On the consolidated table published by Bar Council Malaysia as at October 2024, residential floors run roughly RM400,000 to RM3,000,000.

Alongside the price floor sit four national exclusions reproduced by the Bar Council from the property acquisition guideline: real estate valued below RM1,000,000 per unit, residential units in the low-cost and medium-low-cost categories, properties on Malay Reserved Land, and real estate allocated to Bumiputera interests in a development.

States add their own. Selangor allows strata and landed strata titled property only, not landed individual titles. Perak's entry states that non-citizens cannot acquire, own, hold or inherit freehold property, leaving a 60 year leasehold. Melaka limits a foreigner to two residential units and three commercial units. The state list is where a plan succeeds or fails, and it changes with state budgets.

The state-by-state table: Malaysia's minimum purchase price by state.

How many Taiwanese buyers are there in Malaysia?

On the published programme figures, Taiwan is second. Of 744 completed property purchases by Malaysia My Second Home participants to 31 December 2025, Taiwan accounted for 91, behind mainland China's 304 and ahead of Singapore's 63. The Tourism Minister gave those figures in Parliament on 4 February 2026.

The same reply put a further 2,637 participants in the process of acquiring a home. Taiwan is also second on holder numbers: of 5,972 participants under the revamped programme as at 31 August 2025, Taiwan had 611, behind mainland China's 3,414 and ahead of Hong Kong, Singapore and the United States.

Read the scale honestly. These are programme figures, not a national count of every Taiwanese purchase in Malaysia, and 744 completed purchases across every nationality is a small number next to the 1,036 units REIC counted for Taiwanese buyers in Thailand in 2025 alone. It is real published evidence of presence, in a specific channel, and nothing wider than that.

Does buying property in Malaysia give a Taiwanese buyer residency?

Not by itself. Malaysia My Second Home is a long stay pass programme rather than permanent residence, and it runs the other way round: you qualify on a fixed deposit first, and the purchase of a residence is then compulsory. The pass categories carry their own minimum property prices.

So the property is a condition of the pass rather than a route to it. That ordering matters for a buyer budgeting a purchase, because the programme's own price floor can sit above the state floor for the same property.

Immigration status is a question for the programme's own centre and a Malaysian adviser on your own facts. Nothing on this page is immigration advice.

What does a Taiwanese owner pay in Malaysia, on the way in, on the rent and on the way out?

A flat 8 percent transfer stamp duty from 1 January 2026 for a buyer who is not a citizen and not a permanent resident. Rent is taxed at a flat 30 percent for a non-resident. On sale, real property gains tax is 30 percent within five years and 10 percent from the sixth.

The 8 percent is the number that reshapes a model. It is charged on the transfer instrument rather than on a gain, so it lands in full on day one and has to be earned back before anything else.

Bank Negara Malaysia's foreign exchange policy notices let a non-resident repatriate proceeds in foreign currency. The full stack: Malaysia property buying costs, Malaysia property tax for foreigners and selling Malaysian property as a foreigner.

What do Taiwan's rules ask of a buyer sending money to Malaysia?

A declaration on foreign exchange transactions of NT$500,000 or more, a bank check of supporting documents on a single individual remittance above the equivalent of USD 500,000, and central bank approval where an individual's annual aggregate of foreign exchange purchased or sold passes the equivalent of USD 5 million.

Those thresholds come from the Regulations Governing the Declaration of Foreign Exchange Receipts and Disbursements or Transactions, amended 26 December 2022 and in force from 1 January 2023. They are stated here as published, and nothing on this site describes or evaluates any way around them.

At home, income from outside Taiwan is brought into basic income once a filing unit's overseas income reaches NT$1 million in a year, under the Income Basic Tax Act, so Malaysian rent and a Malaysian gain belong in that calculation. The thresholds, the deduction and the rate: sending money from Taiwan for a property purchase.

Sequence it accordingly. The state approval step in Malaysia and the declaration and approval steps in Taiwan both take time, and a Malaysian sale and purchase agreement will fix dates whatever either queue is doing.

Header photo: xiquinhosilva, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. All credits: image credits.