Sunway offers homes in Iskandar that can be customised and bought online

ISKANDAR (Johor) — Amid a wobbly property market, Malaysian developer Sunway Property on Thursday (Aug 17) unveiled the next phase of its RM30 billion (S$9.5 billion) township project in Johor’s Iskandar region, focusing on sustainable and innovative homes, including units that may be customised and bought online.

“The idea is to make Sunway Iskandar a destination for lifestyle shopping, leisure, and entertainment in its own right,” said Ms Sarena Cheah, Managing Director, Property Division for Malaysia & Singapore, at Sunway.

Targeting younger buyers, the developer launched Sunway GRID — a mixed development comprising residential, office and retail units across 5.2 acres of land in Sunway Iskandar that allows buyers to design and customise their units online and purchase them from anywhere around the world. The starting price of these units is RM350,000. With its portfolio of affordable offerings, Sunway is targeting Malaysians as well as foreigners from all over the world to buy into the township spanning 1,800 acres of land.

The township project will have a large-format retail village — the Sunway Big Box Village spread over 24 acres. Offering 500,000 sq ft in gross floor area of retail space, it is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of next year. Adjacent to this is the 32-acre XPARK that will be filled with extreme and lifestyle sports activities for residents and visitors of Sunway Iskandar. It is expected to open partially by the end of next year.

Sunway will also open an infirmary as well as a hotel to be completed by the second half of 2019. The developer is also building Sakura homes — the first luxurious prefabricated homes in Malaysia using Japanese technology.

The township already has a school in place and as buyers take possession of residences at its Citrine Hub project, Sunway will provide shuttle bus services to ferry residents between the complex and Singapore by the end of the year.

Citrine Hub is an integrated development with a gross development value of RM427 million spread across 5.2 acres in the Lakeview Precinct, comprising 328 serviced residences, 168 office suites, and 51 boutique retail units managed by Sunway.

Citrine Lakehomes offers townhouses and link houses with indicative prices of RM550,000 and RM760,000, respectively, and will be launched in the fourth quarter of this year.

Emerald Residence, the first landed property project in Sunway Iskandar, has a total gross development value of RM350 million and is spread over 22.1 acres. With selling prices starting from 1.1 million ringgit each, Emerald Residence is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of next year.

The Iskandar region has recently seen a slowdown in investments, with sales of residential units hit by China’s restrictions on local Chinese buying overseas property as Beijing seeks to curb capital outflows.

Having pumped in around RM4.7 billion in the Forest City project in Johor last year, Hong Kong-listed Chinese developer Country Garden recently said it will be investing around RM5 billion this year, aggressively diversifying its customer base in the region with more than eight sales offices across new focus markets including South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates. It had to shut down all of its mainland China showrooms earlier this year as curbs on capital outflows tightened.