What a foreigner can actually buy in Penang in 2026

The single most expensive misunderstanding we see is a foreign buyer falling in love with a RM750,000 condominium on the island. It is a perfectly good unit at a perfectly fair price, and they cannot buy it. Penang’s floor for strata property on the island is RM1 million, and no amount of goodwill from the seller changes that.

Malaysia leaves the minimum price for foreign acquisition to each state, so what your friend did in Johor or Kuala Lumpur tells you almost nothing about what you can do here. This is the Penang position as at July 2026.

The four combinations

Two questions decide your floor: island or mainland, and strata or landed.

• Penang island, strata (condominium or apartment): RM1,000,000. This covers the large majority of what foreign buyers actually want — the seafront blocks at Tanjung Tokong, Tanjung Bungah and Gurney.
• Penang island, landed (terrace, semi-detached, bungalow): RM3,000,000. In practice this rules out most landed stock on the island, including the pre-war terraces in Pulau Tikus that people fall for.
• Seberang Perai (the mainland), strata or landed: RM500,000. This is why the mainland is worth a serious look, and why Batu Kawan appears on so many foreign buyers’ lists.

The floor is applied to the purchase price on the transfer, not to a valuation you commission. A RM980,000 island condominium does not become eligible because a valuer says it is worth RM1.05 million.

State consent, and the three months nobody budgets for

Every foreign acquisition needs State Authority consent, applied for through the land office. In Penang that runs roughly two to four months, and the completion period does not begin to run until consent is in hand. A purchase that would take three months for a Malaysian buyer takes about six for you. That is not a delay, it is the normal timetable, and it needs to be in your plan from the first viewing rather than discovered in month four.

Penang also applies a levy of three per cent of the purchase price on a foreign acquisition. On a RM1.2 million condominium that is RM36,000, payable in addition to everything below.

Stamp duty changed in January 2026

Until the end of 2025 everyone paid the same tiered transfer duty: one per cent on the first RM100,000, two per cent to RM500,000, three per cent to RM1 million, four per cent above. From 1 January 2026 a non-citizen who is not a permanent resident pays a flat eight per cent instead.

The difference is not marginal. On a RM1.2 million purchase the old scale produced RM32,000. The flat rate produces RM96,000. Add the three per cent state levy and you are RM100,000 further from your budget than the tiered numbers you may still find on older calculators.

Permanent residents are assessed on the ordinary tiers, not the flat eight per cent. If you hold PR, say so early — it changes the arithmetic more than anything else on this page.

MM2H sits on top, it does not replace the state floor

The 2026 programme runs in three tiers, each with its own property requirement: Silver at RM600,000, Gold at RM1 million and Platinum at RM2 million. Participants must complete a purchase within a year of endorsement and cannot dispose of the property for ten years.

The tier requirement and the state floor both apply, and the higher one governs. A Silver participant buying island strata still faces the RM1 million state floor, because RM600,000 does not unlock anything Penang has not already decided. On the mainland, though, that Silver requirement of RM600,000 is the higher of the two and becomes the real threshold.

A worked example

A British buyer, no PR, no MM2H, buying a RM1.2 million condominium at Tanjung Tokong with a RM840,000 loan:

• Eligible — RM1.2 million clears the RM1 million island strata floor.
• Transfer stamp duty at eight per cent: RM96,000.
• State levy at three per cent: RM36,000.
• Loan agreement duty at 0.5 per cent of RM840,000: RM4,200.
• Total in duty and levy: RM136,200, before legal fees, valuation and disbursements.
• Timetable: roughly six months from accepted offer to keys.

The Foreign & MM2H check on this site runs your own figures in about thirty seconds, and the Offer-to-keys planner will date the consent branch for you.

What we do about it

Before you view anything, we put your status, the location and the property type in writing and tell you which of our stock you may buy. It takes ten minutes and it has saved a great many people a wasted trip and a lost deposit. If the answer is that the island does not work for your budget, we will say so and show you the mainland instead.