Imagine a housebuyer finally finding their dream home online after months of tireless searching. They click on the listing for a stunning 1,500 sq ft condominium with an unbeatable price in the heart of Petaling Jaya. The photos are clear and crisp with a modern, bright kitchen and a dazzling balcony view.
But as they continue to scroll, a bizarre digital distortion occurs. The same unit appears again. And then another. They become baffled after finding 15 different listings for this exact apartment with a different property agent as the uploader. As for the prices, there is usually a clean RM50,000 difference or less.
That is the reality of the Malaysian sub-sale housing market. Housebuyers learn a skill informally dubbed as “extreme digital sifting” while perusing major property listing portals.
Furthermore, the rampant overpadding of listings has resulted in more than just decision fatigue. It has exposed how vulnerable the property industry is to systemic market practices, outdated regulatory enforcement and property portals that quietly profit from the chaos.
Ghost inventory
Malaysia is not only experiencing economic inflation but also listing inflation. Online netizens have repeatedly posted about how the total number of property listings nationwide is heavily and artificially inflated.
While most major real estate portals have hundreds of thousands of active listings, industry data experts have estimated that a staggering 30% to 40% of these subsale listings are actually duplicate posts, outdated posts or deliberate data-farming dummy posts.
From the buyer’s perspective, this would mean a simple search result showing 50 available units, when in actuality maybe only five are legitimate.
A survey of property portals estimates around 450,000 to 500,000 active online listings. Of these, the estimated duplicates or outdated posts hover around 30% to 40%. So the real available stock is significantly lower than the digital data suggests.
The spot-the-difference game of cross-referencing layouts, furniture and even the light fixtures hanging overhead across dozens of advertisements can take unnecessary time and effort.
In addition, some photos have been slightly altered using editing or artificial intelligence tools. Buyers have to perform their due diligence when browsing property portals.
Rampant duplicates
The price disparities between the different listings are sometimes mistaken as room for negotiation but it is far more institutional. Firstly, the real estate industry is dynamic.
This ever-evolving environment will inevitably leave outdated ads behind like a lag.
As a hypothetical example, a seller might initially list their condo with Agent A for RM850,000. Three months later, facing financial urgency, the seller instructs Agent B to list it for RM790,000. Agent A is occupied with other deals and never updates or deletes his/her original listing. The ghost price remains live, floating forever in the property cyberspace.
Price fishing is also a common tactic used by sellers in which a property is listed at a price about 5% to 10% below what the owner would accept.
The idea behind this is to attract potential buyers who are drawn in by that lower price only to steer them towards higher-priced listings later on.
Often, these low-priced ads are more about gathering buyers’ contact information than accurately reflecting what is actually available on the market.
On the flip side, there is a strategy known as “premium buffing” in which properties are listed at inflated prices. The purpose is to test the market ceiling or create ample room for negotiation.
It is particularly effective at luring in buyers who are unaware of the current market values. This increases the chances for sellers to close a deal well above what is fair.
Multiple keys to multiple agents
Now, when it comes to the way Malaysian homeowners sell their properties, things get interesting.
Unlike mature markets like Australia where exclusive listings are the norm, Malaysian sellers tend to go for multi-agency agreements.
There is a fear that committing to just one agency will limit the property’s exposure. As a result, sellers will often give keys, photos and floor plans to multiple agents, sometimes as many as twenty at once.
This approach is complicated by how modern real estate agencies are structured.
Many operate with a multi-tiered team system where an agency leader might secure a verbal agreement from a homeowner.
They then instantly share the property details in a group chat with dozens of junior negotiators. In such a competitive environment like this, each agent scrambles to secure the commission, resulting in the same property being uploaded multiple times across various platforms.
Titles are tweaked, descriptions rewritten and prices adjusted just enough to stand out to browsing buyers.
Multiple offences, zero enforcement
For property portals, this situation creates a paradox. They operate on a business-to-business credit-based revenue model, meaning real estate agents need to buy credits to upload or boost their listings.
This results in something like a digital transaction loop where multiple agents list the same property, then pay to have their ad bumped to the top.
While this boosts the portals’ revenue, the overall consumer experience suffers due to the excessive duplication of listings.
Interestingly, Malaysia has regulations in place to manage this behaviour.
The Board of Valuers, Appraisers, Estate Agents and Property Managers or BOVAEP operates under Act 242 and imposes strict guidelines.
According to Standard 6 of the Malaysian Estate Agency Standards, misleading advertisements are not allowed.
Any public listing must represent the true asking price and be authorised in writing by the client. So when several agents advertise different prices without proper consent, they are actually breaking the law.
So why does this continue?
It all comes down to enforcement issues. Consumers who feel misled must navigate an extremely troublesome administrative process to file official complaints which often involves formal declarations and fees.
This complaint takes up a lot of time and money, discouraging consumers, leading many to simply walk away.
Without these complaints, regulatory bodies rarely intervene in what has become a chaotic landscape.
For the average Malaysian house hunter, all this frustrating fragmentation leads to issues like buyer fatigue and loss of trust towards those industry players.
When someone calls multiple agents about the same property and hears entirely different stories about pricing and the owner’s motivations, they are left with a serious lack of transparency.
Until Malaysia moves towards a centralised, mandatory multiple listing service database like Singapore’s or other Western models, buyers will be left to their own devices.
For now, they need to look beyond the digital facades and remember that behind all those different online prices, there is actually still just one front door.
