PETALING JAYA: Over 40% of room rental listings carried explicit racial exclusions, revealed a study on over 30,000 room rental listings in the Klang Valley.
According to Architects of Diversity’s (AOD) “Room Rental Discrimination: Volume 1 Klang Valley” report, which analysed 35,367 listings, 42.8% carry explicit racial exclusions – exceeding the share of listings that welcome all races (22.6%) and those with no stated preference (34.6%).
Renters from the Indian community faced the most severe exclusion whereby 31.7% of all listings in the Klang Valley explicitly excluded them, compared to 7.6% for Malay renters and 3.9% for Chinese renters.
“Listings that do not discriminate against Indian renters are on average 11.2% more expensive than those that do, meaning Indian renters are not only excluded more often but are being shut out of listings that would be cost-effective.
“A renter browsing the platform is statistically more likely to encounter a listing that excludes a racial group than one that is explicitly open to all tenants. Indian renters bear the greatest burden,” it said.
The disparity between racial groups is stark. While 96.1% of listings are open to Chinese renters and 92.4% to Malay renters, only 68.3% of listings accept Indian renters.
“The most common discriminatory pattern on the platform is the exclusion of Indian renters alone, while accepting
Malay and Chinese tenants, a pattern that accounts for 21.3% of all listings in the dataset,” it added.
The report added that no area in the Klang Valley is free from discrimination.
“Even in Sentul, the area with the lowest Indian discrimination rate, 8.5% of listings still exclude Indian renters,” it said.
The five most discriminatory areas in the Klang Valley are Ampang whereby 57.5% of listings are discriminatory, Taman Desa (56.2%), Klang (54.8%), Setapak (51.1%) and Bangi ( 50.5%).
“These are large, well-populated residential areas with substantial listing volumes, meaning the absolute number of discriminatory listings in these localities is very high. By contrast, areas closer to the Kuala Lumpur city core, such as KL City Centre (31.3%) and Titiwangsa (25.7%),
tend to record lower discrimination rates and higher shares of inclusive listings. Discrimination carries a price premium,” it said.
The report also finds that listings not discriminatory towards Indian renters are priced, on average, 11.2% higher (RM735) than those that exclude them (RM661). This suggests that the cheaper segments of the rental market are disproportionately closed off to Indian renters, leaving them with a smaller and more expensive pool of available housing. Platform design enables discrimination at scale,” it added.
The report said renters from the Malay community faced the second-highest overall exclusion rate at 7.6% of all Klang Valley listings. However, this rate is unevenly distributed geographically, with a handful of areas showing markedly elevated exclusion of Malay renters relative to the regional average.
Taman Desa recorded the highest Malay discrimination rate at 23.1%, more than three times the regional average, followed by Setapak (17.9%) and Ampang (16.9%). Kepong (15.7%), Sri Petaling (15.4%), and Bukit Jalil (14.8%) also show notably elevated rates.
“At the opposite end, areas such as TTDI (1.2%), Bangsar (1.5%), Selayang (1.8%), and Sentul (2.2%) show very low rates of Malay exclusion. Shah Alam, one of Malaysia's most Malay-majority cities, records a Malay discrimination rate of only 2.9%, which is consistent with the demographic composition of its landlord base. Similarly, KL City Centre (3.0%) and Ampang Hilir (2.3%) show low exclusion rates,” it said.
However, the Chinese community are not spared from discrimination either, although they were the lowest.
“At 3.9% across the Klang Valley, Chinese renters face the lowest overall exclusion rate among the three groups studied. However, this aggregate figure masks significant variation at the area level, with several localities recording Chinese exclusion rates that are several times higher than average,” it said.
Bangi stands out sharply with a Chinese discrimination rate of 23.8%, six times the regional average, making it by far the most restrictive area for Chinese renters. Wangsa Maju (16.5%), Ampang (14.5%), and Sepang (13.9%) also record substantially elevated rates.”
In contrast, several areas record very low Chinese exclusion rates. Kuchai Lama records 0.0%, and Sri Petaling (0.5%), Subang Jaya (0.8%), Taman Desa (0.8%), and Segambut (0.9%) all fall below 1%. These are generally areas with established Chinese-majority communities, where Chinese renters are effectively never excluded,” it added.
Speaking at a press conference held in conjunction with the release of the report, executive director of AOD Jason Wee said there are instances where Indian tenants are excluded but Malay and Chinese tenants are accepted.
"So what this shows is that this is not simply a case of landlords wanting to rent only to their own race, because if that were true, we would see a much stronger pattern of Malay-only or Chinese-only listings," he said on Thursday (March 12).
Instead, these are listings that include both Malay and Chinese tenants, but explicitly exclude Indian tenants.”
While the overall picture is quite favourable towards Chinese renters, there are specific areas where they too face significant barriers, namely specifically in these areas and mainly the outliers here being Bangi,” he added.
He said the long delayed Residential Tenancy Act could provide protection to landlords and tenants, if it is tabled. He said it is important to include a clause that prohibits racial discrimination by landlords and agents, as well as any services that facilitate bookings and marketplaces of rental listings.
“This is quite critical to ensure that the discrimination protections are enforceable across the board, and then agents as the middlemen between landlords and tenants and have a fiduciary responsibility as a property agent to pick that regulation into what is expected for agent ethics and regulation,” he added.
Wee said the group will release another report covering listings across Peninsular Malaysia.
The report analysed rental listing data that was publicly accessible on a popular website.
Listings were classified as discriminatory if the landlord had activated the platform's race preference function and explicitly excluded one or more racial groups (Malay, Chinese, Indian, or Other). Price bounds of RM200 to RM1,500 were applied to filter out non-room-rental entries.
