Forest City golf villa or a landed home in JB: what the same money buys

The short answer

At about RM1.1 million the golf villa gives you two large bedrooms, two golf courses at the gate and very little else you can walk to. The same money in Bukit Indah, Horizon Hills or Medini gives you three or four bedrooms and an easier week for a family.

So the villa is a lifestyle purchase and the JB house is a family purchase. The tables below show how wide the gap is, and the sections after them say who should accept it.

What about RM1.1 million buys

The JB rows are asking prices on my Johor listings site on 8 October 2026. The V120 row comes from the EdgeProp adverts I went through on 2 October for the V120 vs V160 comparison.

The floor areas are close. Five of the six homes sit between 1,980 and 2,249 sq ft. The difference is how the space is cut. The V120 puts 2,034 sq ft into two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The Horizon Hills terrace of 2,224 sq ft has four of each. On the RM1,080,000 villa that works out to RM540,000 a bedroom. On the RM1,150,000 terrace it is RM287,500.

Big rooms are a real pleasure when there are two of you. If a child or a parent is moving in, count bedrooms before you count anything else.

My listings site carried three Forest City villas that day as well: a V120 at RM1,000,000 and two villas of the same 2,034 sq ft at RM1,500,000 to RM1,580,000. That is the same spread the EdgeProp adverts showed, and the top of it buys a five-bedroom house in the next table.

What about RM1.6 million buys

Take the terrace out of the V160 and its two indoor floors come to about 2,120 sq ft. Every JB home in this table advertises more built-up than that, and every one has at least four bedrooms. The East Ledang semi-detached house is 3,868 sq ft for RM190,000 more than the cheapest V160.

What the V160 has and none of them do is an open terrace of about 797 sq ft inside a golf resort. If you will sit out there most evenings, the villa is worth it to you. If you would rather have a fifth bedroom, it is not.

Rent: thin evidence that points one way

Two-bedroom golf villas were asking RM2,500 to RM3,800 a month on 2 October, with RM3,000 the most common figure. At RM3,000, a V120 bought for RM1,080,000 brings about 3.3% a year before costs, and one bought for RM950,000 about 3.8%. The adverts behind those figures are in the golf villa rental guide.

On 8 October my listings site had a refurbished Avira terrace in Medini asking RM4,500 a month. Set against the Avira sale prices above, that is about 4.2% to 5.0%. An Aurora resort villa was offered at RM1,400,000 or RM6,000 a month, about 5.1%. That is one asking rent for each project, so do not read it as a market rate. The direction makes sense all the same. A four-bedroom house near schools and malls has more families to rent it than a two-bedroom villa inside a golf resort.

The week, not the weekend

Inside the resort gates there are two 18-hole courses, a driving range where 100 balls cost RM15, and a hotel. There is no supermarket, clinic or school inside. Those are on the Forest City island or in Medini, and each one is a drive. I set this out in the guide to living at Forest City Golf Resort, and the conclusion there holds: it is easy with two cars and hard with one.

The JB townships are built the other way round. Bukit Indah has AEON Mall Bukit Indah. An Avira terrace is in Medini, the same district as Mall of Medini and Gleneagles Hospital Johor. And Horizon Hills has its own private 18-hole, par 72 course designed by Ross Watson, so the villa is not the only way to live on a golf course near JB. Forest City gives you 36 holes against 18. Horizon Hills gives you four bedrooms against two. Prices there by house type are in the Horizon Hills buyer guide.

Getting to Singapore

This is the villa's strongest card. The resort states about 5 km to the Second Link, and the zone's operator put Singapore's CBD at about 40 minutes on clear roads in drive times it published on 17 July 2026. Horizon Hills' developer quotes about 30 minutes' drive to Singapore without saying where in Singapore, so the two figures are not like for like. Bukit Indah, Medini, Eco Botanic, Nusa Idaman and East Ledang are in Iskandar Puteri too, on the Second Link side of Johor. I have no published drive time for any of them, so I do not print one. Drive the route from the front door at the hour you would really cross.

Eco Summer is the odd one out. It is in Tebrau, on the Causeway side of JB, which is the side the RTS Link will serve once passenger service starts. That is now due in February 2027. Tolls, VEP charges and the bus from the island are worked out in the Forest City to Singapore guide.

Buying costs, and one open question for foreign buyers

A Malaysian buyer pays the same tiered stamp duty on any of these homes: RM24,000 at RM1,000,000, RM27,200 at RM1,080,000, RM30,000 at RM1,150,000 and RM48,000 at RM1,600,000. Nothing in the duty favours the villa or the terrace.

A foreign buyer pays 8% stamp duty and the 3% Johor levy wherever in the state the house is. That is RM118,800 on a RM1,080,000 villa and RM126,500 on a RM1,150,000 terrace. The land office page I read on 5 October sets the minimum price for a foreign buyer's house at RM1,000,000 and says terrace, cluster, semi-detached and detached houses must be two storeys or more.

The open question is a second figure. Some guides give RM2,000,000 for landed homes inside Johor's international zones, and Forest City has been described as one. If that figure is applied to the golf villas, no V120 or V160 on the adverts above clears it. The sources on both sides are in the Singapore buyer guide. Ask the same question, in writing, about any landed lot you are offered in Johor before you pay a deposit.

Who should buy which

Buy the villa if there are two of you, you play golf or want the quiet, you keep two cars, and somebody in the house crosses at Tuas. It works as a weekend base too, because a locked-up two-bedroom villa is less to look after than a five-bedroom semi-detached house.

Buy JB landed if children or parents live with you, if you run one car, or if you need the rent to carry most of the loan. At RM1.1 million I would view the Horizon Hills and Avira terraces first. At RM1.6 million, the Aurora resort villas and the East Ledang semi-detached house.

• On either, ask for the latest service charge or maintenance statement in writing. The golf resort does not publish its charge.
• Have your lawyer check tenure and the title for the exact lot. The villas are marketed as freehold, and Horizon Hills is a freehold township.
• Compare the size on the sale documents, not the advert. Built-up figures on adverts are the seller's.

My take

On price per square foot the villa is not cheap, and on bedrooms it loses badly. What you pay for is the setting and the short run to the Second Link. That is a fair trade for a golfer and a poor one for a family of five. View one of each on the same day and you will know within an hour which household you are.

Questions buyers ask about golf villas and JB landed homes