Forest City in Johor Bahru was ranked the second most useless megaproject in the world by a YouTube channel named Top Luxury in November 2021.
One of the people who have bought a unit there has spoken out and said she regrets her decision and wants her money back.
Yang Ting Ting from Beijing came to Malaysia in May 2016 to visit Forest City in Johor Bahru. She did not have any plans to buy property here but after talking to the salesperson, she thought that investing here might not be a bad idea.
“I didn’t expect to buy a unit, but the salesperson was very persuasive. They told me it will be part of China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ plan and there’s the Kuala Lumpur–Singapore high-speed rail project among other things.”
Other than that, she added that the salesperson offered her a unit with an “unparalleled sea view”. At that time, it was also easy to invest in property as a foreigner as the MM2H policy only needed investors to deposit RM150,000 into a local bank account.
As she had seen much promotion of the Forest City project back in Beijing and the salesperson had successfully persuaded her, she bought a 648 square feet unit which costs almost 1.8 million yuan (RM1,159,058).
For the downpayment, she paid 200,000 yuan (RM128,784) and took a 10-year loan for the rest. So, every month she needed to pay 19,400 yuan (RM12,492) for the unit.
Fast forward to September 2019, Miss Yang got the keys to the unit and it was, safe to say, unsatisfactory. The “unparalleled sea view” that was promised turned out to be partially true as there was a sea view, but it was very small as many buildings were blocking it.
At first, she didn’t want to sign the contract but after being persuaded by the salesperson yet again, she signed it thinking that she could rent or sell it later on.
In 2021, she discovered that the unit she bought was changed from a residential unit to a commercial unit. She then went to the developer to ask for a full refund due to the uninformed change but she was ignored.
Miss Yang went to many provincial offices and government agencies in China to seek help on this matter but they said that they couldn’t do much as it is an investment in a foreign country.
Miss Yang.
When HK01 asked her if she was planning on coming to Malaysia to sue the company, she says that she will not be doing so as someone had done that before and failed. There is also the problem of getting a visa to come here.
She had faithfully paid off 1.3 million yuan (RM837,097) of the loan before stopping payments. Also, due to the pandemic, she has accrued more than 7 million yuan in debt.
Miss Yang added that she had to sell her house in China and since her parents are old and cannot work anymore, they depended on her financially.
For about 2 years, she expressed that she was burdened and depressed because of this unit that she bought.
“For a family like mine, more than 1 million is not a small amount. I am not from a rich family, I really need this money.”
HK01 has also reached out to the developer of Forest City, Country Garden, about this issue. They did not comment on Miss Yang’s case but said that “dissatisfied owners are only a minority”. They emphasized that many owners have moved into Forest City and are satisfied.
Also read: Malaysia’s Forest City Ranked World’s 2nd Most Useless Megaproject by Popular YouTube Channel
