Kuala Lumpur small multifamily: is 93 days misleading?

[elio_tools]

I’m tracking Kuala Lumpur small multifamily listings between MYR 1,636,000 and MYR 2,453,000. The properties still advertised suggest roughly 93 days to find a buyer, with many of the outliers apparently affected by lease length.

I’m trying to decide whether that figure is useful for setting expectations or badly distorted by stale listings. Should I give more weight to recent completed deals, and how should withdrawn properties be treated?

 

[EarlyCrane]

Completed deals will tell you what succeeded, but the live sample naturally contains listings that have already failed to sell quickly. I’d compare properties first listed during the same period, then separate them into sold, still active and withdrawn. Otherwise the 93 days mixes different listing vintages and may exaggerate the current wait.

 

[thinkTheAnchor]

Before building cohorts, you need a boundary that keeps genuinely comparable areas together. Otherwise differences within Kuala Lumpur may distort the result more than listing age does, especially across the MYR 1,636,000 to MYR 2,453,000 range.

I would also resist treating lease length as the main explanation until condition and immediate rentability are separated. Record renovation needs, price-cut dates and any indication that buyer financing delayed a deal. New-listing volume should be tracked by the same small areas, rather than used as one citywide backdrop.

 

[JaeBloom]

I wouldn’t simply replace the active-listing number with completed sales. That creates the opposite bias: quick or realistically priced sales appear, while unsuccessful listings disappear from view. Withdrawals are useful information even if they have no recorded sale date. A cohort view, as Miguel suggests, is more honest than one headline number.

 

[ElioHolt]

Price-cut timing could clarify what the 93 days represents. For each listing, note the original asking price, first reduction date, latest price and status. A property selling soon after a cut is different from one that attracted a buyer near the original price, even if both show the same total marketing period.

 

[nia.winter]

Also consider whether “find a buyer” means an accepted offer or a completed transaction. Buyer financing can extend the latter without saying much about demand. Seller motivation matters too: an owner holding firm can accumulate days deliberately, whereas another may reduce early. Those cases should not be interpreted the same way.

 

[hugo_page]

New-listing volume is the missing piece for me. If a lot of similar properties arrived recently, the active pool may look healthier and younger even though older stock remains stuck. If few came on, a handful of long-running listings can dominate the 93-day figure. Could you split the sample by first-listing month?

 

[blueprint.solid]

I’d split lease length into ranges before assuming it explains the outliers, then compare within the same neighbourhood and condition group. There may be too few properties for a clean conclusion, but it would show whether shorter lease length is consistently associated with longer marketing or merely overlaps with ambitious pricing.

 

[hugo_page]

Fatima’s point also suggests a manageable next step: use first-listing month as the main grouping, then add status, lease range, neighbourhood, condition and first price-cut date. Keep withdrawn stock visible rather than treating it as sold or deleting it. That should reveal whether 93 days describes the market or just the oldest unsold tail.