Malaysia has spent years asking foreign buyers to put money into its housing market. The Malaysia My Second Home programme, the country’s main long-stay visa, goes further than asking. Since June 2024 it has required every approved applicant to buy a house. On Jan 1, 2026 the government doubled the tax those buyers pay.
Three questions follow: what applicants have to buy, how much the new tax adds, and whether the rules were updated to match.
Buying a house is not optional
The programme has three levels. Each one sets an amount the applicant must leave in a Malaysian bank, and a lowest price for the house. A fourth level covers special economic zones on separate terms.
The tax is worked out on the lowest allowed price for each level, so anyone buying a dearer house pays more. A Malaysian buying the same RM600K house pays about RM12,000, because citizens are charged on a rising scale of 1% to 4% and not a flat rate.
The purchase comes after approval. Once the house is bought it cannot be sold for 10 years, although applicants may trade up to a more expensive one. The tourism ministry says the pass can be cancelled if the rules are not followed.
The two periods do not match on the cheapest level. A Silver pass lasts five years and the house attached to it cannot be sold for 10. A Silver applicant is committing to hold a Malaysian property for twice as long as the visa that made them buy it.
The tax doubled in January
The tax is called stamp duty. It is charged when a house is put into a new owner’s name. Foreigners without permanent residence pay a flat rate, and people on this visa count as foreigners, so they pay it. Under the Finance Act 2025 the rate went from 4% to 8% on Jan 1.
The tax comes on top of two other sums: the deposit, which is money parked in a Malaysian bank, and the fee charged to join the programme. A foreign buyer on the cheapest level now pays four times what a Malaysian would, on a purchase the programme requires them to make.
The rulebook was not updated
At the foot of the tourism ministry’s MM2H terms is a date, June 14, 2024. That is when the document was last checked and confirmed. The same document is still on the ministry’s website, on a page updated last month, and it does not mention stamp duty anywhere.
The timing explains how. The cabinet approved the framework in May 2024 and the terms were signed off three weeks later. The budget that raised the tax came 16 months after that, in October 2025, and the new rate started on Jan 1. Through all of it the amount an applicant must spend on a house stayed the same. The applicant absorbs the difference. The house still has to cost RM600K, and the tax on it has doubled.
Why the tax went up
The higher rate was not aimed at MM2H. The finance ministry raised it in the 2026 budget, tabled on Oct 10, 2025, to slow the price rises that were pushing homes out of reach for ordinary Malaysians. Foreign buyers of every kind pay it. MM2H applicants are caught by it rather than singled out.
The extra cost is also small next to what applicants already put in. Someone on the cheapest level leaves US$150K in a bank and buys a house costing at least RM600K, so another RM24,000 in tax is a small slice. Anyone who could not find that amount was unlikely to clear the deposit.
Tourism minister Tiong King Sing said 3,172 applications were approved in 2025, against 1,900 across the whole of 2021 to 2023. That figure cannot settle the question, because the year ended before the new rate began. Every one of those approvals happened while the tax was still 4%.
Silence in the rulebook is not proof that anyone forgot. Officials may have looked at the tax, weighed it against the housing rule and decided to leave it alone. The record shows only that it was left alone.
2026 is the first year both rules apply
The RM600K house is still the price of entry. What changed is that entry now carries RM48,000 in tax rather than RM24,000.
Last year’s 3,172 approvals were the programme’s best since it collapsed, though still short of 2019, when 3,598 were approved. That recovery was built under the 4% rate. The next set of figures will be the first taken under 8%.
