Lawyer Lawyer Lawyer - Legal Process of Buying a House in Johor for Foreginers

For the purchase of our house in East Ledang, we used the service of Ms. Lau Lee Jan from Tay & Partners.

Since we were new to this whole process and area, we asked for contact of reliable lawyer from a neighbour.

Here's the rough legal process we went through (Bear in mind that we bought a sub-sale unit):
- Loan application (through UOB Malaysia)
- Offer to purchase
- Title deed search
- Quit rent and Assessment checks from vendor
- Confirmation of loan
- Sale & Purchase Agreement (SPA)
- State Authority Consent application - estimate time is 3 to 4 weeks earliest
- Transfer to be adjudicated by the stamp office (estimate time is 3 to 4 weeks earliest)
- SPA allowed us to complete purchase within 3 months from getting the Approval
- Once State Authority approved, complete loan discharge
- Vendor's existing loan to be discharged
- Exchange of keys
- Building inspection checklist

The entire process took est. 6 months due to many delays from the vendor. The legal fees (including Levy, lawyer fees etc) cost est. RM65K.

I'm super glad that this is over and am happy to be the legal owner of our house now :)

We're happy with the services provided by Tay Partners and we found them to be quick to respond and trustworthy.

Happy buying!

Johor State New Administrative Centre - aka Johor Iskandar Govt Office

"Grand" is the word I would use to describe this Johor state government administrative centre. It's so different from the usual high rise office building we'd see in Singapore. From what I can see, there are 5 major buildings, 2 of which resemble a palace.


The new Johor state Govt office is about 10 minutes drive from East Ledang. The fact that it's been relocated into this Iskandar area means that we should see the ambitious Iskandar project continues and comes into fruition (I hope, well that's what everybody thinks).

This state government area is in a huge complex which features interesting building design. It almost feels like you're in a Middle Eastern country. When I researched about this online, the buildings are based on Moorish-Andalusian architecture, which I believe is a Spanish Muslim culture.



I also read that the area will cost est. RM1.5bil (est. SGD625M) to complete....well let's just say that the area should be able to host lots of govt offices. I can see lots of construction works being carried out and it feels like they're building 24/7. Let's give it about 18 months, by 2012, I think the area would have been fully developed. Let' see...



We drove around the area a couple of days ago to explore. I took some pictures standing up in our Subaru which has open rooftop area while Ian was driving. It was super fun...not something that I'd be able to do in Singapore :)

Here are some other pictures I took: