The video starts off with bit of a misunderstanding of how China ACTUALLY works vs how it is said to work. Nobody is allowed to own land there except the government. The land is all leased, instead, allowing the government to take it back from anyone it dislikes at-will.
i m from malaysia and let me add a bit more context. the forest city was heavily backed by the sultan of johor, who has grudge against Dr Mahathir who was the prime minister that removed royal immunity many years before. When Mahathir became the prime minister the second time, he wanted to fck with the sultan of johor, and one way of doing that is to restrict who can buy properties in forest city. So there is political feud at play on the forest city
Geez, what are you? It is all about money, not grudge. Who else is able to sell plain empty non-functional sea to be converted to livable home without using tax payers money?
@@phoenix5054 he is only commenting about project and nothing is stopped based on his instruction. It is private equity and got nothing to do with govt coffers he managed. The project slowed down due to covid and china govt equity control. You got it all wrong abt mahathir. We are reviving the project,
it would be succeeding now if there wasn’t sensitivity to putting a bunch of PRC transplants into Malaysia, and expecting Singapore to facilitate the erosion of its border. There are actually a lot of such wannabe transplants now that people are running away from HK/China due to the current regime. They don’t realize how much they are hated elsewhere though, because they have been listening to propaganda for years.
One of the the major factor is the real estate company of China "Country Garden ". They got serious problem after China started to limit foreign investment because of capital outflow control and debt crisis for most of the real estate developers in China. Not only Forest City, many other projects suspended or abandoned.
The scale of waste just boggles the mind.. China has poured more concrete in the last 10 years alone than *the rest of the world combined, in the last 100 years !!!* btw, making and curing concrete produces copious greenhouse gasses
ghost cities always seem wierd and wasteful, until a decade later they're no longer ghost cities and there's a new one over yonder to call wierd and wasteful instead other parts of the world can have more extreme population growth than just tacking on a new developement project to an existing city can really handle
It's because you have a visual representation that feels extreme. No question you're actually accepting of others that may even be greater, but they're normalized to you and likely not as so statically visible and obvious. I could be wrong, but you (or at least the average person) as an individual probably waste a lot of your income on unnecessary things and self justify it (the interpreter module in our brain that is well studied does this naturally, that is why people can vehemently disagree about the same information).
I've been to Forest City a few times in the last year, and honestly while it is always very nice, the thing my wife loves the most about it is how quiet it is. It is kinda spooky cuz it is so big and brand new, yet we rarely see more than a few dozen people on the beach or walking around the complex😅
@@Vaeldarg return to nature ? maybe in a 10000 years or more seeing the nature there was water so to return to that would take a while. or are invasive animal species in a country also a return to nature then why complain about those?
The hasty development also meant that the reclaimed land was not given time to settle/compress, and the artificial island is at risk of land subsidence or even sinking back into the sea. Then the project would be renamed "New Atlantis Gardens".
There's a very interesting article posted recently about how Sunway City (local Malaysian property developer) first phase of built apartment units nearby (8km away from Forest City) all sold out within 2 hours while Foest City still continues to struggle. Sunway City was built with affordability and for people to actually live in, while Forest City was built for speculation and investment (therefore high prices). I don't think China's ghost cities model is something that Malaysia should emulate.
That is the whole purpose. The local company is given land to built affordable landed home for local people whilst the forest city is meant for expat to live in surrounded by sea, on the sea we managed to sell to foreign investor. We are preparing ecosystem that works for everyone without sidelining the local. Johor is getting billions of investor for datacenter and AI and of course foreign expat will flock to the state and we are all well prepared to accomodate them
@@thewolfofswingthat2035Bro, 600k is a fvckton amount of money for an apartment room. You got too used to paying 400k for a single bedroom, single bathroom apartment, that's why
There's plenty of Selangorku and RUMAWIP you can purchase for only 300K. Forest City was never meant for Malaysians, the land was sold out to foreigners and of course locals gonna riot when they find out they suddenly have 2 million foreigners living there
About 10,000 people live there. I will be there this weekend to meet some friends at their apartment. It's actually quite nice there. Though how long they can keep the maintenance going with such a low residential base is the question.
I checked it out on Google Maps. There are _streets_ only within one district which has single-family houses.densely packed together. The rest are _stroads_ . Completely car-centric.
As my grandma used to say, "don't build your castles on sand. Unless they're sand castles. Then go ahead and do that. Those are pretty fun. Especially if you build a little moat around it. And put little tiny robot alligators in the moat."
You should look at the level of Chinese funded construction in Africa. I've personally seen huge developments around Lagos that just stop when they're half built.
And those African nations governments are probably stuck with the debt they took on. Of course, China is always happy to take a port or two in exchange 🤷
And it's done by Chinese labor too. So the host country really gets nothing but a burden, debt, and possibly gets scammed out of rights to a port or some such.
@@therogueadmiralthe host countries are actually losing a ton in those projects. China is taking so many of their resources in exchange for that labour. All that infrastructure China is building is being paid for in resources
I am actually really happy. They actually deserve this. I am currently in Malaysia and it is so hard to find a condo or an apartment to rent because all the Chinese investors own all of them. They won’t do yearly rent. All they do is Airbnb and they’ve made it very difficult for people to find a permanent residence in Malaysia .
@@aaronnunavabizniz199 You probably don't even know how to change your oil, but you are on the internet telling people to build a house in an area you have no knowledge of the process of obtaining permits and property. That's called blue collar brain rot. You are no different than a woke snowflake.
It's risky purchasing an apartment in that development complex. If for whatever reason, the company managing and maintaining that goes bankrupt, you can expect the maintenance of the grounds and the buildings and security to deteriorate fast. Then it will start looking more like a ghetto, once all the greenery shrivels up.
This is a privately managed estate, like a resort. You are completely dependent on someone else to keep the lights on. Except they want people to treat it as permanent living space, rather than a temporary recreation spot. What the hell are you supposed to do if a pipe bursts and management refuses to repair it? There are some critical fundamental issues with properties developed principally as commercial vehicles (read: money pits) that make it outright dangerous to view as long term housing. And a reminder that the holding company is running deep in the red: it will be actively skinning residents to recoup its losses. Before i would ever consider such a place, i would want its management placed in the hands of a public body thats obligated to make a livable house, rather than profits.
They don’t even have to go bankrupt - just having sold all the units means the management abandons the property to neglect with no new buyers to impress.
It's in Malaysia, the greenery is more likely to blanket the buildings than shrivel up. You can already see the plants getting overgrown in some of the shots.
Affordable Luxury is a paradox on itself. For one, Affordable means you can afford it, Luxury is something that you think you can afford it until you realize you don't.
Ahh but here it’s affordable up front, but the “luxury” expenses come after you move in and realise you have to pay premiums to maintain the property and reside there in the first place.
Then China tried? I mean you said "real" government and I'd hardly call the CCP a government, they are a very effective criminal organization, but to be fair there is an argument to be made that's true for all governments lol. It's just especially true for the likes of China, Russia, the DPRK and Iran.
This site is directly across the straight of Johor from Singapore, and not far from one of the biggest ports in Malaysia and a large Singapore container port. But the existing roads make it a long drive from other populated areas. Infrastructure seems to be one of the major issues, it just isn't in place for an area expected to house this many people. But if you enjoy mega tanker and container ship spotting on the beach, this is the place for you! It never ceases to amaze me all the money and environmental destruction spent creating artificial islands in places that have plenty of open seaside land.
Even worse, according to Wiki (citing Rahman, Serina (2017). "Johor's Forest City Faces Critical Challenge". Trends in Southeast Asia Series: WTO Issues. Yusof Ishak Institute.) "Cracks began to appear in the Show Gallery, hotel buildings and roads soon after construction. There were claims that the speed of the land reclamation did not allow time for the soil to settle and stabilize, with a building consultant opining that the land was sinking, and would likely continue to do so."
'"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" No thing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.' - Percy Shelley
I just looked up some prices in Forest City. While it's no NYC, they're not what I'd call cheap. I guess owners are trying long plays rather than dumping at fire sales. Frankly, I don't hate the idea of having a beach to myself...
You want government meddling MORE in the real estate market? Yeesh, that's quite a take. Did you even watch the video? Every policy the CCP made only worsened the problem.
Here on the west coast, developers and real estate speculators are afforded every indulgence in the name of lowering housing prices ... Except they don't put the units on the market at prices any normal citizen can afford, so the crisis remains, and tax loopholes make the empty apartments profitable.
I have been to forest city in 2024, there were a few Malay families in the water park at the beach front and lots of Bangladeshi guest workers cutting back the tropical vegitation. Not a total ghost town. Forest city, however has no sewage treatment plant and there are plenty of container ship moving by, makes swimming in the ocean not so pleasant. But here comes the real nightmare: I ordered a bloody marry in the beach bar. The bar keeper didnt even know what that is. After I explained her, she told me they dont serve alcohol. Like seriously, I am still traumatized. How can a beach bar not serve alcohol.
Chinese investors were supposed to buy them, but the Chinese economy went sharply into recession, and the housing market collapsed. Now it is marketed to Singaporean. The Johore sultanate have invested a large sum in the project. When the Sultan became the new Malaysia king, he pushed for free trade status & new public transport from Singapore. This raised buyer interest again. Only time will tell if this moves succeed or not.
So that's why Singapore has been one of the places Chinese companies are laundered through, such as TikTok. ("I'm from Singapore.", acting as if the company isn't owned by ByteDance....)
Been there for a whole day about a year ago. It was a cool trip for the apocalyptic atmosphere. Definetely not even close to 10k inhabitants, and pretty much all of the people living there work for Country Gardens in some capacity or in the few shops and restaurants, pretty much no residents. The big mall is almost exclusively filled with liquor stores. They still sell property, we posed as a rich couple and got a salesperson to show us the luxury suites in the big main tower with the infinity pool hanging off it's site. If you have a spare day before heading over to Singapore, I'd recommend a visit, especially since Johor Baru is no tourist hotspot exactly.
Soon after the 1st stage opened I played golf on this course. During the round my Singaporean friend informed me that the reclaimed land was previously Mangrove’s, the breeding grounds for a huge number of fish and crustaceans, the food source for locals. I was ashamed of myself and disgusted that breeding grounds that feed thousands of mouths was turned into a golf course. I have never returned and now examine the history of each golf course before I play it.
Thank you. For giving it thought. Golf courses _are_ greedy consumers of natural resources . I just recall the green golf courses as Cape Town was nearing Day Zero. Boreholes tapping into every aquifer as long as one wasn't using "city water". Sad.
The CCP doesn't ever want it paid-off and successful....China hooks Developing Nations and Third World countries into massive Infrastructure projects, funded by Chinese-controlled banks and then has them by the short hairs for the next 50 years in a cycle of financial dependence on the Chinese Communist Party. The buildings aren't the Project...the DEBT and Dependency is.
that's not a city, it's an idealistic feverdream, nobody would or could live there cities are not the buildings, they are essentially the result of specialisations that are the result of cheaper food + less available land requiring people to seek their fortune elsewhere you can build any concrete mess you want but unless you can forcefully bring people there it isn't going to work out
Until you try to get basic necessities like food, water, clothes, TP, linen, coffee, etc. No restaurants/shops (unsustainable unless Garden City decided to subsidize them), and no delivery. Best wishes.
@@DixonLu Saw some videos. It's got everything, just way less of it. Very little. You might still get a brave cab to go out there, for instance. There's some little one dish cafes, possibly for the workers?. Everything's still gorgeously maintained and works. But slowly the balcony garden beds are starting to crack from root migration issues, uncalibrated automated watering systems can cause water ingress issues which later can make unrepairable concrete and structural problems. It's a slow train wreck. Slowly ventilation systems wear out, maintenance is deferred and simple maintenance procedures like lubrication schedules and electronics device manuals and service numbers are deprecated and not updated or renrewed, or misplaced because of employee turnover. Mechanical device manufacturers product lines change, warranties run out, and device operating apps become obsolete as operating systems change, software and service contracts not renewed voiding small print, business change hands, go bankrupt, networking relationships and specialty legacy serviceman proprietary knowledge lost forever.. Forgotten hidden locations of filters plug up, never discovered inaccessible ducts become contaminated and rust, condensation goes unnoticed in walls and inert spaces. Daily Heat-cool cycles invite micro cracks which invite moisture, bacteria, insect and rodent migration. Pretty soon you have a mouldy condemned building with out-of-style luxury finishes,
I was there just last month (10/2024) looking at renting a 2 bedroom apartment for just $1100RM a month (£194 a MONTH!)...whilst the views are great, the buildings were run down, walls were flaky, cement coming away from the walls, paint falling off...door locks were so corroded that they would not open etc. It is a pity, it could have been a great place to live. Now, all that are living there, so i am told, are young Malaysian white collar workers wanting a place just to crash for the night after they cross over to Singapore for work! Sad to see really.
FYI no one but the government owns the land, they allow leases. Those leases have a time limit starting from when the government allowed the land could be leased.
Seeing as I am happiest and most relaxed when there are as few people around me as possible I'm thinking this would be a fantastic place to live for the most part.
Ive been to that skyscraper in Tianjin. The urinals in the restaurant bathroom near the lower levels were fully visible through the giant plate glass window by the neighboring towers
Considering it's right by a property market as pumped as Singapore it's amazing they can't sell these. Of course when you look online the prices aren't particularly cheap relatively speaking.
Many already living there. Locals are also buying units there as weekend gateways or for Airbnb including myself. After Covid the price dropped from USD200k per unit to USD75k. We don’t need buyers from the PRC anymore 😊
good luck with your tofu dreg if it was made by the chinese. should look at the videos warning about their terrible construction practices. youre building will be falling apart in no time.
I used to live in Shaoxing and at one point I counted 40 tower blocks going up whilst on the ground there were buildings and malls empty. One building I went into was a glazed shell with people camping on the concrete slabs, cooking on open fires and doing their 'business' in pails in a corner.
It looks beautiful, other than the tall apartment blocks being WAY too big for a place with no industry but tourism. The job of those buildings was to fleece individual investors.
I am living in Hanoi and on some of the Islands and beach cities the Chinese built entire cities in the style of an Italien city with zero people living in it.
There are universities in Shanghai where students are living crowded in filthy mold infested dorm rooms, with bad plumbing. Meanwhile, there's money being wasted on stuff like this. Central planning is wonderful
It’s not just Forest City there’s plenty of empty new build tower blocks all over Johor. When I lived there (2017 - 2020) was the only person living in my block for the first three months even though most of the apartments were sold, or that’s what I was told when I was looking to rent an apartment. Then something happened, globally. 😷
The smart Chinese had already bought property in Australia, Canada and NZ. Fueling our own property bubbles, but at least here you can rent out and get a decent return (unless you are needing to rent)
There are many ways to get rich in China without having a legitimate business. Recently, duplicate RMB100 banknotes with identical numbers were found. They're authentic banknotes. Estimatedly, it has been going on for a decade. Then, those people tried to buy gold and Bitcoins, take RMB to exchange US dollars in Hong Kong, etc. If we pay attention, every time China looses the restrictions for citizens to apply for visas in other countries' embassies in Beijing, the price of Bitcoin goes up.
But Malaysia Very Clever Foreigner Cannot Buy Permanently It Leases For 99 Year Can You Live That Long,Even If Inheritance The House To Your Heir After 99 Year The Property Belong To Malaysia Government
as someone who is involved in this type of work, but who has routinely been dismissed and shown out of the room (literally and figuratively) when I tried to warn people of this happening, I will say this: the failures do help as they will be longstanding testaments to what happens when planning, designing, and marketing lead without any consideration of economics, finance, or politics.
The irony is-that in a number of countries such as Australia there is a housing shortage. Several hundred thousand Australians are i’m looking to either rent or buy a house
Similar issue in the US. Affordable housing is a joke. International deals should be happening everywhere for this kinda of thing. But... it's a tough sell to up and move to Malaysia from the West, unless ALL your friends come with you, and even then.... :\
@@stephen-torrence I doubt very many westerners would want to risk moving to a muslim majority country and run the risk of being a second class citizen
@@stephen-torrence You realise this "Forest City" is made by Chinese companies, that don't have exactly the best track record in quality assurance? We're talkin' rebar that can be snapped BY HAND. And concrete that can be broken off and crumbled to dust in some cases.
It's because of the discontinuity of Malaysian politics. The next president of Malaysia denied the promise of the previous president of Malaysia about getting the long term resident permission by buying an apartment in this community. So there won't be any Chinese buyers then.
15:12 another interesting fact is that many of the apartments are just shells. They are not finished inside because the theory was that a potential buyer would want to personalize the interior. This means they are uninhabitable as is. There are hundreds of thousands of dwellings that are concrete shells. Add to that extensive corner cutting that is called “tofu building” has these buildings falling apart having just been built.
If you brought in US dollars or British pounds to Malaysia it is possible to live the high life in Malaysia and many are doing it. 150k expats received their green light last year.
Exactly the stuff I can watch the whole day while working. Always super interesting. Maybe you should start one day on also visiting some of the places you talk about.
It's wild to me that they maintain the place and that there's a few people living there in near total isolation. I guess there must be a few restaurants and shops?
Many of us who were headed for retirement in Malaysia were disappointed to see the dismantling of the MM2H visa. It really was superb for retirees. However, it seems that the Malaysian government got a bit snobbish and decided to limit retiree access to peninsular Malaysia to the rich. The monthly retirement income requirement went from $2500 to $10000, overnight for the peninsula. It was so unpopular that applications for the peninsular MM2H dived and the applications for the Sarawak (Borneo) and Sabah MM2H visas shot up. But, for those of us who don't want to live in a hot, humid, less-developed jungle, these two places were not even considerations. Then...they announced a new peninsular Malaysian MM2H...which coincidentally required every applicant to own property, even though there is no path to permanent residency or citizenship! Oh, yeah...and its almost a forgone conclusion that these visa holders would need to own these crappy condos in Forest City. BTW: The former governor of the province containing Forest City is now the president of Malaysia. The hell with them! I'm taking my retirement dollars elsewhere.
as controversial as the project is, if it can serve to be a gathering place for snobby tourists who come to Malaysia without wanting to learn the local culture and language(Malay) and just here for the "cheap" food and pseudo high life then I'd very much welcome the forest city. A fitting solution for such a investment inspired problem.
@@evanhughes3027 Well, yeah and no, actually. You see, I can afford to retire in the U.S., too. I've got more than enough now and in 5 years, I would have plenty more with full SS. The problem is that the U.S. really isn't the best place for a lot of things, anymore. Our healthcare system has always ranked in the mid-low 30s. Prices of everything are high and getting worse. The U.S. gun ownership is so out of control that even Trump has two assassination attempts from sickos in his own party, in less than two months. A lot of the nice places to retire are going to shit. Florida is suffering from climate change, high insurance rates, and extreme heat. The West and Southwest are burning up with extreme heat, forest fires, and water shortages. I get the impression that you're one of these guys who doesn't have a passport and has never traveled abroad. Dude...there's a reason the rich sail the world in mega yachts and spend time around the globe. It's because its fun! Retiring abroad is fun, too. Part of it is having access to the best place in those societies for less money. It's also about doing it with other expats. What Malaysia did with its MM2H visa is a reversal of its past tradition of welcoming foreigners. Traveling the world isn't just for the rich. Spending your money in countries with high buying power is called "geo-arbitrage". Its an approach traditionally taken by businesses and the super rich, but anyone with a certain amount of money can do it. You need to stop thinking like an inferior to the rich and rid yourself of this peasant mentality. (The result is the type of jealousy, masked resentment, and national chauvinism you are trying to wear like indifference here.)
@shyamdevadas6099 America had guns for 2 centuries and no mass shooting, if you're not in a ghetto in a few cities or depressed you'll never be even near a shooting. 99% of America is as safe as the Czech Republic. Biden voters are not Republicans Obamacare is trash yes Florida and the West and SW are heating up because of all the forests being paved over and California stopping controlled burns. A liberal wants to leave America to avoid the consequences of their actions? And water is wet How is chauvinism saying "If you don't learn the local language you deserve a cardboard apartment"?
To think China's managed to export this problem. There's so many city's where blocks of high rise apartment buildings have maybe a dozen residents in which each build can fit hundreds of families easily, some buildings are left incomplete and are a slowly rotting husk. China decided to build their way through the 2008 housing recession. The USA learned in our "Great Depression" why you don't try and do that. The problem is when the bubble does finally burst it'll send shock waves, we'll be ok but it'll get annoying and inflation will cause issues. That's why the trend in Chinese households has stopped being "buy houses" and has started being "hoard and hide your cash". The CCP is trying to raise internal consumer spending but the consumers see what's going on and are not willing to spend money on things they don't need as much as the rest of the world is. Which is actually making the risk all the more likely things will get real bad in China's economy soon. If they attack Taiwan in 2027 like it's been suggested it's over for them. The fallout would do to them what Ukraine has done to Russia despite China's "wealth".
Has already burst. Evergrand ring a bell? They fully collapsed. The resulting inflation has already affected things, that's why most of the world in general has inflation issues currently.
You didn't even touch on the main point. There was a promise of visa free travel for residents of the island into Singapore which was dropped which was the main driver.
its beautiful despite not being heavily populated reminds me of a certain city of tears. Honestly I wouldn’t mind living in such an isolated yet modern home.
It is easy to build it from scratch, but it becomes difficult to convince people to live there and take in the skyrocketing rent they have to content with for the next 2 to 5 years before the renting prices become stable.. Otherwise artificial inflation would do the trick too if it becomes successful.
I saw the exact same thing on a small little island in Cambodia. A little “city of the future” but there was like almost no one living there at all. It was very interesting. I forgot what it was called, I somehow got lost and found it just walking around Phnom Penh
In the netherland were there is a big housing shortage there is a problem that new buiding projects can not get started due to regulations in co2 emissions. it is therefor extra cringy to see that in china so much is build and unocupied not taking the enviroment at all in account.
If Forest City holds on for another few years without falling into complete decay, there is still a chance for the project to see a second life, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Don't forget, this whole presentation also neglects the Tofu Dregs aspect of Chinese construction.
You may by what remains of the 70-year lease. If you buy a property that's 30 years old, four decades remain. China has not yet reached the point where leases expire - the oldest developments are about 35 to 40 years old. As time marches on, what that will do valuations and how it will affect those who bought and are unable to sell will be revealed. I suspect it won't go well.
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OMG, your camera needs to be focused better badly, or cleaned.
Please talk about the huawei mate xt is all over the internet
The video starts off with bit of a misunderstanding of how China ACTUALLY works vs how it is said to work. Nobody is allowed to own land there except the government. The land is all leased, instead, allowing the government to take it back from anyone it dislikes at-will.
@@BrunoDias1234 This is not one of your CCP-controlled propaganda channels, you know.
Too much brain washing, isn't it ! !
i m from malaysia and let me add a bit more context. the forest city was heavily backed by the sultan of johor, who has grudge against Dr Mahathir who was the prime minister that removed royal immunity many years before. When Mahathir became the prime minister the second time, he wanted to fck with the sultan of johor, and one way of doing that is to restrict who can buy properties in forest city. So there is political feud at play on the forest city
Geez, what are you? It is all about money, not grudge. Who else is able to sell plain empty non-functional sea to be converted to livable home without using tax payers money?
@@Ameng3471AFAIK this is beside Singapore. If Mahathir wanted to turn this into success, he could've.
@@phoenix5054 he is only commenting about project and nothing is stopped based on his instruction. It is private equity and got nothing to do with govt coffers he managed. The project slowed down due to covid and china govt equity control. You got it all wrong abt mahathir. We are reviving the project,
it would be succeeding now if there wasn’t sensitivity to putting a bunch of PRC transplants into Malaysia, and expecting Singapore to facilitate the erosion of its border. There are actually a lot of such wannabe transplants now that people are running away from HK/China due to the current regime. They don’t realize how much they are hated elsewhere though, because they have been listening to propaganda for years.
One of the the major factor is the real estate company of China "Country Garden ". They got serious problem after China started to limit foreign investment because of capital outflow control and debt crisis for most of the real estate developers in China. Not only Forest City, many other projects suspended or abandoned.
When i see these abandoned places, it shocks me. It's a gargantuan waste of materials and resources!! Absolutely insane!!
It's obscene. Especially when there's a chronic shortage of housing in so many places around the world.
The scale of waste just boggles the mind..
China has poured more concrete in the last 10 years alone than *the rest of the world combined, in the last 100 years !!!*
btw, making and curing concrete produces copious greenhouse gasses
The US has a couple million illegal aliens we could send there to live
ghost cities always seem wierd and wasteful, until a decade later they're no longer ghost cities and there's a new one over yonder to call wierd and wasteful instead
other parts of the world can have more extreme population growth than just tacking on a new developement project to an existing city can really handle
It's because you have a visual representation that feels extreme. No question you're actually accepting of others that may even be greater, but they're normalized to you and likely not as so statically visible and obvious.
I could be wrong, but you (or at least the average person) as an individual probably waste a lot of your income on unnecessary things and self justify it (the interpreter module in our brain that is well studied does this naturally, that is why people can vehemently disagree about the same information).
I've been to Forest City a few times in the last year, and honestly while it is always very nice, the thing my wife loves the most about it is how quiet it is. It is kinda spooky cuz it is so big and brand new, yet we rarely see more than a few dozen people on the beach or walking around the complex😅
Not exactly brand new anymore, what with plants doing their best to eventually return the whole place to nature.
Sounds like a nice place to live, quiet beach all to yourself :)
But back in your mind the whole place can be shut down at any time :o
Apparently you can't swim there because of sharks
Mike, no swimming sign because of crocodiles
@@Vaeldarg return to nature ? maybe in a 10000 years or more seeing the nature there was water so to return to that would take a while.
or are invasive animal species in a country also a return to nature then why complain about those?
The hasty development also meant that the reclaimed land was not given time to settle/compress, and the artificial island is at risk of land subsidence or even sinking back into the sea. Then the project would be renamed "New Atlantis Gardens".
Everything the CCP touches turns to gold .... in toilet🚽
Dredged sand reclaimed land, Tofu Dreg building quality
There is a parable about the man who built his house on sand and the man who built his house on rock.
That is a very astute comedic comment. You win the internet
Let me guess, you were an engineer on the project? Oh wait, you’ve “done your own research”.
The city would be a great setting for a post-apocalyptic movie or video game like Fallout
That's what I was thinking, so cool to film in a place like that, how cool would that be
They film The Walking Dead in Atlanta. That's not sets, that's just what it looks like outside of the center of the city
What do they know that we don't?
Thats exactly what these cities are for. The plan is taking a little longer than they thought. Too many people are fighting back.
i live there.. what the hell
There's a very interesting article posted recently about how Sunway City (local Malaysian property developer) first phase of built apartment units nearby (8km away from Forest City) all sold out within 2 hours while Foest City still continues to struggle.
Sunway City was built with affordability and for people to actually live in, while Forest City was built for speculation and investment (therefore high prices).
I don't think China's ghost cities model is something that Malaysia should emulate.
That is the whole purpose. The local company is given land to built affordable landed home for local people whilst the forest city is meant for expat to live in surrounded by sea, on the sea we managed to sell to foreign investor. We are preparing ecosystem that works for everyone without sidelining the local. Johor is getting billions of investor for datacenter and AI and of course foreign expat will flock to the state and we are all well prepared to accomodate them
600k is actually pretty standard
desa park city and montkiara way more expensive
@@thewolfofswingthat2035Bro, 600k is a fvckton amount of money for an apartment room. You got too used to paying 400k for a single bedroom, single bathroom apartment, that's why
There's plenty of Selangorku and RUMAWIP you can purchase for only 300K. Forest City was never meant for Malaysians, the land was sold out to foreigners and of course locals gonna riot when they find out they suddenly have 2 million foreigners living there
买家请注意，该项目的价格严重过高，高于首都吉隆坡和槟城的许多项目。此外，某个国家的建筑质量通常比许多当地开发商差。对我来说，价格过高且质量差=糟糕的购买。是否便宜是相对于买家所在国家而言的。它应该与类似的项目进行比较，例如吉隆坡的项目，而不是买家祖国的项目。
About 10,000 people live there. I will be there this weekend to meet some friends at their apartment. It's actually quite nice there. Though how long they can keep the maintenance going with such a low residential base is the question.
how much are the appartments?
@@luxraider5384 honestly no idea. There are far better places to buy in Johor.
That's it. I lived, and hyped through phases of this project: conceptualize, development, embezzlement, fall, and a TH-cam documentary.
Artificial island with concrete towers. Seems very green to me!
Just paint it all green is China's solution to climate change!
Catastrophe to sea relying aborigines around.
@@tantangpenn5496 Johor doesn't have the "sea residence". you're talking about Sabah community, which is on a totally different island far from it
@@r.sakarollsafe1285
What level of self delusion is required to deny the existence of Sea People?
I checked it out on Google Maps. There are _streets_ only within one district which has single-family houses.densely packed together. The rest are _stroads_ .
Completely car-centric.
They should've built the city on rock and roll.
Single best TH-cam comment ever if only I could give more than one like!😂
😂
If they listened to the radio, they would have remembered
😂😂😂😂bravo!
Building a concrete jungle on sand? I can't forsee that ever backfiring 😊
As my grandma used to say, "don't build your castles on sand. Unless they're sand castles. Then go ahead and do that. Those are pretty fun. Especially if you build a little moat around it. And put little tiny robot alligators in the moat."
Wait... luxury, isolated, well maintained and no people? Where do I sign up?
The problem is you can't 😂
Indeed, sounds like paradise :)
It does sound perfect to me.
I think the mainproblem is basic services, groseries and pharmacies access... at least i need internet (as per my career)
You should look at the level of Chinese funded construction in Africa. I've personally seen huge developments around Lagos that just stop when they're half built.
And those African nations governments are probably stuck with the debt they took on. Of course, China is always happy to take a port or two in exchange 🤷
And it's done by Chinese labor too. So the host country really gets nothing but a burden, debt, and possibly gets scammed out of rights to a port or some such.
Also is built poorly and crumbles in half the time
It's like a weird type of cargo cult!
@@therogueadmiralthe host countries are actually losing a ton in those projects. China is taking so many of their resources in exchange for that labour. All that infrastructure China is building is being paid for in resources
I am actually really happy. They actually deserve this. I am currently in Malaysia and it is so hard to find a condo or an apartment to rent because all the Chinese investors own all of them. They won’t do yearly rent. All they do is Airbnb and they’ve made it very difficult for people to find a permanent residence in Malaysia .
Build your own?
Imagine a Malaysian owning an apartment in china😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
The Chinese are doing this all over Asia
@@aaronnunavabizniz199 You probably don't even know how to change your oil, but you are on the internet telling people to build a house in an area you have no knowledge of the process of obtaining permits and property. That's called blue collar brain rot. You are no different than a woke snowflake.
@user-yj8zw7hk6fNot everyone can afford owning multiple apartments.
It's risky purchasing an apartment in that development complex. If for whatever reason, the company managing and maintaining that goes bankrupt, you can expect the maintenance of the grounds and the buildings and security to deteriorate fast. Then it will start looking more like a ghetto, once all the greenery shrivels up.
This is a privately managed estate, like a resort. You are completely dependent on someone else to keep the lights on. Except they want people to treat it as permanent living space, rather than a temporary recreation spot. What the hell are you supposed to do if a pipe bursts and management refuses to repair it?
There are some critical fundamental issues with properties developed principally as commercial vehicles (read: money pits) that make it outright dangerous to view as long term housing. And a reminder that the holding company is running deep in the red: it will be actively skinning residents to recoup its losses. Before i would ever consider such a place, i would want its management placed in the hands of a public body thats obligated to make a livable house, rather than profits.
They don’t even have to go bankrupt - just having sold all the units means the management abandons the property to neglect with no new buyers to impress.
More 70% been sold, ya saying they not gonna pay the maintenance fee?.
@@ulooqulg Where did you get this 70% sold figure from?
It's in Malaysia, the greenery is more likely to blanket the buildings than shrivel up. You can already see the plants getting overgrown in some of the shots.
Affordable Luxury is a paradox on itself. For one, Affordable means you can afford it, Luxury is something that you think you can afford it until you realize you don't.
Ahh but here it’s affordable up front, but the “luxury” expenses come after you move in and realise you have to pay premiums to maintain the property and reside there in the first place.
@@Underestimated37 AND that you sacrificed your freedom to sell when you want to reclaim your investment.
Nope it's not a paradox. You can make good quality housing for everyone, so it will be cheap luxury housing, compared to other regions in the world.
Well affordable is subjective. You can be broke in US but you can be rich with the same amount of money in 3rd world country.
Sim City made it look so easy that real governments decided to give it a go!
Then China tried? I mean you said "real" government and I'd hardly call the CCP a government, they are a very effective criminal organization, but to be fair there is an argument to be made that's true for all governments lol. It's just especially true for the likes of China, Russia, the DPRK and Iran.
"real governments" run by corrupt idiots
Not really. Gi-Gi Ping's incompetence is beyond comprehension.
@@frenstcht that's what he's saying Xi played too much 😂
@PJWestfield - That's what the Saudi's thought so they're building The Wall
This site is directly across the straight of Johor from Singapore, and not far from one of the biggest ports in Malaysia and a large Singapore container port. But the existing roads make it a long drive from other populated areas. Infrastructure seems to be one of the major issues, it just isn't in place for an area expected to house this many people. But if you enjoy mega tanker and container ship spotting on the beach, this is the place for you! It never ceases to amaze me all the money and environmental destruction spent creating artificial islands in places that have plenty of open seaside land.
It'll make an awesome post-apocalyptic film set someday
Even worse, according to Wiki (citing Rahman, Serina (2017). "Johor's Forest City Faces Critical Challenge". Trends in Southeast Asia Series: WTO Issues. Yusof Ishak Institute.) "Cracks began to appear in the Show Gallery, hotel buildings and roads soon after construction. There were claims that the speed of the land reclamation did not allow time for the soil to settle and stabilize, with a building consultant opining that the land was sinking, and would likely continue to do so."
I went there and I felt like Chihiro in "Spirited Away".
'"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.' - Percy Shelley
I just looked up some prices in Forest City. While it's no NYC, they're not what I'd call cheap. I guess owners are trying long plays rather than dumping at fire sales. Frankly, I don't hate the idea of having a beach to myself...
I wish our leaders in the west would say "houses are for living in, not for speculation".
I agree. The west now has a huge housing speculation problem that our government leaders only pretend to care about.
@user-yj8zw7hk6fCommunism isn't all bad, it's not like capitalism is all good either 🤷🏼♂️
You want government meddling MORE in the real estate market? Yeesh, that's quite a take. Did you even watch the video? Every policy the CCP made only worsened the problem.
@@Decatronics自然 Only one is responsible for hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century. Communism is *almost* all bad.
Here on the west coast, developers and real estate speculators are afforded every indulgence in the name of lowering housing prices ... Except they don't put the units on the market at prices any normal citizen can afford, so the crisis remains, and tax loopholes make the empty apartments profitable.
I have been to forest city in 2024, there were a few Malay families in the water park at the beach front and lots of Bangladeshi guest workers cutting back the tropical vegitation. Not a total ghost town.
Forest city, however has no sewage treatment plant and there are plenty of container ship moving by, makes swimming in the ocean not so pleasant.
But here comes the real nightmare: I ordered a bloody marry in the beach bar. The bar keeper didnt even know what that is. After I explained her, she told me they dont serve alcohol. Like seriously, I am still traumatized. How can a beach bar not serve alcohol.
Muslim country. Many are dry and do not sell alcohol which is forbidden by the Koran.
Well Malaysia is muslim majority country and alcohol is haram
@@notusneomate you clearly never been to Malaysia
It's clearly that you didn't do your research before travelling to other countries
@@adam248 alcohol is legal in Malaysia?
Chinese investors were supposed to buy them, but the Chinese economy went sharply into recession, and the housing market collapsed. Now it is marketed to Singaporean. The Johore sultanate have invested a large sum in the project. When the Sultan became the new Malaysia king, he pushed for free trade status & new public transport from Singapore. This raised buyer interest again. Only time will tell if this moves succeed or not.
Artificial islands have an alarming tendency to sink, fast, time is one thing that they dont have.
So that's why Singapore has been one of the places Chinese companies are laundered through, such as TikTok. ("I'm from Singapore.", acting as if the company isn't owned by ByteDance....)
@@VaeldargHe is Chingaporean.. try Google his Parent..
@cesaravegah3787 It is in the straits of Malacca. The sea floor is pretty solid. Singapore close by has been reclaiming land for many decades now.
@@wenhu That's when done properly. Which the Chinese companies likely did not.
Been there for a whole day about a year ago. It was a cool trip for the apocalyptic atmosphere. Definetely not even close to 10k inhabitants, and pretty much all of the people living there work for Country Gardens in some capacity or in the few shops and restaurants, pretty much no residents. The big mall is almost exclusively filled with liquor stores. They still sell property, we posed as a rich couple and got a salesperson to show us the luxury suites in the big main tower with the infinity pool hanging off it's site. If you have a spare day before heading over to Singapore, I'd recommend a visit, especially since Johor Baru is no tourist hotspot exactly.
The ADV China channel visited here. That was a great video.
Soon after the 1st stage opened I played golf on this course. During the round my Singaporean friend informed me that the reclaimed land was previously Mangrove’s, the breeding grounds for a huge number of fish and crustaceans, the food source for locals.
I was ashamed of myself and disgusted that breeding grounds that feed thousands of mouths was turned into a golf course. I have never returned and now examine the history of each golf course before I play it.
You should play golf in the desert...
A few hundred meters away is a country that has 0.5% of it's original mangroves left as a result of land reclamation........
Thank you. For giving it thought.
Golf courses _are_ greedy consumers of natural resources . I just recall the green golf courses as Cape Town was nearing Day Zero.
Boreholes tapping into every aquifer as long as one wasn't using "city water". Sad.
Since the damage is already done, it doesn't matter much. Not using it just adds to the waste.
@@Kempscreek oops.. Who found my comment offensive.
It was the truth... Above what i observed in CPT ZA Day Zero rolling in.
Surrounded by fuel refineries. Mmmm yummy air and the island with stagnant water for all those mosquitos. Heavenly.
Good thing, Whistler changes shirts for his ads - makes it easier to ff over 'em!
The ban on foreigners buying properties KILLED it. Genius move.
we dont want to be like UAE, never see the locals around unlike flooded foreigner
Why should they own properties in a foreign country?
The CCP doesn't ever want it paid-off and successful....China hooks Developing Nations and Third World countries into massive Infrastructure projects, funded by Chinese-controlled banks and then has them by the short hairs for the next 50 years in a cycle of financial dependence on the Chinese Communist Party. The buildings aren't the Project...the DEBT and Dependency is.
@@Deedlanger To invest or holiday in
there is no ban...
For that kind of money you could build a new railway that doesn’t quite go to Birmingham from not quite London
that's not a city, it's an idealistic feverdream, nobody would or could live there
cities are not the buildings, they are essentially the result of specialisations that are the result of cheaper food + less available land requiring people to seek their fortune elsewhere
you can build any concrete mess you want but unless you can forcefully bring people there it isn't going to work out
*Russian ears perk up*
Even totalitarian China learned this lesson the hard way with their many ghost cities
10,000 residents of Forest city: 👁👄👁
@oooshafiqooo 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Ghost town? If it has electricity and high speed internet I'd love it.
well good water and food come to mind
i think it does hv everything youd need for a vacation over there.
Until you try to get basic necessities like food, water, clothes, TP, linen, coffee, etc. No restaurants/shops (unsustainable unless Garden City decided to subsidize them), and no delivery. Best wishes.
@@DixonLu Saw some videos. It's got everything, just way less of it. Very little. You might still get a brave cab to go out there, for instance. There's some little one dish cafes, possibly for the workers?. Everything's still gorgeously maintained and works. But slowly the balcony garden beds are starting to crack from root migration issues, uncalibrated automated watering systems can cause water ingress issues which later can make unrepairable concrete and structural problems. It's a slow train wreck.
Slowly ventilation systems wear out, maintenance is deferred and simple maintenance procedures like lubrication schedules and electronics device manuals and service numbers are deprecated and not updated or renrewed, or misplaced because of employee turnover. Mechanical device manufacturers product lines change, warranties run out, and device operating apps become obsolete as operating systems change, software and service contracts not renewed voiding small print, business change hands, go bankrupt, networking relationships and specialty legacy serviceman proprietary knowledge lost forever..
Forgotten hidden locations of filters plug up, never discovered inaccessible ducts become contaminated and rust, condensation goes unnoticed in walls and inert spaces. Daily Heat-cool cycles invite micro cracks which invite moisture, bacteria, insect and rodent migration. Pretty soon you have a mouldy condemned building with out-of-style luxury finishes,
Me too, it sounds like paradise.
I was there just last month (10/2024) looking at renting a 2 bedroom apartment for just $1100RM a month (£194 a MONTH!)...whilst the views are great, the buildings were run down, walls were flaky, cement coming away from the walls, paint falling off...door locks were so corroded that they would not open etc. It is a pity, it could have been a great place to live. Now, all that are living there, so i am told, are young Malaysian white collar workers wanting a place just to crash for the night after they cross over to Singapore for work! Sad to see really.
Excellent presentation, you're really good at this. thank you.
I don't understand how this doesn't get more coverage, its been going on for years and is quite concerning.
FYI no one but the government owns the land, they allow leases. Those leases have a time limit starting from when the government allowed the land could be leased.
Honestly, living in a maintained, abandoned city would be fun.
Just blast loud music at 3am in the middle of the road
That does sound pretty cool
sounds interesting
Till someone realizes this might also be a great place for illegal street racing.
That's haram and alcohol is haram too
@@davianoinglesias5030 Brother I don't think anyone who isn't a Muslim would care whether something is or isn't haram
I used to live nearby. It's a gargantuan mess of a ghost town. It's like 15 minutes from Singapore if you're bothered to make the trip.
That place looks like a absolute dream to live in, even more so if theres hardly any people about.
Seeing as I am happiest and most relaxed when there are as few people around me as possible I'm thinking this would be a fantastic place to live for the most part.
Forest City, looks like a good place for squatting.
Think how much grafiti you could do there, though it depends on the penalty for doing so. I should think it would be very severe.
This kind of story is EXACTLY what this channel is for. Great video!
The jungle seems WELL on its way to reclaiming Forest City instead of being maintained, something that was claimed several times in this video.
It’s interesting how there’s a real estate shortage in some parts of the world (a lot due to speculation too), while massive projects sit empty.
As Kramer would say "I'll cost them nothing. It's just a write off for them!"
Do you even know what a write off is?
@@carolyn12681 😆 th-cam.com/video/BAjxn2US7J8/w-d-xo.html
I think what still is killing it is that a home there is 1M USD or a penthouse the same. Prices don’t make sense
Ive been to that skyscraper in Tianjin. The urinals in the restaurant bathroom near the lower levels were fully visible through the giant plate glass window by the neighboring towers
😂 awesome free 😎 entertainment
Considering it's right by a property market as pumped as Singapore it's amazing they can't sell these. Of course when you look online the prices aren't particularly cheap relatively speaking.
Many already living there. Locals are also buying units there as weekend gateways or for Airbnb including myself. After Covid the price dropped from USD200k per unit to USD75k. We don’t need buyers from the PRC anymore 😊
I would never buy property developed by China. Reason is poor quality of materials and workmanship, unlikely to last more than 20 years.
@lynnemorris7516, so 12 years left?
Precisely, as getaways, not to live in.
good luck with your tofu dreg if it was made by the chinese. should look at the videos warning about their terrible construction practices. youre building will be falling apart in no time.
I used to live in Shaoxing and at one point I counted 40 tower blocks going up whilst on the ground there were buildings and malls empty. One building I went into was a glazed shell with people camping on the concrete slabs, cooking on open fires and doing their 'business' in pails in a corner.
China's Bait and Switch Initiative. 😮
And people/countries still fall for it
@@alok.01 Thanks 😊
@@alok.01 people fell for it, Malaysia won the bait 😎😎😎
They ought to consider turning Forest City into a suburb of Singapore an expensive place with a housing shortage.
It looks beautiful, other than the tall apartment blocks being WAY too big for a place with no industry but tourism. The job of those buildings was to fleece individual investors.
I am living in Hanoi and on some of the Islands and beach cities the Chinese built entire cities in the style of an Italien city with zero people living in it.
There are universities in Shanghai where students are living crowded in filthy mold infested dorm rooms, with bad plumbing.
Meanwhile, there's money being wasted on stuff like this.
Central planning is wonderful
money laundering is wonderful.... for the CCP elites.
Saw that too, local students are like sardines 10-20 in 1 room while international students get 1-1 room
There are people living in roadside tents in capitalist countries while others own several properties and holiday homes
None of those students would go live in the ghost cities if it was free, though
@@davianoinglesias5030 It's not real capitalism
Everyone should fear the phrase.
"I'm from the government and I'm here to help"
I'm in love with that Ghost Mega City. For someone who thrived during the pandemic, I wouldn't mind living there. 😅
There must be so much stagnant water between those ghost apartments 🤮
I would absolutely love to live there, very few people to almost no people. If I can get food I would be more then happy to be in an empty city
Looks like nice place if there were higher population growth in the area. Only what worries me is rising sea levels which could unreclaim the island.
It’s not just Forest City there’s plenty of empty new build tower blocks all over Johor. When I lived there (2017 - 2020) was the only person living in my block for the first three months even though most of the apartments were sold, or that’s what I was told when I was looking to rent an apartment. Then something happened, globally. 😷
There are places where bank account interest matches inflation? Where is this utopia?
India
The smart Chinese had already bought property in Australia, Canada and NZ. Fueling our own property bubbles, but at least here you can rent out and get a decent return (unless you are needing to rent)
There are many ways to get rich in China without having a legitimate business. Recently, duplicate RMB100 banknotes with identical numbers were found. They're authentic banknotes. Estimatedly, it has been going on for a decade. Then, those people tried to buy gold and Bitcoins, take RMB to exchange US dollars in Hong Kong, etc. If we pay attention, every time China looses the restrictions for citizens to apply for visas in other countries' embassies in Beijing, the price of Bitcoin goes up.
Why did the Canadian/Australian government allow the Chinese to buy property knowing it'll cause property bubble? 😝
@captives6479 Because CANZUK politicians are slumlords
But Malaysia Very Clever Foreigner Cannot Buy Permanently It Leases For 99 Year Can You Live That Long,Even If Inheritance The House To Your Heir After 99 Year The Property Belong To Malaysia Government
the rich ones are in Singapore
as someone who is involved in this type of work, but who has routinely been dismissed and shown out of the room (literally and figuratively) when I tried to warn people of this happening, I will say this: the failures do help as they will be longstanding testaments to what happens when planning, designing, and marketing lead without any consideration of economics, finance, or politics.
.......OR human nature......
Why would you say crystal clean blue water, while showing a picture of dark murky green water? LOL
Great episode!
The irony is-that in a number of countries such as Australia there is a housing shortage. Several hundred thousand Australians are i’m looking to either rent or buy a house
Same here in the Netherlands. We're over 300 thousand houses short, in a country of 18 million.
Similar issue in the US. Affordable housing is a joke. International deals should be happening everywhere for this kinda of thing. But... it's a tough sell to up and move to Malaysia from the West, unless ALL your friends come with you, and even then.... :\
@@stephen-torrence I doubt very many westerners would want to risk moving to a muslim majority country and run the risk of being a second class citizen
@@stephen-torrence You realise this "Forest City" is made by Chinese companies, that don't have exactly the best track record in quality assurance? We're talkin' rebar that can be snapped BY HAND. And concrete that can be broken off and crumbled to dust in some cases.
@@8qk67acq5 And random comments definitely never lie to support Chinese propaganda 😂
It's because of the discontinuity of Malaysian politics. The next president of Malaysia denied the promise of the previous president of Malaysia about getting the long term resident permission by buying an apartment in this community. So there won't be any Chinese buyers then.
@user-yj8zw7hk6f They sadly paid before the new Malaysian president broke the promise.
15:12 another interesting fact is that many of the apartments are just shells. They are not finished inside because the theory was that a potential buyer would want to personalize the interior. This means they are uninhabitable as is. There are hundreds of thousands of dwellings that are concrete shells. Add to that extensive corner cutting that is called “tofu building” has these buildings falling apart having just been built.
Thank you so much for this. Much love for your content.
affordable luxury is an oxymoron
Especially if you put a 100% tariff on it😂
Depends on what you're talking about, when it comes to cars for example luxury is 100% affordable.
If you brought in US dollars or British pounds to Malaysia it is possible to live the high life in Malaysia and many are doing it. 150k expats received their green light last year.
Thats the idea behind the general demise in quality. Over time, the same things cost tenfold. With some luck, that is.
Exactly the stuff I can watch the whole day while working. Always super interesting. Maybe you should start one day on also visiting some of the places you talk about.
Greed , Corruption and Chinese investment goes hand in hand .
Nice job, Mr. Whistler and Mr. Dickerson and everyone else .
Omg, lessons never learned.
It's wild to me that they maintain the place and that there's a few people living there in near total isolation. I guess there must be a few restaurants and shops?
This looks and sounds interesting!
I want to pay this place a visit!
Man...once you see Winnie the Pooh, you can't unsee it...
This place would make a great location for a movie. I need to take my bike down from KL and ride around this city.
Many of us who were headed for retirement in Malaysia were disappointed to see the dismantling of the MM2H visa. It really was superb for retirees. However, it seems that the Malaysian government got a bit snobbish and decided to limit retiree access to peninsular Malaysia to the rich. The monthly retirement income requirement went from $2500 to $10000, overnight for the peninsula. It was so unpopular that applications for the peninsular MM2H dived and the applications for the Sarawak (Borneo) and Sabah MM2H visas shot up. But, for those of us who don't want to live in a hot, humid, less-developed jungle, these two places were not even considerations. Then...they announced a new peninsular Malaysian MM2H...which coincidentally required every applicant to own property, even though there is no path to permanent residency or citizenship! Oh, yeah...and its almost a forgone conclusion that these visa holders would need to own these crappy condos in Forest City. BTW: The former governor of the province containing Forest City is now the president of Malaysia. The hell with them! I'm taking my retirement dollars elsewhere.
as controversial as the project is, if it can serve to be a gathering place for snobby tourists who come to Malaysia without wanting to learn the local culture and language(Malay) and just here for the "cheap" food and pseudo high life then I'd very much welcome the forest city. A fitting solution for such a investment inspired problem.
On one hand, good for you, traveling, palm trees, etc. On the other, I can just retire where I live and that makes me feel a little bad for you.
@@evanhughes3027 Well, yeah and no, actually. You see, I can afford to retire in the U.S., too. I've got more than enough now and in 5 years, I would have plenty more with full SS. The problem is that the U.S. really isn't the best place for a lot of things, anymore. Our healthcare system has always ranked in the mid-low 30s. Prices of everything are high and getting worse. The U.S. gun ownership is so out of control that even Trump has two assassination attempts from sickos in his own party, in less than two months. A lot of the nice places to retire are going to shit. Florida is suffering from climate change, high insurance rates, and extreme heat. The West and Southwest are burning up with extreme heat, forest fires, and water shortages. I get the impression that you're one of these guys who doesn't have a passport and has never traveled abroad. Dude...there's a reason the rich sail the world in mega yachts and spend time around the globe. It's because its fun! Retiring abroad is fun, too. Part of it is having access to the best place in those societies for less money. It's also about doing it with other expats. What Malaysia did with its MM2H visa is a reversal of its past tradition of welcoming foreigners. Traveling the world isn't just for the rich. Spending your money in countries with high buying power is called "geo-arbitrage". Its an approach traditionally taken by businesses and the super rich, but anyone with a certain amount of money can do it. You need to stop thinking like an inferior to the rich and rid yourself of this peasant mentality. (The result is the type of jealousy, masked resentment, and national chauvinism you are trying to wear like indifference here.)
@shyamdevadas6099 America had guns for 2 centuries and no mass shooting, if you're not in a ghetto in a few cities or depressed you'll never be even near a shooting. 99% of America is as safe as the Czech Republic.
Biden voters are not Republicans
Obamacare is trash yes
Florida and the West and SW are heating up because of all the forests being paved over and California stopping controlled burns.
A liberal wants to leave America to avoid the consequences of their actions? And water is wet
How is chauvinism saying "If you don't learn the local language you deserve a cardboard apartment"?
You expect to live another fifty years after retirement?
To think China's managed to export this problem.
There's so many city's where blocks of high rise apartment buildings have maybe a dozen residents in which each build can fit hundreds of families easily, some buildings are left incomplete and are a slowly rotting husk. China decided to build their way through the 2008 housing recession. The USA learned in our "Great Depression" why you don't try and do that. The problem is when the bubble does finally burst it'll send shock waves, we'll be ok but it'll get annoying and inflation will cause issues.
That's why the trend in Chinese households has stopped being "buy houses" and has started being "hoard and hide your cash". The CCP is trying to raise internal consumer spending but the consumers see what's going on and are not willing to spend money on things they don't need as much as the rest of the world is. Which is actually making the risk all the more likely things will get real bad in China's economy soon. If they attack Taiwan in 2027 like it's been suggested it's over for them. The fallout would do to them what Ukraine has done to Russia despite China's "wealth".
China managed to export this problem... to hellhole countries run by dictators who take chinese bribes
Has already burst. Evergrand ring a bell? They fully collapsed. The resulting inflation has already affected things, that's why most of the world in general has inflation issues currently.
China won't be attacking taiwan - not for now ..
Wow! We made it to this amazing channel yet again haha - opposite this area, there’s an awesome golf course though :)
Love me an empty megacity
You didn't even touch on the main point. There was a promise of visa free travel for residents of the island into Singapore which was dropped which was the main driver.
Buy property in Malaysia and get visa free to Singapore? You must be kidding me
Honestly we need something like this in America and then let all the homeless people live there.
thats not quite how it would work but it would absolutely help relieve the housing crisis
Better than living in a tent beside the rail road tracks at Riverside
its beautiful despite not being heavily populated reminds me of a certain city of tears. Honestly I wouldn’t mind living in such an isolated yet modern home.
You must remember that China's "private" real estate is just an idea, it's all leases _which revert to the state after 70 years._
This is Malaysia.
The changing of down comforters to cotton bedspreads always meant the squirrels had returned.
It's not so easy to build a city from scratch, now is it?
It is easy to build it from scratch, but it becomes difficult to convince people to live there and take in the skyrocketing rent they have to content with for the next 2 to 5 years before the renting prices become stable..
Otherwise artificial inflation would do the trick too if it becomes successful.
@Siranoxz it's easy for china because their construction is absolute trash.
Now? Yeah, it's relatively easy.
It is for some
having been there myself, I'd say it needs more attractions than a waterpark, a beachside and a golf resort.
I saw the exact same thing on a small little island in Cambodia. A little “city of the future” but there was like almost no one living there at all. It was very interesting. I forgot what it was called, I somehow got lost and found it just walking around Phnom Penh
winnie the pooh at 12:30
In the netherland were there is a big housing shortage there is a problem that new buiding projects can not get started due to regulations in co2 emissions.
it is therefor extra cringy to see that in china so much is build and unocupied not taking the enviroment at all in account.
If Forest City holds on for another few years without falling into complete decay, there is still a chance for the project to see a second life, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Don't forget, this whole presentation also neglects the Tofu Dregs aspect of Chinese construction.
You run into a problem with buildings in a high humidity region when dehumidification isn't run, such as when no one lives there. Black mould.
Aw this one makes me sad, it honestly looks pretty cool
Simon you keep saying "buying" real estate in China? That's not possible you can buy a 70 year lease..
You may by what remains of the 70-year lease. If you buy a property that's 30 years old, four decades remain.
China has not yet reached the point where leases expire - the oldest developments are about 35 to 40 years old. As time marches on, what that will do valuations and how it will affect those who bought and are unable to sell will be revealed. I suspect it won't go well.
I was in Melaka years ago and there was a little empty island city off the coast there as well it bc was a really eerie place.