Some of it, and none of the part you were asking about.
The investment is real, and it is large.
Malaysia’s Deputy Economy Minister told the Dewan Rakyat that approved investment in the zone reached RM37.1 billion in the first half of 2025 alone, on MIDA’s data.
Nobody has published what actually landed.
A minister has said 57% of 2025’s RM76.98 billion is realised on the ground.
No MIDA table publishing either number could be found.
And no official body has ever measured what any of it did to house prices.
Across 478 pages of NAPIC’s 2025 reporting, the zone appears in two forms only: a state policy summary copied word for word into three separate reports, and one road upgrade.
Medini appears once in those 478 pages.
It is a rent, not a market.
So no figure in this article describes Medini itself, and anyone who tells you otherwise is quoting something they cannot show you.
What the JS-SEZ is, and what it does not reach
The JS-SEZ is an industrial and services agreement, signed with Singapore on 6 January 2025 according to NAPIC’s own reports. Its published incentives cover manufacturing licences, SME co-investment and investor visas. Malaysia’s trade ministry release of 14 October 2025 does not contain the words property, residential or housing anywhere.
That last point is the one worth slowing down for, so here is where it comes from.
On 14 October 2025, at the second Joint Investment Forum in Singapore, Malaysia’s trade ministry published its incentives for the zone (PDF).
A manufacturing licence decided within seven working days.
Johor’s No Objection Letter issued in the same seven days.
An extra RM200 million into a co-investment fund under Budget 2026, aimed at Malaysian SMEs.
A business development fund that MITI says only that it “will look into repackaging”.
That is the package.
Manufacturing, funding for SMEs, and a faster queue.
Now the part that matters if you are reading this as a home buyer.
That document does not contain the word property.
Nor residential, nor housing, nor real estate, nor hartanah, nor rumah, nor kediaman.
We checked twice, because the file carries images on two of its three pages and a text search alone would not have been enough.
The text layer holds 662 words and reading the pages as images recovered 691.
Neither contains any of those terms.
- Fast-track manufacturing licence, decided in seven working days
- Johor's No Objection Letter, in the same seven days
- RM200 million more for SME co-investment, under Budget 2026
- An MIDA Investor Pass, a multiple entry visa up to 12 months
property · residential · housing · real estate · hartanah · rumah · kediaman
Text layer, 662 words. The three pages read again as images, 691 words.
There is one pass attached to the zone, and it is not what people assume.
MITI records an Investor Pass led by MIDA, giving eligible foreign investors a multiple entry visa valid up to 12 months, through a platform that launched in April 2025.
It is for investors in businesses.
There is no JS-SEZ residency, visa or pass for buying a home, in any document we opened.
The train is not part of it either.
The Johor Bahru to Singapore RTS Link is the single thing most often credited to the zone, and it predates it.
Singapore’s Land Transport Authority still states that “the RTS Link is targeted to commence passenger service at the end of 2026”.
That page was last updated in May 2025, and it does not mention the JS-SEZ anywhere.
Malaysia’s Transport Minister Anthony Loke said in April 2026 that the link remains on track for a January 2027 launch, and described it as being in the system installation phase.
Two governments, two dates.
We cannot tell you whether that is a real disagreement or simply a page nobody has refreshed, because neither document says.
What is clear is that the train is not yet carrying anyone, and that no document we read makes it part of the zone.
How much money has actually moved
Malaysia’s most detailed published figure is RM37.1 billion of approved investment in the JS-SEZ for the first half of 2025, on MIDA data given to the Dewan Rakyat on 31 October 2025. Approved is a decision, not money spent. No MIDA table publishing realised investment could be located.
Four different words get used for JS-SEZ money, and they do not mean the same thing.
Most articles blend all four into one headline.
Here they are separated, with who said each one.
On 31 October 2025, Deputy Economy Minister Datuk Hanifah Hajar Taib answered a question in the Dewan Rakyat from Jimmy Puah Wee Tse of Tebrau, and the official JS-SEZ site published the reply.
Approved investment for the first half of 2025: RM37.1 billion on MIDA’s data, of which RM24 billion services and RM13 billion manufacturing.
The three largest sources: Singapore RM28.5 billion, Italy RM2.9 billion, China RM700 million.
As at 30 September 2025, the facilitation centre in Johor had handled 808 enquiries, including 11 potential projects worth RM1.3 billion worked on with Singapore’s EDB and Enterprise Singapore.
Note the shape of that last one.
Eight hundred conversations, eleven projects, and the eleven are still described as potential.
Then there is the number everyone repeats.
The Edge reported on 1 July 2026 that Economy Minister Akmal Nasrullah said 57% of the RM76.98 billion approved under the zone in 2025 had already been realised on the ground.
Read that sentence carefully, because we did.
It is the reporter’s summary, not a direct quotation from the minister.
And no MIDA statistical table publishing the RM76.98 billion or the 57% could be located.
Multiply them and you get roughly RM43.9 billion.
That multiplication is ours, not anyone’s published figure, which is exactly why this article does not print it as though a government had.
Why Singapore’s number and Malaysia’s number cannot be added
Singapore counts S$5.5 billion committed since the January 2024 memorandum. Malaysia counts approved investment from the January 2025 agreement. Two different verbs, and two starting lines a year apart. Both governments announced their figure on 14 October 2025, at the same forum, which is why the two get mistaken for one measure.
Here is where each number comes from.
Singapore publishes a figure too.
Its trade ministry’s factsheet for the same 14 October 2025 forum records Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong announcing that Singapore-based companies have committed over S$5.5 billion into Johor.
Committed, not approved.
Two different verbs.
And the clock is different too.
Singapore counts “since the signing of the MOU on the JS-SEZ in January 2024”.
Malaysia’s approved figures run from the Agreement, in January 2025.
One government is counting from a memorandum, the other from a treaty, and the two starting lines are a year apart.
Jan 2024Jan 2025Jan 2026
Neither government says the two figures are incompatible.
Neither draws the comparison at all.
Putting them side by side is our reading, and we are showing you both baselines rather than combining them into a number that would look bigger and mean less.
If you see the Malaysian and Singaporean totals stacked in one paragraph anywhere, that is the mistake being made.
What NAPIC says about the zone, across 478 pages
NAPIC published four property reports covering 2025, totalling 478 pages. The JS-SEZ appears in two forms only: a summary of Johor state policy, copied word for word into three of them, and one road upgrade. No price, transaction count, overhang figure or occupancy rate is attributed to the zone anywhere.
NAPIC is the government’s property information centre.
If the zone had moved Johor’s housing market, this is where it would show up.
So we read all of its 2025 reporting.
0 pages478 pages
The zone appears in exactly two forms.
One is a summary of Johor state policy, reproduced word for word in three separate publications.
It describes the zone’s size, its sectors and its aims.
It is not analysis of the property market.
It sits in a table of state initiatives, next to the Forest City financial zone.
The other is a single road, in the annual report’s list of Budget 2025 projects: “Upgrade of Senai-Desaru Expressway Phase 2A: Cahaya Baru to Sungai Johor for JS-SEZ.”
That is all of it.
In 478 pages, no price, no transaction count, no overhang figure and no occupancy rate is attributed to the zone.
Medini appears once, and the zone is nowhere near it.
The annual report notes that “condominium units at Iskandar Residence in Medini recorded a rental rate as high as RM2,800 per month”.
A rent observation, in a list of rents.
One detail says something about how carefully that policy summary was written.
One passage, four bullets apart
“…can be finalized and signed with Singapore at the end of 2024”
Four bullets later, same passage
“…signed with Singapore on 6 January 2025”
Both sentences sit in the same passage, in reports covering 2025, reproduced in three separate publications.
A caution on what this does and does not prove.
NAPIC not attributing house prices to the zone may simply be how NAPIC writes.
Statistical agencies often report numbers without assigning causes.
Reading the silence as evidence that nothing happened is our inference, and you should treat it as one.
What is not an inference is this: if someone tells you the zone has lifted Johor property values, they are not getting that from NAPIC, because NAPIC has never said it.
And the central bank does not mention it either.
Bank Negara’s Financial Stability Review for the second half of 2025 (PDF) runs to 51 pages and does discuss housing.
“Conditions in Malaysia's residential property sector were broadly stable amid robust market activity and moderate house price growth.”
Financial Stability Review, second half of 2025, 51 pages.
SEZ · Special Economic · Johor · Medini · Iskandar
Text layer, 18,565 words. The one page carrying images read again separately.
So the country’s central bank wrote a full review of the residential property market, in the second year of the zone, without naming it.
The master plan that keeps moving
The JS-SEZ master plan and investment blueprint are complete and Cabinet-approved, but neither has been published. The launch target has been reset four times since the end of 2025, and now sits at December 2026, at the annual leaders’ retreat. The economy minister says the delay is political timing, not stalled work.
Here is the full chain of dates.
Jan 2025, Agreement signedDec 2026
Three of those four dates come from one article.
Only the December date is independently reported, one month later.
The reason for the most recent delay is on the record in the minister’s own words: “The plan is to get both prime ministers again to launch the master plan and blueprint. So I think the timeframe that we are looking at is definitely after the state elections.”
He also says the delay has not stopped the work, and that what was agreed “has actually begun to be implemented”.
In the same 31 July report he added that he had met Singapore’s National Development Minister Chee Hong Tat the day before, and that a ministerial-level committee between the two countries would meet in November.
Both things can be true.
A document being held for a photograph is not the same as a project stalling.
It is also not the same as a project delivering.
What a buyer can take from it is narrower than either reading.
The plan that will say what the zone does, sector by sector and zone by zone, is not public yet.
Until it is, nobody can point you to an official document describing what Iskandar Puteri is meant to become.
Who actually moves across the Causeway
About 120,000 Singaporeans live and work in Malaysia, on the most current estimate CNA cited in July 2026, against 1.13 million Malaysians living in Singapore as of 2022. No official figure stands behind the first number, and the specialists CNA interviewed expect no wave across the Causeway. The movement that is real is narrow, senior hires, specialists and business owners, and most of it predates the zone.
The minister first, then the count, then the people who watch the flow professionally.
Malaysia’s housing minister, Nga Kor Ming, has said for years that Singaporeans will one day cross the Causeway to work.
In an interview with Oriental Daily published on 26 June 2026, he stood by it, saying the shift had gradually begun, and pointed to H&M and Gardenia moving parts of their operations from Singapore to Malaysia.
Note what those examples are: companies moving work, not people moving over.
On 14 July 2026, CNA put the idea to Singaporeans who had already moved, and to two specialists who track cross-border employment.
About 120,000 Singaporeans live and work in Malaysia, on the most current estimate CNA could cite.
CNA says in the same breath that no official figures exist.
Nobody is named behind the estimate either, which is why it also sits in what we could not verify.
In the other direction, Malaysia’s then human resources minister V Sivakumar said in 2023 that 1.13 million Malaysians were living in Singapore as of 2022.
The two numbers are from different years and different kinds of source, so this article will not print a ratio.
What they support is a direction: the flow still runs overwhelmingly toward Singapore.
Neither specialist CNA asked expects that to flip.
Arulkumar Singaraveloo, chief executive of the human resources consultancy Malaysia HR Forum, said there are no official statistics showing any significant increase in Singaporeans working in Malaysia.
The moves he does see are specialists, senior managers and regional roles, because a local salary package rarely adds up for either the employer or the employee.
Ben Neumann, who leads the Singapore side of the career mobility firm Vialto, expects the flow to stay gradual and selective, not a broad shift of the workforce.
Where he sees growth is regional and hybrid roles, and senior people running Malaysia teams for Singapore-headquartered companies.
He also names the zone: the JS-SEZ, with infrastructure like the RTS Link, is expected to make crossing for work more practical.
His caveat is the honest part: pay, career track and tax will still decide who moves.
The driest line came from inside the property industry.
Greg Low, a Singaporean who has spent 15 years in Johor Bahru advising property developers, told CNA that Singaporeans are “not suddenly queuing to cross the Causeway” for ordinary jobs.
On an ordinary local salary, the exchange rate ends the conversation before it starts.
Where he sees real movement is business owners, because the same money runs further on this side, across housing, staff and office space, in a market less crowded than Singapore’s.
One more thing the interviews make plain, and it matters for the order of cause and effect.
Of the four movers CNA quotes, three crossed between 1996 and about 2011, and the fourth went to Kuala Lumpur in 2024 for an agriculture job.
None of them credits the zone for their own move.
- 1996Hafiz Ellahi moves to Malaysia.
- About 2006Doreen Sim moves to Kuala Lumpur. CNA describes her as about 20 years there, as at July 2026.
- About 2011Greg Low moves to Johor Bahru. CNA describes him as 15 years there.
- November 2024Andrew Yong moves to Kuala Lumpur, for agriculture research. Two months before the Agreement.
- 6 January 2025The JS-SEZ Agreement is signed. Every move above had already happened.
Whatever is pulling Singaporeans over, it was pulling before the JS-SEZ existed, and no one has measured the zone adding to it.
What does this add up to for a buyer in Medini?
Less than a brochure would make of it, and more than nothing.
No wave has been measured, and the people paid to watch the flow do not expect one.
The movement that is real is exactly the narrow group with housing budgets: senior hires, founders, and people paid in Singapore dollars living at Malaysian costs.
The zone’s own job targets are a separate story: jobs in Johor, for whoever fills them, with nothing said about where those people would live.
If those jobs ever arrive and get counted, their senior end is the tenant pool a district like Medini competes for.
That is a conditional, not a forecast.
Where cross-border workers choose to live appears in no source we read, so this article will not guess.
What nobody has published yet
Four things about the JS-SEZ have never been published by any official body: the number of jobs actually created, the number of companies approved for its tax rates, any figure broken out for Medini or Iskandar Puteri, and a statistical table behind the RM76.98 billion headline.
Taken in order:
-
Jobs actually created. No official count exists. What exists are two targets that do not match. The Deputy Economy Minister told parliament the aim is “at least 20,000 high-skilled job opportunities over the next decade”. NAPIC’s own policy summary says “it is expected that more than 100,000 job opportunities will be generated”. Both are official. Nobody has reconciled them, and nobody has counted.
-
Companies approved for the tax rates. The zone offers a 5% corporate rate and a 15% rate for knowledge workers. How many have been approved for either is not published.
-
Anything at zone level. Iskandar Puteri is one of the nine flagship zones, and Medini sits inside it. No investment, jobs or approval figure has been published for either.
-
A statistical table behind the headline numbers. The RM76.98 billion and the 57% were said by a minister and reported by a newspaper. Neither appears in a MIDA publication we could find.
The first of those four is worth drawing, because the two official targets are not close.
What we could not verify
Seven questions about the JS-SEZ stayed open after reading every source named here. They cover jobs created, tax approval counts, the statistical basis for the headline investment figures, zone-level data for Medini, the treaty ratification instrument, the unnamed source behind the cross-border workforce estimate, and one internal contradiction inside NAPIC’s own text.
Every article on this site carries this section, because the alternative is pretending the record is more complete than it is.
We could not find any official count of jobs created under the zone, in English or Malay, from MITI, MIDA, the Johor state government or parliamentary replies.
We could not find approval counts for the 5% or 15% tax rates.
We could not find a MIDA statistical table publishing the RM76.98 billion approved or the 57% realised.
Both rest on a ministerial statement reported by a newspaper.
We could not find any zone-level or Medini-level investment, jobs or tax figure.
We could not confirm the ratification instrument for the agreement.
We could not identify who produced the estimate of 120,000 Singaporeans living and working in Malaysia: CNA carries it as the most current estimate, notes that no official figures exist, and names no source.
And one small thing we noticed but cannot resolve.
NAPIC’s policy summary, reproduced in three reports
“…involves six (6) local authorities”
Five are named in the same passage. The sixth is never named.
What this means if you are buying a home in Medini
For a home buyer in Medini, the JS-SEZ is documented industrial activity with no measured property effect. Its incentives target businesses, not housing. No Malaysian government body has published a figure connecting the zone to Johor house prices, transaction volumes, overhang or occupancy, as at August 2026.
Read the rest as what the record does and does not support, not as advice.
The zone is real, it is drawing genuine industrial and services investment, and both governments are still actively working on it.
That much is documented from both sides.
None of the instruments in it are aimed at housing.
The incentives are manufacturing licences, SME co-investment and investor visas.
The pass that exists is for investors in businesses, not buyers of homes.
No official body has published a figure connecting the zone to Johor house prices, transaction volumes, overhang or occupancy.
Not NAPIC across 478 pages of 2025 reporting, and not Bank Negara.
- RM37.1 billion approved, first half of 2025. MIDA data, given to the Dewan Rakyat
- S$5.5 billion committed since January 2024. MTI Singapore factsheet
- The incentives themselves: manufacturing licences, SME funding, an investor pass. MITI, 14 October 2025
- One road upgrade attributed to the zone. NAPIC's annual report
- Any effect on Johor house prices
- Any effect on transaction volumes
- Any effect on the overhang
- Any effect on occupancy
- Jobs actually created
- Any figure at all for Medini or Iskandar Puteri
So if a projection has been shown to you that prices in Medini will rise because of the JS-SEZ, it did not come from a government source, because no government source has published one.
That is not an argument against buying here.
It is an argument for knowing which parts of the case are documented and which parts are somebody’s forecast.
If you want the rules that do apply to a foreign buyer in Medini, they are in our buyer’s guide, and the supply picture is in what NAPIC’s overhang tables actually show.