Malaysia and MM2H: the programme that keeps being rewritten

Malaysia My Second Home is a long-stay pass rather than a residence permit in the European sense, and its recent history is the most useful thing to know about it.

What happened to it

The programme ran for years on modest financial requirements and was popular. It was suspended, relaunched with dramatically higher thresholds and shorter terms, and then revised again into tiered categories with different deposits, property requirements and minimum days of presence. Existing holders faced changed conditions at renewal.

That is the substantive lesson, and it generalises well beyond Malaysia: a long-stay programme is a policy, and holders of it are exposed to the policy changing under them at renewal.

What the current shape looks like

• Tiered categories distinguished by the size of a fixed deposit placed locally and by the property held, with correspondingly different pass lengths.
• A minimum presence requirement in the country, which the original programme did not have and which changes who it suits.
• A separate regional variant operated by Sarawak with its own terms.
• No right to work, and no path to permanent residence or citizenship.

Every one of those parameters has moved at least once. Confirm the current version from the immigration department rather than from an agent's page, which is frequently the previous version.

Property alongside it

Foreigners may own property in Malaysia, subject to state-level minimum purchase prices that differ substantially between states and have been raised. There are restrictions on certain categories of land and on Malay reserved land. Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Johor behave as three different markets with different rules and different buyer pools.

The honest assessment

Malaysia offers a high standard of living at a low cost, good private healthcare, English widely spoken and a mild treatment of foreign-source income. It offers no status that accumulates into anything, and a programme whose terms have proven changeable.

Assessed as a place to spend part of the year with a deposit locked to permit it, it is reasonable. Assessed as a step towards permanence, it is not a step at all.