This is for anyone buying a home in Johor Bahru who wants to know which feng shui points local buyers raise, whether or not you believe in it yourself. The short answer: in JB the questions are shaped by the city’s geography. Buyers ask about the Straits of Johor, the Causeway and highways, hills and slopes, and what sits next door. Feng shui is a belief system, not a building standard, but it decides how many buyers will look at your home when you sell.
I have already covered the five general checks Malaysian buyers make in feng shui and resale, and sun and heat in which way your condo should face. This one covers what is specific to JB.
Does it actually move prices?
There is some hard evidence, though not from Johor. A study of Singapore housing transactions by researchers from NUS, SMU and Nankai University, published in Management Science in 2020, found that homes with very unlucky addresses sold for about 1.3% less, and very lucky ones for about 1.9% more. The effect showed up in buildings where at least 80% of the buyers of those unlucky addresses were Chinese.
So the effect is small and depends on who your buyers are. A 2021 review of Malaysian studies by Universiti Putra Malaysia researchers agrees that location, land, interior and house number can affect the selling market, though younger buyers care less. I have not seen published price figures for Johor.
Facing the Straits of Johor
Many JB towers along the waterfront look across the Straits towards Singapore. In feng shui, calm water near a home is usually treated as a good sign. The practitioner Joey Yap, writing for iProperty, describes calm or gently flowing water within about 2km as favourable. Practitioners distinguish calm water from rushing water aimed at the building.
For a Straits-facing unit, buyers ask me first whether the view is protected, and second whether the windows take the afternoon sun, which the facing article covers.
The Causeway, the Second Link and busy roads
JB is a border city, and some homes sit close to very heavy traffic. Bernama reported that the Causeway checkpoint at Bangunan Sultan Iskandar handled a record 375,828 people on 20 December 2024. Practitioners describe fast traffic heading straight at a house as harmful “sha qi”. Joey Yap calls a T-junction “tiger eyes”, because headlights and oncoming cars point at the door. In an iMoney checklist he also names rail lines and pedestrian bridges aimed at a home as things to check.
For a landed home, that means a house at the end of a straight road, or one facing a highway ramp or flyover. For a condo, it means a low or middle floor looking straight down a main road or the CIQ approach. Buyers who do not believe in feng shui often avoid the same homes anyway, because of noise, fumes and headlights at night.
Hills behind, slopes in front
Some JB estates are built on rolling ground, so a house can sit against a hill or above a falling street. Classical feng shui, as summarised by iProperty, sees a green, rounded hill behind the house as support and stability. A steep, bare or quarried slope is read badly. Another iProperty checklist says a road that climbs or drops away in front of a house is linked to wealth draining away.
The practical checks are the same either way. Look at the retaining walls, the drains and the height of the house relative to the road. For landed homes, my JB landed homes page is a starting point.
What is next door: cemeteries, temples and substations
| Neighbour | What practitioners or agents say | The practical side |
|---|---|---|
| Cemetery | Treated as “yin”. Joey Yap says a busy road between the home and the graves is believed to lessen the effect. Stacked Homes notes that some believers avoid anything within about 500m. | A Malaysian agency head quoted by StarBiz in 2013 said homes next to a cemetery or a sewerage plant can be hard to sell. |
| Temple | Linked to the Fire element. Joey Yap does not call it bad in itself; he says it depends on the home’s chart. | Festival crowds, parking and incense smoke on certain days. |
| TNB substation or pylons | Joey Yap says a substation has little feng shui effect, but a pylon pointing at the main door is treated as sha qi. | Some buyers worry about electromagnetic fields, which can make resale harder. |
Before a viewing, I check about 500m around the home on the satellite map. It takes two minutes.
Inside the tower: floor numbers and lift-facing doors
The number 4 sounds like “death” in Chinese, and 14 carries a similar association for many buyers. Juwai reports that some high-rises in Malaysia and Singapore relabel the 14th floor as 13A or 13B. Buyers who care still know what floor it is.
The other common question is a main door facing the lift. Master Mandy Lim, a feng shui practitioner based in Johor Bahru, writes that a door facing a lift, staircase or narrow corridor where air rushes straight in is “chong sha”, linked to restlessness and money that does not stay. She prefers a door with an open, bright outlook, and puts the surroundings ahead of lucky floor numbers. Stacked Homes notes that fewer Singapore condos now place front doors directly opposite lifts, partly for this reason.
Timing: the Hungry Ghost month
Some Chinese buyers prefer not to sign or move in during the seventh lunar month. In a 2016 StarProperty report, one agency head said buyers would rather wait a couple of weeks. Another said transactions dip during the month, but not by much. Joey Yap told EdgeProp the same year that the month’s taboos are not a feng shui matter and that buying is fine. If you are selling, your buyer may ask to sign after the month ends.
How I would use this in JB
- In my experience, a JB home with one of these features usually still sells. It tends to draw fewer Chinese buyers, so it can take longer, and buyers use it to bargain.
- If you are buying to live in and a home with a “bad” feature is priced fairly against similar homes, it can still be a sensible buy. Just plan for a smaller buyer pool later.
- If you are buying to sell or rent, choose the unit or house that the most buyers will accept. That usually means a calm view, no road aimed at the door and nothing unusual next door.
- For subsale homes, look up recorded transaction prices in the same project before you assume a feature has changed the price. My subsale buying page explains how I check.
Questions about your situation?
Send me the address or the unit number, and I will tell you how JB buyers are likely to see it, alongside recorded prices nearby.
Sources: Bernama, “Johor Causeway: Govt Aims To Reduce Peak-hour Congestion By Up To 70 Per Cent”, February 2025; iProperty (Joey Yap), “5 feng shui tips to consider before buying a house”, August 2020; iProperty, “Understanding Feng Shui For Property Investment”, May 2018; iProperty, “Feng shui checklist when buying a house”, January 2021; iMoney (Joey Yap), “A Property Feng Shui Checklist For Home Buyers”, updated February 2026; Stacked Homes, “8 Common Feng Shui Property Problems Even For People Who Don’t Believe In It”, January 2023; Juwai, “Chinese pay attention to numbers when considering home purchases”, December 2023; Master Mandy Lim, Xuan Ding Feng Shui Centre, JB, “Singapore Feng Shui Layout Guide: HDB and Apartment Feng Shui, Floor Selection”, October 2025; NUS Social Research Network (on He et al., Management Science 2020), “Superstition, Conspicuous Spending, and the Housing Market: Evidence from Singapore”, August 2022; Hassan, Ahmad and Hashim (UPM), IJARBSS, “Homebuyers Superstitious Belief: Feng Shui and Housing Property”, July 2021; StarProperty, “Does Hungry Ghost taboo affect property market?”, August 2016; EdgeProp Malaysia, “5 things you may not want to do during the Hungry Ghost Month”, August 2016
Jason Lim, REN 84424, IQI Realty Sdn. Bhd. E (1) 1584/6. General information checked on 16 October 2026, not legal, tax or financial advice.