Forest City, Johor

// The claim

// The reality

The towers are real, and from a boat they are genuinely impressive. What's missing is the city part of the city. International reporting has repeatedly found occupancy in the low single digits against that 700,000 target — a mall where the karaoke echoes, beaches with more monitor lizards than residents, and a food street with more signage than food.

The buyers who make the project's economics work were largely overseas, purchasing off-plan into a future that depended on everything going right: capital flowing freely, borders staying open, and the developer staying liquid. None of the three held. Capital controls squeezed the original buyer base, the pandemic emptied the pipeline, and the developer's own widely reported financial distress finished the momentum.

Since then, the pitch has been rebooted — duty-free status, a special financial zone, tax incentives for family offices. Some of that may eventually matter. But "we're pivoting the ghost city into a tax haven" is a different product from the one 700,000 people were promised, and it's telling that the loudest current residents are content creators filming abandoned-city tours. The hype has literally become the inventory.

// Who profits

// The verdict

Overhyped — not a scam, but a promise priced as a certainty. The buildings exist, the land is real, and the special-zone revival could yet give the place a second act worth watching. But buying a home is not supposed to be a bet on a geopolitical parlay, and that is what early buyers were sold at full price. If the turnaround happens, it will happen slowly and visibly — which means you lose nothing by waiting for evidence instead of buying the render.

Rule of thumb: when a city's main export is drone footage of itself, rent first.