Racial discrimination in room rentals affects Malay tenants too

Racial discrimination in room rentals affects Malay tenants too

• A study of 40,294 room rental listings on iBilik across Semenanjung Malaysia found that 43.6% explicitly exclude at least one racial group, confirming that discrimination is the single most common landlord stance on the platform.

• Indian renters continue to face the most severe exclusion nationally, with 31.7% of all listings closed to them. But in the northern states of Kedah, Perak, and Penang, Malay renters face exclusion rates of 25-30%, a finding not visible in the Klang Valley data.

• In Penang, the largest iBilik rental market outside the Klang Valley (2,367 listings), 18.3% of listings exclude Malay renters, more than double the Semenanjung average. In island areas such as Georgetown (29.8%) and Tanjung Tokong (29.0%), nearly one in three listings is closed to Malay tenants. "Chinese only" listings, which shut out both Malay and Indian renters, account for 16.9% of the Penang market.

• AOD recognises that landlords face real risks when entrusting their property to strangers. The solution is the long-delayed Residential Tenancy Act and proper legal remedies that protect landlords and tenants alike.

• AOD reiterates its call for iBilik to remove the racial preference feature and for the Minister of Housing and Local Government, YB Nga Kor Ming to prioritise the tabling of the Residential Tenancy Act in Parliament to address both landlord and tenant woes.

Architects of Diversity (AOD) today releases Room Rental Discrimination. Volume 2: The Semenanjung Report, extending its analysis of explicit racial exclusion on iBilik from the Klang Valley to the whole of West Malaysia. Using the same dataset collected between 2-3 February 2026, the study provides a state-by-state breakdown of how landlords and agents use the platform's built-in race preference function to exclude prospective tenants by race.

Across all 40,294 listings analysed, 43.6% carry explicit racial exclusions. This exceeds both the share of listings that welcome all races (22.6%) and those with no stated preference (33.8%). A renter browsing the platform is statistically more likely to encounter a listing that excludes a racial group than one that is explicitly open to all tenants. Discrimination rates vary by state, ranging from 36.8% in Negeri Sembilan to 66.3% in Perak, though states with smaller listing volumes should be interpreted with caution.

Volume 1 established that Indian renters bear the overwhelming burden of exclusion in the Klang Valley, where 31.7% of listings excluded them compared to 7.6% for Malay renters. The Semenanjung data confirms that Indian exclusion remains the most pervasive form of discrimination nationally, with 31.4% of all peninsular listings closed to Indian renters.

However, the expansion beyond the Klang Valley reveals a second dimension to the problem. In the northern states of Kedah, Perak, and Penang, Malay renters face exclusion rates far exceeding the national average:

• Penang: 18.3% of listings exclude Malay renters (2,367 listings)

• Perak: 25.6% (199 listings)

• Kedah: 30.2% (149 listings)

While sample sizes for Kedah and Perak are small and their precise figures should be treated with caution, the pattern is corroborated by the much larger Penang market, where Malay discrimination (18.3%) is more than double the Semenanjung average.

Rental discrimination is not solely a problem affecting Indian renters. It is a multi-community problem whose shape changes with local landlord demographics. In the Klang Valley, Indian renters bear the overwhelming burden. In the north, Malay renters face a parallel barrier.

Since the release of Volume 1, iBilik has not removed its racial preference feature. The company described the tool as facilitating "compatibility between housemates." AOD rejects this characterisation. When a platform allows a landlord to tick a box that excludes an entire racial group from being considered as tenants, the outcome is exclusion on the basis of race, regardless of how it is labelled. The practice documented in this report would be illegal under housing anti-discrimination laws in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, among others.

Our call to action

AOD reiterates its call for iBilik to remove the racial preference feature immediately.

We understand that landlords are in a vulnerable position. They are entrusting their property to strangers, and it is natural to want to protect that investment. But race is not a measure of whether someone will pay rent on time or take care of a unit. What landlords need are proper legal protections, a Residential Tenancy Act that gives them clear remedies for non-payment, property damage, and lease violations. When the law gives landlords real tools to protect their interests, the impulse to fall back on racial stereotypes loses its justification. The answer is not a race filter on a website. The answer is a regulatory framework that protects both landlords and tenants fairly.

"The Residential Tenancy Act has been delayed for five years. There is one person who can solve this problem: the Minister of Housing and Local Government, YB Nga Kor Ming. We urge YB Nga to table the Residential Tenancy Act in the next parliamentary session. Every session that passes without this law is another session in which landlords have no proper legal framework, renters have no protection from discrimination, and platforms like iBilik continue to fill the vacuum with race filters."

• Jason Wee, Executive Director, Architects of Diversity

About the study

Rental listing data was collected between 2-3 February 2026 from iBilik's publicly accessible listings using a custom web scraper. The final dataset comprises 40,294 valid room rental listings across Semenanjung Malaysia, covering eight states. Listings were classified as discriminatory if the landlord had activated the platform's race preference function and explicitly excluded one or more racial groups (Malay, Chinese, Indian, or Other). Price bounds of RM200 to RM1,500 were applied to filter out non-room-rental entries. Listing volumes vary across states; Selangor (21,077) and Kuala Lumpur (14,290) provide the largest samples, while Kedah (149), Perak (199), and Melaka (349) have smaller samples whose state-level rates should be treated as indicative.

The full report can be accessed at https://www.aodmalaysia.org/rrdv2.