Executive Summary
This report provides the first systematic quantitative analysis of explicit racial discrimination in the room rental market across the Klang Valley. Using a dataset of 35,367 room rental listings scraped from the iBilik platform between 2–3 February 2026, the study measures how frequently landlords and agents use the platform’s built-in race preference function to exclude prospective tenants from three major racial groups: Malay, Chinese, and Indian.
The findings indicate that racial discrimination is a dominant feature of the online room rental market. Across the full dataset, 42.8% of listings explicitly exclude at least one racial group, exceeding both the share of listings that are explicitly inclusive (22.6%) and those with no stated preference (34.6%). In practical terms, a renter searching the platform is statistically more likely to encounter a listing that excludes a racial group than one that explicitly welcomes all tenants.
Discrimination is not evenly distributed across racial groups. Indian renters face by far the highest level of exclusion. 31.7% of all listings in the Klang Valley explicitly exclude Indian renters, compared to 7.6% for Malay renters and 3.9% for Chinese renters. While 96.1% of listings accept Chinese renters and 92.4% accept Malay renters, only 68.3% of listings are open to Indian renters, meaning roughly one in three listings is inaccessible to them at the outset.
Geographically, discrimination is widespread across the Klang Valley but varies significantly by area. Several suburban and outer-urban areas record particularly high discrimination rates, with Ampang, Taman Desa and Bangi among the most restrictive markets. By contrast, areas closer to the Kuala Lumpur city core tend to display lower discrimination rates and higher shares of explicitly inclusive listings.
The data also reveals meaningful differences across price segments. Indian renters face the highest exclusion rates in the lowest price tier, with 43.9% of listings below RM400 excluding them, though exclusion remains substantial even in higher-priced listings. Chinese exclusion is concentrated almost entirely in the lowest-cost segment, while Malay exclusion remains relatively consistent across price tiers.
Price comparisons further show that listings excluding Indian renters are, on average, 11.2% cheaper than listings that do not exclude them. This suggests that the cheaper segments of the rental market are disproportionately closed off to Indian renters, leaving them with a smaller and more expensive pool of available housing.
Because this analysis captures only listings where landlords explicitly state racial preferences, the results likely underestimate the true prevalence of discrimination, which may also occur informally during enquiry or screening stages. Nevertheless, the dataset provides a clear and measurable picture of how racial exclusion operates openly within the digital rental marketplace.
Taken together, the findings demonstrate that racial discrimination in the Klang Valley room rental market is systemic, measurable, and unevenly distributed, with Indian renters facing the most pervasive barriers to housing access. The results provide an empirical foundation for further research, policy discussion, and scrutiny of platform design choices that enable explicit racial filtering in housing listings.