This report extends the analysis of explicit racial discrimination in Malaysia's room rental market beyond the Klang Valley to the whole of Semenanjung Malaysia. Using a dataset of 40,294 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. This second volume complements Volume 1 (The Klang Valley Report) by providing a state-by-state and area-level analysis across eight states.

 

The findings confirm that racial discrimination in the online room rental market is not confined to the Klang Valley but is prevalent across Semenanjung Malaysia. Across the full dataset, 43.6% of listings carry explicit racial exclusions, exceeding both the share of explicitly inclusive listings (22.6%) and those with no stated preference (33.8%). A renter searching the platform is statistically more likely to encounter a listing that excludes at least one racial group than one that is explicitly open to all. Discrimination rates vary substantially by state, ranging from 36.8% in Negeri Sembilan to 66.3% in Perak. States outside the Klang Valley generally exhibit higher rates, with Perak (66.3%), Melaka (60.5%), and Johor (55.2%) all markedly exceeding the peninsular average. It should be noted that several of these states have limited sample sizes, Kedah (149 listings), Perak (199), and Melaka (349), and their state-level rates, while indicative, are more sensitive to individual listing variation than the larger markets.

 

Volume 1 established that Indian renters bear the overwhelming burden of exclusion in the Klang Valley. The expansion to Semenanjung confirms that Indian exclusion remains the most pervasive form of discrimination nationally, with 31.4% of all listings excluding Indian renters (roughly one in three). However, the Semenanjung dataset reveals a second, regionally concentrated dimension to the problem that was not visible in the Klang Valley data: substantial Malay exclusion in the northern states. In Kedah, 30.2% of listings exclude Malay renters, a rate nearly identical to Indian exclusion in the same state (30.9%). In Perak, Malay discrimination stands at 25.6%, and in Penang at 18.3%. In these states, "Chinese only" listings, which exclude both Malay and Indian renters, account for between 16.9% and 21.6% of the market. The sample sizes for Kedah (149 listings) and Perak (199 listings) are small, and state-level figures for these states should be interpreted with caution; however, the consistency of the pattern across all three northern states, including the much larger Penang market (2,367 listings), supports the directional finding. Rental discrimination in Peninsular Malaysia is therefore not solely an Indian problem. Rather, it is a multi-community problem whose shape varies by region.

 

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 across Semenanjung Malaysia. The principal contribution of this volume is to demonstrate that rental discrimination is not a single-community issue concentrated in the capital region. It is a systemic, geographically widespread phenomenon that affects Indian and Malay renters in distinct but measurable ways depending on the local landlord composition. 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.