According to a new research by iPrice Group, a meta-search website, showed that the cost of living for an individual living in Kuala Lumpur is approximately RM3,262, taking into account rent, food, transportation, utilities and more.

Lowest in Southeast Asia

The also research shows that this is the lowest amongst the six busiest cities in Southeast Asia, namely Singapore, Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh City.

iPrice based its research on data on Numbeo, a website that "gathers data from user inputs (from over 500,000 contributors) and manually collects data from authoritative sources."

It also added rent to the cost of living data by Numbeo.

According to the report, Kuala Lumpur has the lowest rent amongst the six cities. This is despite a one-bedroom apartment costing at least RM1,200 per month to rent in the city centre, and RM700 outside of it.

A quick survey by Rojak Daily on PropertyGuru and iProperty also shows that the rent costs at least that, but much more often a lot higher. We also noted that build-up for one-bedroom apartments can be as small as 150 square foot (is this meant for a cat?) but are often more in the range of 500 to 900 square foot.

iPrice also noted that the price of a one-bedroom apartment in Singapore's city centre is RM6,200, which is 81 per cent more than what it costs in Kuala Lumpur.

The cost of living in the City of Lion is also said to be the highest in the region at about 132 per cent higher than others.

This is followed by Bangkok and Manila, with the former having the cost of living of RM4,387 for a single person and the latter having the cost of living of RM4,325 for a single person.

While noting that Malaysia has the lowest cost of living among these cities, iPrice also mentioned that the amount is still much higher than the minimum wage in major cities of the country, which is RM1,200.

Second highest average monthly salary

Interestingly, iPrice also said that Kuala Lumpur has the second highest monthly average net salary on Numbeo.

"Kuala Lumpur residents are estimated to earn a net salary of RM4,259, right behind Singapore residents, who are estimated to earn RM10,195 a month.

"Hence, the quality of life in Kuala Lumpur is relatively better, especially after comparing it to other SEA cities, such as Manila residents, who are only estimated to earn RM1,609. Moreover, Manila residents’ cost of living even tops the others by 33 per cent (Kuala Lumpur), 28 per cent (Vietnam), and 24 per cent (Jakarta)," the report showed.

We wonder if this number is an average. Considering that fresh graduate's pay has dropped to minimum wage since the pandemic started and at the same time there have been several new billionaires in the country, does it reflect the actual situation in the country?

However, if we go by iPrice's data, residents of Kuala Lumpur probably have a better quality of life than our neighbours considering lower rents and higher earnings.