Insights
Every few months a familiar advertisement makes the rounds on social media. A quarter-acre of land, an hour outside the city, for a fraction of what a terrace house costs. Payment by instalments. No bank loan needed. Build your dream kampung home.
What is being sold is almost always a “lot lidi” — and what the buyer receives is almost never what the buyer thinks they are receiving.
The name comes from the lidi, the thin coconut-leaf rib used to make a broom. On a survey plan, a large agricultural title chopped into long, narrow strips looks exactly like a bundle of them. The picture is apt in a second sense too: individually, the sticks are brittle. Pull one out of the bundle and it snaps.
What Exactly Is a “Lot Lidi”?
Confusingly, the term is used in two quite different ways.
Town planners and land administrators sometimes use it descriptively, for lots that are genuinely titled but awkwardly elongated — a length-to-width ratio steeper than about 1:5 — which are difficult to develop or transact. Those are a planning problem, not a legal one.
The usage that lands people in court is different. Here, “lot lidi” describes a single agricultural title, held by one registered proprietor, which is informally carved into a dozen or more sub-lots and sold off to separate buyers. Each buyer gets a sale and purchase agreement, sometimes a power of attorney, sometimes a promised surat ikatan amanah (trust deed) — but never a title.
The High Court has now put the practice into words. In West Coast Expressway Sdn Bhd v. Pentadbir Tanah Daerah Klang & Other Cases [2025] CLJU 2439, the land administrator's report described a lot lidi buyer as one who had bought land that changes hands, but where the buyer's name cannot be entered on the document of title — kerana tiada peruntukan undang-undang yang membenarkan, because no provision of law permits it.
Shahnaz Sulaiman J put the legal position bluntly:
In this context, the subdivision and transfer of lot lidi parcels are not provided for under the existing statutory framework.
Why the Law Will Not Register It
Three features of the National Land Code collide with the lot lidi model.
Minimum lot size. Section 205(3) prevents dealings in agricultural land that would produce an interest smaller than two-fifths of a hectare — roughly one acre. This is the provision that gives the practice its name, and it is the subject of a long-standing Federal Director-General of Lands and Mines circular (Circular No. 11/1985, revised 2009) restricting dealings that would break agricultural land below that threshold. A one-acre title sliced into twelve “lots” cannot be registered, no matter how carefully the agreements are drafted. Where the parent title is estate land, section 214A adds a further layer: the approval of the Estate Land Board.
Subdivision requires approval. Splitting a title is a formal process requiring the approval of the State Authority and a fresh survey. Drawing lines on a sketch plan and numbering them “Lot 1” to “Lot 12” has no effect in law.
Category of land use. Section 115 permits only limited building on agricultural land — dwellings connected with the working of the land, within strict area limits. A row of houses on an agricultural title breaches the express condition of the title and exposes the land to enforcement, including forfeiture.
The practical consequence was spelled out in evidence by an officer of the Klang Land Office in Normilah Jamil lwn. Rosidin Selamat & Yang Lain [2024] CLJU 2853: sales of agricultural lot lidi cannot be entered into the eTanah system at all, and fall outside the land office's jurisdiction.
What the Recent Cases Actually Decide
The Register Wins
In Normilah Jamil (High Court, Klang, 2024), a landowner divided a 0.5261-hectare agricultural title into twelve lots and, through an attorney, sold most of them to six buyers. Two lots went by a properly executed Form 14A to the plaintiff, who became the registered proprietor, built on the land and paid the quit rent. When she discovered families living on “her” land, she sued.
Norliza Othman J applied sections 89 and 340 of the Code: the register is conclusive, and a bona fide registered proprietor holds an indefeasible title. The six lot lidi buyers lost. Their counterclaims were dismissed and they were ordered to pay RM10,000 in costs to the very person occupying the land they had paid for.
The court's criticism of the buyers is worth reading closely. The promised trust deed was never registered. No caveat was ever lodged. They had lawyers acting for them throughout, yet nobody checked with the land office whether these sub-lots could be registered in their names at all. The judge found they had been cuai dalam melindungi hak mereka — negligent in protecting their own rights — and appeared, until the writ arrived, simply not to have cared what they had bought.
Compulsory Acquisition
When the State takes land for a highway, compensation is assessed and paid to the persons whose interests appear on the register. In the Klang land references decided in West Coast Expressway (2025), applicants who had bought sub-lots on affected agricultural titles were not registered proprietors. Their claims were confined to buildings and incidental costs — and even those ran into the argument that structures erected in breach of the category of land use attract no compensation at all.
The court was ultimately willing to compensate a limited number of residential buildings falling within the tolerance in section 115. But the land value — the part that matters — was never theirs to claim.
The Narrow Escape Hatch
It would be wrong to say an unregistered buyer is always without remedy. In Siti Rumilah Tamyed & Ors v. Baini Kasan Mardi [2023] CLJU 1797, a buyer had agreed on 17 September 1980 to buy a quarter-acre out of a larger agricultural title in Kuala Langat, paid, taken possession and stayed. Four decades later the registered owners' successors sued to evict him, arguing among other things that the agreement was void as an unlawful lot lidi sale under section 205(3).
Jamhirah Ali J rejected that argument, held the agreement valid and binding, declared the registered proprietors constructive trustees of the quarter-acre for the buyer, and dismissed the claim.
Read the reasoning, though, and the comfort evaporates. The section 205(3) restriction only came into force on 1 June 1985, and section 205(5) expressly preserves instruments executed before that date. The 1980 agreement escaped by five years. A buyer signing the same document today would not have that defence, and would be left arguing constructive trust after a full trial, on strong documentary and possessory evidence, at a cost that will often exceed what the land was worth.
That is the conundrum in a sentence. Equity is a lifeboat, not a title.
The Current Position
No state land office in Malaysia registers lot lidi sub-lots, and none has announced any intention to.
Bukit Aman has treated the practice as a commercial-crime problem. The then Director of the Commercial Crime Investigation Department, Datuk Seri Ramli Mohamed Yoosuf, warned in May 2024 that lot lidi buyers acquire no rights as landowners, and disclosed 45 police reports involving losses of about RM1.96 million between 2021 and 2023 — a figure that plainly understates the position, since most buyers never report at all.
State governments have hardened rather than softened. Selangor has consistently declined to recognise trustee documentation over such sub-lots. In January 2026, Kedah's Menteri Besar announced strengthened enforcement, the removal of unauthorised land-sale advertising, and investigations into those promoting the schemes — noting pointedly that the practice cuts across the National Land Code, the Town and Country Planning Act 1976 and the Street, Drainage and Building Act 1974.
The one legitimate route runs the other way. Where a landowner genuinely wishes to break a title into smaller saleable lots, the mechanism is surrender and re-alienation — serah balik dan beri milik semula, or SBBS — under sections 204A to 204H of the Code: surrender the title to the State, apply through licensed planners and surveyors, pay the premium, and receive separate individual titles. It is slower and it costs money, which is precisely why the schemes advertised on social media avoid it.
So — Should You Buy?
Our answer is no, not as a way of acquiring land.
A lot lidi purchase is not a cheap version of buying land. It is a different transaction altogether: you are buying a contractual promise against a seller, secured by nothing on the register, over land whose intended use is unlawful, which no bank will finance, which your executors cannot distribute, and which the State can acquire from under you while paying the compensation to someone else.
If you are nevertheless considering one — or if you already hold one — do these things before anything else:
- Conduct an official land search on the master title. Confirm the registered proprietor, the category of land use, the express conditions, and every caveat, charge and encumbrance already registered.
- Ask the land office directly, in writing, whether the sub-lot can be registered in your name. Keep the answer.
- Do not accept a sketch plan as a substitute for an approved subdivision plan or an issued individual title.
- Protect whatever interest you do have. A private caveat, and a properly executed and registered trust instrument, are exactly what the defendants in Normilah Jamil did not have.
- Check who else has a claim. On a lot lidi title, you are rarely the only buyer.
- Get independent advice — from a solicitor of your own choosing, not one introduced by the seller.
The soundest advice remains the oldest: in a Torrens system, the register is everything. If your name is not on the title, you do not own the land.
Cases Referred To
- West Coast Expressway Sdn Bhd v. Pentadbir Tanah Daerah Klang & Other Cases [2025] CLJU 2439, High Court Malaya, Shah Alam
- Normilah Jamil lwn. Rosidin Selamat & Yang Lain [2024] CLJU 2853, High Court Malaya, Klang
- Siti Rumilah Tamyed & Ors v. Baini Kasan Mardi [2023] CLJU 1797; [2023] 1 LNS 1797, High Court Malaya, Shah Alam
This article is intended to provide general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Whether a particular arrangement is a “lot lidi”, and what remedies may be available, depends entirely on the title, the documents signed, and the facts of each case. If you are considering buying land of this kind, or are already party to such an arrangement, please contact Cindy Ng & Co. — we would be glad to assist.