Bangsar is an opulent suburb of vintage homes and boutiques perched on rolling hills at the edge of the Kuala Lumpur city limits.

Despite the traffic, an address is Bangsar is still one to have – if you can afford it. Here are some reasons why people aspire to live in Bangsar.

History

Bangsar had an early start as the ideal neighbourhood for civil servants and professionals.

A well-known narrative lays out Bangsar’s beginning as a rubber plantation, called the Bunge-Grisar (Bungsar) Estate, in the early 1900s. The neighbourhood’s name was apparently derived from the contraction of the names of two board members of the Kuala Lumpur Rubber Company in London. Since then, Bangsar has been the first choice of neighbourhood for expatriates and employees of large corporations.

The central location of Bangsar made it the neighbourhood of choice for housing the employees of Malaysia’s largest companies in the 1950s, and the presence of Bangsar Hospital (now the Institute for Public Health), in addition to the nearby Pantai Hospital and University Malaya Medical Centre, draws professional healthcare workers to live in the area.

Location

Bangsar is ringed by major highways and insulated against Kuala Lumpur and other urban centres with the green slopes of Damansara, Pantai, Federal Hill, and the University of Malaya’s sprawling campus.

A composite view of Bangsar's housing areas. IZZRAFIQ ALIAS / The Star. April 8, 2014.

The northern tip of Bangsar stretches as far as the centre of Damansara, where the Damansara City Mall and Pusat Bandar Damansara MRT station are located; as far west as the sports facilities and athletic science faculty at the University of Malaya; as far south as Mid Valley City; and as far east as Brickfields and the hidden palaces on Federal Hill (Bukit Perseketuan).

A photo taken from Menara TM shows Kuala Lumpur's massive urban sprawl over the last 20 years that has turned the confluence once flourishing on tin mining into an international cosmopolitan enlivened by lights and sounds. Development has also seeped beyond the fringes of the city into Pantai Dalam, Bangsar and the bordering Petaling Jaya. - ART CHEN/ The Star (yoke teng) ////

Bangsar is within seven kilometres of Kuala Lumpur along the city’s outer ring road, and being situated at a convenient intersection of major arterial roads, other urban centres in close proximity can be quickly reached through the Federal Highway, and the Lebuhraya Damansara-Puchong (LDP), or the SPRINT, via the Kerinchi Link.

Food & Beverage

Bangsar’s legacy as a proving ground for ventures in food and beverage continues to make the neighbourhood a favoured destination and home for cosmopolitan locals and expatriates.

The nightlife in Bangsar is popular among the younger crowd and expatriates.

A wide selection of restaurants and cafés have been drawing people to Bangsar’s commercial core since the neighbourhood’s initial development. Crowds still gather at the restaurants and watering holes along the various iterations of Jalan Telawi – where buskers regularly serenade diners – even on midweek nights.

Following the continuing success of establishments in the Telawi area, various other parts of Bangsar – such as Lorong Kurau, Jalan Bangkung, and Art Printing Works (APW) – had vintage shops, homes, and industrial compounds transformed into photogenic coffee houses and fine-dining establishments.

Culture

Bangsar is home to a health-conscious, worldly, and environmentally-friendly population.

The Free Tree Society provides gardening tutorials and seedlings to residents of Bangsar.

In addition to upscale eateries, retail stores, and shopping centres, Bangsar hosts a high concentration of community gardens, gyms, and art galleries – in addition to a variety of creative exercises in green architecture such as the Pertubuhan Akitek Malaysia (PAM) headquarters on Jalan Tandok and the Sekeping Tenggiri guesthouse on Jalan Tenggiri.

Healthcare is served by small private clinics dotted around Bangsar, a hub of retail pharmacies at the intersection of Persiaran Ara Kiri and Lorong Ara Kiri in Lucky Gardens (Taman Lucky), and two major hospitals situated in adjacent neighbourhoods: the Pantai Medical Centre and the University Malaya Medical Centre.

Price Trends

With limited land available for future development, and its existing structures being highly priced, properties in Bangsar are almost guaranteed to provide high sub-sale values.

Drone shots of PPR and PPA Seri Pahang in Jalan Bukit Bangsar. IZZRAFIQ ALIAS / The Star. October 21, 2016.

Many of Bangsar’s homes have been built as early as the 1970s, and aside from the notable minority of structures having been renovated to create the neighbourhood’s characteristic flavour of post-industrial style, most of Bangsar is of relatively low density.

There are significantly fewer walk-up and high-rise apartments in the centre of the neighbourhood – in comparison to adjacent neighbourhoods such as Mont Kiara – the majority of newer and taller developments occupy the outer fringes of Bangsar.

According to price data supplied by PropertyAdvisor.my, the median prices per square foot (psf) of landed and strata title properties transacted in Bangsar have increased from an average of about RM480 psf in 2008 to RM 900 psf in 2018 – an increase of about 90% in a span of just a decade.

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