The verdict
3.8/ 5worth chasing on the sub-sale market if you want STP2 exposure in a larger, family-friendly layout than The Meg offers, but go in knowing you're negotiating with an owner, not a developer price list.
- Price
- from RM800K
- Tenure
- Freehold
- Land title
- Commercial HDA
- Completion
- 2027
Zac’s own rating, not an average of user reviews. It reflects one licensed agent’s assessment of this project against others he tracks in Penang.
Part of my Tanjung Tokong 2026 buyer's guide. For the full corridor read — every project, PSF band, foreign-buyer angle and honest catch — start there. This piece drills into one specific decision within it.
Arica sold out. E&O confirmed it, BERNAMA reported it, and most of what's written about this project online still talks as if you can walk into a sales gallery and book a unit. You can't. E&O's second launch on the STP2 reclamation — a two-acre parcel next to The Meg, 380 units, 45 storeys, freehold, targeted for 2027 handover — cleared its entire allocation by around November 2024. If you want in now, you're buying from an owner, not a developer.
That matters more than it sounds. Launch pricing from RM800,000 worked out to about RM845 per square foot on the smallest 947 sqft layout — a genuinely friendly number for Andaman Island. But that number belongs to 2023-2024 buyers. Today's price is whatever a resale seller asks and a buyer accepts, and nobody has published a resale index for a building that hasn't even completed yet.
Key takeaways:
- Sold out since 2024 — no developer price list exists; every unit on the market now is a resale or sub-sale.
- Freehold, likely commercial land title (HDA) — same pattern as The Meg on the adjacent parcel, though not individually confirmed for Arica; the sale is HDA-protected, the running costs and loan margin sit on the commercial side.
- ~RM845 psf at launch on the 947 sqft layout, from RM800,000 — a reference point for negotiation, not a current asking price.
- 380 units, 45 storeys, single tower on 2 acres — modest density, and only 2- and 3-bedroom layouts (947–1,259 sqft) means no shoebox investor stock in the exit pool.
- 2027 handover targeted; GDV RM400 million; developer entity Persada Mentari Sdn. Bhd. (E&O subsidiary); roughly 90% of E&O's Andaman Island buyers overall have been local, per the developer's own disclosure.
What Arica actually is inside the Andaman Island story
Andaman Island is the northern half of Seri Tanjung Pinang Phase 2 — the 253-acre freehold island E&O reclaimed off Tanjung Tokong, a masterplan running to 2050 with a RM60-billion total build-out.
STP1, the original headland, is where you find the mature stock: Straits Quay, Quayside, Ariza, Andaman @ Quayside — completed, tenanted, resale-tested. STP2 is the newer play: The Meg was the first residential handover in May 2026, Maris is the residential-condo option next door, and Arica is the second serviced-apartment tower.
Access is the fact that changed the map. The Gurney Bridge — 1.2km, eight lanes, opened December 2025, listed by the Malaysia Book of Records as the country's widest box girder bridge — turned the island from "detour" into a short drive from Gurney Drive. If the road was the reason you passed on Andaman Island before 2026, the asset itself has genuinely changed.
Sold out is not the same as unavailable
Worth separating two facts that get blurred in most write-ups: Arica has no developer inventory left, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to buy. Off-plan units change hands before completion all the time — an early buyer relocates, needs liquidity, or simply takes a profit before vacant possession in 2027. Those transactions happen through the resale market, at whatever the current owner sets, subject to the developer's consent-to-assign process and any fees that come with it.
If you're chasing Arica specifically, the practical path is: find an agent tracking sub-sale listings on Andaman Island, confirm the seller actually holds a valid SPA and not just a booking receipt, and price the deal against The Meg's completed sub-sale numbers below — not against the 2023 launch sheet, which no longer reflects what a willing buyer pays today.
The title class — the fact most marketing brochures skip
Arica is billed as a "freehold serviced apartment." Both halves matter, and only the first shows up in the headline.
Freehold is the tenure — you own it in perpetuity, no leasehold countdown, no 99-year clock. Commercial title is the land classification, and it changes two things about how you own it:
| What it means for you | |
|---|---|
| HDA cover | Sale is protected exactly as a residential purchase — statutory SPA, defect-liability period, developer licensing all apply. |
| Commercial title | Electricity and assessment charged at commercial tariffs; most banks offer a tighter loan margin than on a residential title. |
The purchase itself is safe. The running costs are not residential — over a ten-year hold the tariff gap compounds quietly, and the loan-margin gap shows up on day one when your banker offers less than you modelled. This isn't a reason to walk away; it's a reason to get the indicative margin before you price the unit, not after.
Confirm the exact title category on the SPA schedule at booking. It is a paragraph in the sale documents — ask the developer's legal team to point you to it.
RM845 psf at launch — the number to negotiate against, not pay
Launch pricing of RM800,000 on the 947 sqft layout worked out to roughly RM845 psf. There's no current developer number to replace it with, so it's the reference point any resale conversation should start from. For context on the same island and the adjacent corridor:
| Project | Location | PSF | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arica @ Andaman Island | Andaman Island (STP2) | ~RM845 at 2023-24 launch | Sold out, under construction to 2027 |
| The Meg | Andaman Island (STP2) | RM1,036–1,146 (subsale) | Completed May 2026 |
| Andaman @ Quayside | STP1, Tanjung Tokong | RM1,086–1,955 | Completed 2018 |
| Gurney Drive branded (typical) | Gurney Drive | RM1,700–2,400 | Various |
Arica's launch number undercut The Meg's current subsale by around 20% per foot, but that's not a fair like-for-like — The Meg's figure is what buyers pay today, while Arica's is what buyers paid in 2023-2024, two years before handover. Part of the original gap was unit configuration: Arica's larger 2- and 3-bedroom layouts spread the fixed cost of a kitchen, bathroom and lift-core across more square feet, so its PSF was naturally lower than The Meg's compact 567–897 sqft stock. What a resale seller asks for today should sit somewhere between the 2023 launch figure and The Meg's completed subsale band — closer to the latter the nearer Arica gets to its own 2027 handover.
Where any number stops being reliable: sea-view and high-floor stacks command a real premium over pool-deck-facing units on every STP2 tower, and a resale ask should reflect that specific stack, not the building average. Ask for the unit's exact facing before you anchor on any figure.
Who Arica was built for — and who's actually selling now
Look at the unit sizes and the original buyer picture writes itself.
947 to 1,259 sqft, only 2- and 3-bedroom layouts, no studios and no 1-bedroom. This was never shoebox investor stock — it's family and couple-friendly, and the sellers you'll meet now are early buyers cashing out before completion, not flippers offloading excess inventory. That's a healthier resale pool than a building full of speculative shoebox holders.
The right fit:
- MM2H family wanting an Andaman Island own-stay with FD utilisation and a 2027 handover that matches their relocation timeline.
- HK / SG buyer wanting STP2 capital exposure through an off-plan resale rather than a completed subsale — still inside the developer-warranty period, less wear than a handed-over unit.
- Penang upgrader trading out of an ageing Gurney Drive high-rise, wanting a bigger footprint on a fresher address, and willing to negotiate directly with an owner rather than a sales gallery.
The wrong fit:
- Anyone assuming they can still book fresh from E&O. They can't — every unit has an owner.
- Yield chaser — even at the RM845 psf launch reference, Andaman Island long-let rents don't clear a 5% gross on that basis, and resale pricing is unlikely to be cheaper. Look at Bayan Lepas or Georgetown buffer instead.
- Family needing residential-title financing — some conservative banks won't stretch the same loan-to-value on commercial-HDA that they'd offer on residential. If the LTV matters to your budget, this may kill it.
The honest catch
Three things I'd flag before you sign:
- It's sold out, and most of what's written online doesn't say so. You are not booking from a sales gallery — you are negotiating with a private seller, on their timeline, at their price. Confirm the seller actually holds a valid SPA, not just a booking form, before you get attached to a unit.
- View is not universal. "Sea-fronting" on a master-plan with multiple towers means future STP2 plots can eventually block your line of sight. Ask for the STP2 tower-massing plan and confirm in writing which future plots could obstruct — same question I'd ask of The Meg buyers.
- Serviced-apartment maintenance runs higher than a residential condo. Facility-heavy podium plus rooftop means expect RM0.45–0.60 psf/month at handover, ballpark. Ask the seller or agent for the developer's projected rate.
- Off-plan resale risk is real, but bounded. E&O has never missed an STP handover in 25 years of delivery, and the AmBank Group RM780 million financing package announced in 2024 is the funding backstop for the STP2 residential pipeline. That's the strongest developer covenant on the island — but it is not a substitute for reading the assignment paperwork on a pre-completion resale.
Where I come out
Zac's rating: 3.8 / 5. Good developer, good unit sizing, and a genuinely fair launch price two years ago — none of which you can access directly anymore. The rating reflects that every buyer today is in a resale market with no published index, on a land title that hasn't been confirmed unit-by-unit the way The Meg's was.
Before committing, I would want:
- A copy of the seller's SPA and any developer consent-to-assign requirement, confirmed before you commit to a price.
- The land title category in writing, and a banker's indicative loan margin quoted against it.
- The developer's projected maintenance rate per sqft at handover, and the sinking-fund schedule.
- Stack-by-stack facing confirmed against the STP2 tower-massing plan, so you know what the unit sees at handover and five years out.
- VP language in the SPA — E&O's delivery record is strong, but the paperwork is what protects you if anything slips.
Weigh a resale Arica unit against The Meg subsale if you want completed stock you can walk today, Andaman @ Quayside if STP1 fits better than STP2, and the Gurney Drive area guide if you're deciding between Andaman Island and the mainland-facing corridor. For a frank check on what's actually available and at what price, message me — and if you're buying to let, I manage tenancies for owners here and abroad.
Sources: Unit count, storeys, site area, GDV, launch price and completion year per E&O corporate site, The Edge Malaysia (658627, 660624), EdgeProp.my launch coverage, iProperty.com.my Arica launch article and Penang Foodie project write-up. Sold-out status confirmed via BERNAMA (20 November 2024) and corroborated by EdgeProp.my's coverage of Andaman Island's local-buyer share. Andaman Island Phase 2 reclamation timing and quarterly project contributions per The Edge Malaysia (794242). STP masterplan and AmBank Group financing per AmBank newsroom announcement. Land title inference from The Meg's confirmed pattern on the adjacent parcel — not individually confirmed for Arica; confirm the exact category on the SPA schedule before signing. Foreign-buyer minimum, state levy and stamp duty per Penang state guidelines and the Stamp Act; see our foreign-buyer cost breakdown. Gurney Bridge specification per the Malaysia Book of Records.