It was on an early Friday morning that The Edge visited S P Setia Bhd’s KL Eco City office in Mid Valley City to interview president and CEO Tan Sri Liew Kee Sin. Despite a business engagement that had kept him up late the previous night, an energetic Liew blew into the office like a gust of wind.

Strong demand for properties, especially landed homes, spurred the Malaysian property market after a slowdown in the aftermath of the 2008/09 global financial crisis. Local developers rode the “hot” market to achieve good sales at their launches.

The bustling 1,000-acre Bandar Utama township in Petaling Jaya is especially known for its award-winning five million sq ft retail haven, 1 Utama Shopping Centre.

Judges for The Edge-PAM Green Excellence Award 2011 has given a jury’s commendation to the Suruhanjaya Tenaga (Energy Commission) building in Putrajaya.

The headquarters of Bandar Raya Developments Bhd (BRDB) in Bangsar can easily pass for an art gallery. A slatted wooden divider unfurls sinuously across the office, whose walls are also covered with wooden panels that cleverly hide built-in cabinets.

We know nothing about Malaysia” is something Kumar Tharmalingam, CEO of Malaysia Property Inc (MPI), hears often on his trips overseas to promote Malaysian properties. MPI, an initiative of the government’s Economic Planning Unit, was created in February 2008 to attract real estate investment to Malaysia.

As a property market matures, the number of ways buyers and sellers can find each other proliferates. In developed countries such as the US and the UK, properties are advertised on dedicated television channels, auction portals such as eBay.com and free online classifieds such as craigslist.com.