Not your typical 80-year-olds: Why more Malaysian seniors are trading in homes for resort-style living

[KUALA LUMPUR] Even as people half her age might hesitate, 82-year-old Chee Shook Yin embraced change by trading her six-bedroom Bangsar bungalow – complete with the garden she once tended – for a 600 square foot apartment. In return, she found an entirely new way of living.

For more than 40 years, Chee and her husband lived in an affluent part of Kuala Lumpur, in the kind of home many Malaysians still regard as the ideal retirement trophy: spacious, familiar and fully paid-off. But over time, what once symbolised comfort became a burden.

“As age catches up, managing a bungalow with just the two of us is quite tough,” she tells The Business Times. Their children no longer live with them, and they preferred not to move in with any of them. “We prefer our own space and freedom.”