Renovated for maximum profit, arm-span sized at RM350 a month

SERDANG - Exactly at 2pm as promised, the writers were already standing and waiting in front of a residential building in Seri Kembangan which houses several small rooms for rent.

However, only after almost an hour, Mr Chong (not his real name) who is responsible for managing tenants for the rooms could be seen.

Without delay, he immediately led us to a house on the 11th floor of the building.

Everything looked normal from the outside, but as soon as we set foot inside the house, the writers could not help but had their eyes laser-focused towards the small rooms that clearly looked like they had been renovated.

A 3D plan of the bird cage rental rooms in Seri Kembangan, Serdang.

Chong said all seven rooms in the house were reserved for female tenants only at RM350 per month.

"It's convenient having everything around here, it's close to the public transport. There's also a shopping centre next door," he pointed.

A small drying room for tenants.

Before checking out the rooms that were up for rent, a pile of shoes could be seen in front of the main entrance which implied that there were tenants in the rooms.

The house was visibly a bit cluttered with their belongings. On top of that, the writers' noses were also inevitably stung by an unpleasant smell while their eyes had occasionally caught tens of small cockroaches crawling around the corners of the house.

While we were desperate to up and leave the premises as soon as possible, the mission to get an insight into the bird-cage rooms was not an option, so we braved ourselves into the room suggested.

The kitchen which looks no different than any other rental houses.

At first glance, the room equipped with a single bed, a wall fan and a wardrobe looked quite clean. However, its small size evoked a sense of claustrophobia (phobia of narrow spaces) especially since the room had no window at all.

Throughout the visit, Chong hardly left the authors alone thus making the operation quite challenging.

While Chong did seem suspicious, thankfully, he went away into the kitchen for a while which gave the writers a chance to measure the area of the room.

Shockingly, it turned out that the room was only an armspan leaving barely any space to move around.

Apart from the basic room facilities, tenants had to pay their own electricity bills. Meanwhile, the kitchen, toilet and clothes drying facilities need to be shared with other tenants.

Another concern had struck the writers as they found that each room had separate electricity metres. Imagine there was an electrical overload, wouldn't it pose a risk of fire?

The RM350 rental rooms have a single bed, a wall fan and a small wardrobe.

There is no doubt that there are countless birdcage, grave and small-sized rooms for rent across all corners of the capital.

The writers even found out about this particular one through an advertisement on Facebook.

In reality, this is how greedy some homeowners tried to make maximum profit.