Luxury condos in Bangkok’s Sukhumvit area have
slashed prices to attract buyers, while demand for condos as a second home has
been rising.
Aliwassa Pathnadabutr, managing director at
CBRE Thailand, the local affiliate of US commercial real estate services and
investment firm CBRE Group Inc, said the property market in the second quarter
of this year is showed positive signs after the government eased lockdown
measures imposed during the height of the Covid-19 outbreak.
She said: “Demand is starting to climb while
developers are launching promotional campaigns to attract buyers to sell their
stock of finished condo projects and regain cash flow to compensate the
contraction during the outbreak.
“CBRE statistics also show that the number of
potential buyers visiting projects’ mock-up units in July is higher than that
of the same period last year.
“This year, the condo market has fewer supplies
in the luxury section while most new projects have been focusing on units lower
than three million baht [$95,000] or less than 150,000 baht per sqm to suit the
purchasing power of people during economic contraction.
“As a result, developers of luxury condos,
especially in the Sukhumvit area which has around 4,000 unsold units, are
slashing their price by five to 40 per cent so that they could close the
project as soon as possible.”
CBRE also found out that last year, 61 per cent
of buyers bought condos for residential purposes, 34 per cent bought for
investment and five per cent bought as a second home.
But in the first half of this year, the number
of people buying condos as a second home rose to 25 per cent while those buying
for investment went down to 16 per cent, and 59 per cent bought for residential
purposes.
Aliwassa said: “This is because the current
economic status is not suitable for reselling so fewer people are choosing to
invest in condos, while those who already have a house are looking for condos
located in city areas for convenience in commuting.”
Meanwhile, Major Development Pcl managing
director Suriya Poolvoralaks said the company’s Munich Sukhumvit 23 luxury
condo project is now 70 per cent sold with one-fourth of the buyers foreigners,
mostly from Hong Kong.
He said: “The Covid-19 situation has prevented
potential foreign customers from coming in so we launched a promotional
campaign offering discount of 30,000 to 80,000 baht per sqm to attract domestic
customers.
“We expect that the move will help drive the
sale of the project to 80 to 90 per cent.”