Bangkok property prices survived the political unrest earlier this year, report show

The latest report on the Thai real estate markets shows that development resumed quickly in Bangkok. The Bangkok Residential Sales Market View report fro the second quarter of 2010 from CB Richard Ellis also shows that overall prices have not fallen.
 
It also shows that the market has changed over the last two years both in terms of buyers and products. Thais are now the main buyers of condominium units rather than foreigners and the trend has been to build one bedroom units both in the downtown market and midtown locations.
 
‘Effectively we have two markets, a downtown larger unit market and the one bedroom market mainly in midtown locations. The performance of these two markets has been very different,’ says the report.
 
The market for larger units priced above 10 million baht has been slow with few new launches. There has been a buildup of unsold inventory in some recently completed projects but developers are making inroads into clearing this stock with incentives such as guaranteed yields and furniture packages inclusive in the price.
 
Developers have not resorted to across the board price discounts for the remaining stock. There also appear to have been few defaults by buyers who have been unable to resell prior to transfer of title, the report points out.
 
But there are likely to be few new launches of larger units priced about 10 million baht for the rest of this year until the unsold inventory has been cleared. ‘We see little possibility of prices falling and in certain developments that are seen as being the best in particular location prices could increase,’ the report points out.
 
The average achieved re-sale price of units in completed upscale and above units has increased by 11% year on year. And in the second quarter of 2010 the average price for an off plan freehold condominium unit in the high end and above sectors in downtown Bangkok increased of 0.2% quarter on quarter and 8.6% year on year.
 
In the second quarter of the year the overall occupancy rate increased to 74.1 % and the number of newly launched units in peripheral areas was 4,801 units, the report also shows.