Sipping an iced coffee at a roadside stall and scrolling through my phone, I came across the latest figures from the Real Estate Information Center of the Royal Government Housing Bank of Thailand. During the first half of this year, foreign nationals transferred ownership of 6,533 condominium units in Thailand, pouring a total of 28.267 billion baht into the market. Compared to the same period last year, both the number of units and the total value dropped, falling by 8.8% and 1.5% respectively. Things picked up a bit in the second quarter, however, with both quarterly transfers and transaction values seeing a slight rebound.
Mainland Chinese buyers remained firmly in the top spot. In the first half of the year, they snapped up 1,813 units worth 6.874 billion baht, working out to an average of about 3.8 million baht per unit. That said, compared to the same period last year, Chinese purchases fell by 23.8% in volume and 27.7% in total value. Real estate agents on the street say people are definitely holding onto their purse strings a lot tighter these days.
Right behind them were buyers from Russia and Myanmar, who picked up 842 and 641 units respectively, while the US, Taiwan, and France also squeezed into the top ten. Interestingly, Russian and Australian buyers showed strong growth, with Russian purchases jumping by more than 50%. Looking at property types, Americans bought the priciest units at an average of 6.6 million baht each, while Indian buyers went for the largest spaces, averaging 72.1 square meters per unit. Everyone house-hunting in the local market seems to be playing a different game.
