Quick answer: After you buy, a 50 sqm mid-market Bang Tao 1-bed costs about 194,000-208,500 THB per year ($5,933-$6,376) to maintain with short-term management, roughly 32-35% of gross rent. Without rental, pure lifestyle ownership runs 81,000-84,000 THB/year (~$2,500). The surprise line item for new owners is not insurance, it is CAM (common area maintenance) escalating 3-5% annually.
What are monthly maintenance fees (CAM) in Phuket?
| Zone / tier | Fee per sqm/month | 40 sqm unit | 65 sqm unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic inland | 25-40 THB | 1,000-1,600 THB | 1,625-2,600 THB |
| Mid tourist (Patong, Kata) | 40-65 THB | 1,600-2,600 THB | 2,600-4,225 THB |
| Premium (Bang Tao, Kamala) | 65-100 THB | 2,600-4,000 THB | 4,225-6,500 THB |
| Luxury branded (Laguna, Sansiri) | 80-120 THB | 3,200-4,800 THB | 5,200-7,800 THB |
50 sqm Bang Tao at 60 THB/sqm:
| Period | THB | USD (~35 THB) |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | 3,000 | $86 |
| Annual | 36,000 | $1,029 |
Fees typically rise 3-5% per year, model escalation in 5-year hold math.
Insider tip: Request the juristic person annual budget before reservation. Buildings planning roof waterproofing or lift replacement may levy special assessments outside regular CAM.
How much does condo insurance cost?
| Coverage level | Annual cost |
|---|---|
| Basic contents | 8,000-12,000 THB ($240-$365) |
| Comprehensive + liability + loss of rent | 12,000-20,000 THB ($365-$606) |
Budget ~10,000-18,000 THB/year for a furnished rental unit.
What is Land and Buildings Tax (LBT) on a condo?
LBT is the annual property tax, and the rate that applies to your unit depends on how it is classified rather than on what it cost.
Residential classification: 0.03% to 0.1% of assessed value. This is the rate for a unit used as a home, and on a 5M THB condo it is roughly 1,500 to 5,000 THB a year, small enough that most owners never think about it.
Commercial or rental classification: 0.3% to 0.7%. Up to seven times the residential rate. On the same 5M THB condo that is up to about 35,000 THB a year, which is no longer a rounding error against the rent.
Two things follow. First, the assessed value is set by the authority, not by your purchase price, and the two are usually not the same. Second, the classification is the variable worth understanding before you let the unit: an owner who registers a unit for commercial letting has changed the tax basis as well as the rental model.
Ask the juristic person what classification the building’s units currently carry and what owners have actually been billed. On a building where most units are let, the answer will already be established.
Wider context on the annual bill is in annual ownership costs in Thailand.
How much does AC servicing cost?
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Per service | 800-1,500 THB per AC |
| 1-bed (2-3 AC units) | 2,400-6,000 THB/year |
Skipping service leads to 15,000-40,000 THB compressor failures, false economy.
How much do property management fees cost?
| Operator type | Fee | On 600K THB gross/year |
|---|---|---|
| Independent | 18% | 108,000 THB |
| Developer pool | 30% | 180,000 THB |
| Hotel branded | 35% | 210,000 THB |
Negotiate 15-18% on mid-market units with full calendar, do not accept 25%+ without audited ADR proof.
Manager selection: how to choose a property manager in Phuket.
What utilities do owners pay?
Electricity, water, internet and, in most buildings, nothing else, since common-area power and water are inside the CAM charge rather than billed separately.
Occupied. Electricity dominates, and air conditioning dominates electricity. A unit run continuously through the hot months costs several times one used in the cool season, which is why an owner’s own usage pattern changes the bill more than the tariff does.
Vacant. The bill does not fall to zero. Standing charges, a fridge left running, and a minimum water charge continue: roughly 5,600 to 8,800 THB a year ($170-$267) for a unit sitting empty. Small in absolute terms, and worth knowing before modelling a holiday home as costing nothing between visits.
Let. Utilities are normally the tenant’s on a long lease and the owner’s on nightly letting, where they are absorbed into the rate. Confirm which applies in your management agreement, because a nightly programme that charges utilities back to the owner and a lease that passes them to the tenant produce different net numbers on identical gross figures.
One thing to check per building: whether utilities are billed at the government tariff or at a building rate with a markup. The markup is legal and common, and it is worth knowing before a tenant discovers it.
What is the complete annual cost for a rental condo?
| Cost item | Annual THB | Annual USD |
|---|---|---|
| Maintenance fees | 36,000 | $1,029 |
| Insurance | 12,000 | $343 |
| Property tax (residential) | 2,000-16,500 | $57-$471 |
| AC servicing | 4,000 | $114 |
| General maintenance | 25,000 | $714 |
| Vacant utilities | 7,000 | $200 |
| Subtotal (no mgmt) | 86,000-100,500 | $2,630-$3,073 |
| Management (18%) | 108,000 | $3,303 |
| Total with management | 194,000-208,500 | $5,933-$6,376 |
As % of gross rent: 32-35% total cost load → net ~65-68% of gross → 390K-408K THB ($11,140-$11,660) → ~6.5-6.8% net yield on 5.5M THB.
Yield cross-check: Phuket rental yield guide. Condo overview: cost of owning a condo.
What if you use the condo as a pure holiday home?
| Cost item | Annual THB | Annual USD |
|---|---|---|
| Maintenance fees | 36,000 | $1,029 |
| Insurance | 12,000 | $343 |
| Property tax | 2,000-5,000 | $57-$143 |
| AC servicing | 4,000 | $114 |
| Basic maintenance | 15,000 | $429 |
| Utilities (2 months personal use) | 12,000 | $343 |
| Total | 81,000-84,000 | $2,477-$2,569 |
Less than a long weekend at a premium Patong hotel, reason many buyers accept carrying costs.
Costs that arrive without warning
Three items sit outside the annual budget and account for most of the unpleasant surprises owners report.
A special assessment is the largest. When a building needs work its reserve cannot fund, the juristic person raises the money from owners, charged by floor area. Lift replacement, facade repair and waterproofing are the usual causes, and any of them can produce a bill several times a year’s common charge. It is not a risk you can insure against; it is a risk you assess before buying, by reading the reserve balance against the building’s age.
An air conditioning replacement is the second. Compressors have a working life, coastal air shortens it, and a unit with three or four systems will replace one every few years once the building is past its first decade. Owners who service annually get considerably more life out of them, which is the strongest argument for a maintenance contract nobody enjoys paying for.
A guest-related repair is the third, and it is specific to letting. Something breaks, it breaks at the wrong moment, and it has to be fixed the same day rather than the same month. The cost is rarely large and the premium for urgency is real, which is part of what a management fee actually buys.
Hold a contingency rather than budgeting these precisely. Somewhere around a year’s fixed costs kept liquid covers most of what a Phuket condominium will throw at an owner, and it converts these events from crises into transactions.
The first year is not a typical year
Owners build a budget from the recurring lines and are then surprised by the first twelve months, which carry costs that never recur and are rarely mentioned in advance.
Furnishing is the largest. A unit bought unfurnished, or furnished to a developer’s basic package, needs everything a guest or tenant expects before it can be let at all: bedding and a mattress worth sleeping on, a kitchen with actual equipment, window treatments, and the small items that turn a shell into somewhere habitable. Even at the practical end this is a meaningful percentage of a modest purchase, and it is capital rather than an expense.
Then the setup costs. Utility accounts have to be opened and metered, which usually carries a one-off charge. Internet installation is separate. A management company will charge an onboarding fee, photograph the unit, and list it, and none of that is free. Where the unit is new, snagging inevitably produces a list of small works that fall between the developer’s obligation and yours.
Then the timing gap. A unit handed over in May will not earn much before November, so the first year’s income is often a fraction of a full year’s while the costs are more than a full year’s. Owners who model year one as if it were year three arrive at Christmas with a shortfall they did not plan for.
Budget the first year separately, and keep enough liquidity to cover roughly twelve months of fixed costs without income. Owners who do this find the second year straightforward; owners who do not spend it worrying about a period that was always going to be expensive.
Where the money actually goes over a year
It helps to see the annual bill as four groups rather than a list, because each group behaves differently and only two of them are controllable.
Fixed building costs. The common charge and the sinking fund contribution are set by the building and payable monthly whether the unit is occupied, let or empty. They rise gradually over time, they do not pause when you leave, and they are the floor under every other calculation. On a typical Phuket one-bedroom they are the single largest recurring line.
Fixed statutory costs. The land and building tax on a residential condominium is modest, and it moves into a higher band where the property is let short-stay rather than occupied. Building insurance on the common property sits inside the common charge; contents and liability cover inside your own unit does not, and it is worth having.
Variable operating costs. Electricity is the big one, and in a tropical climate it is mostly air conditioning. An occupied unit costs several times an empty one, and a unit let nightly with guests who leave the air conditioning running costs more again. Water and internet are small by comparison. Air conditioning servicing is a genuine recurring item rather than an optional one: units serviced twice a year last considerably longer than units serviced when they fail.
Costs that only exist if you let it. Management, cleaning, linen, consumables, platform commissions where you are not using a manager, and the replacement cycle on everything a guest touches. These scale with activity rather than with time, which is why an empty unit and a busy unit have quite different annual bills.
The practical consequence is that the two ways to reduce your annual cost are to shut down properly when the unit is empty, and to choose a building whose common charge buys maintenance rather than deferring it. Everything else is either fixed or the price of earning income.
Pros and cons of owning rather than renting the same unit
In favour of owning. The annual cost is knowable and largely fixed, which a rent is not: common charges rise gradually and predictably while asking rents move with the market. Letting the unit when you are away turns a cost centre into something that partly funds itself, which renting never does. And the capital is in an asset rather than in someone else’s, which matters over a long horizon even in a flat market.
Against. Every line on this page continues whether you are in residence, in another country, or between tenants, and none of it pauses. The costs are in baht while most owners earn in something else. Entry and exit costs together need several years of holding to absorb. And the flexibility you give up is real: an owner who decides Phuket is not for them has a sale to arrange, while a tenant has a notice period.
The honest test is time on the ground. Under roughly six weeks a year, renting when you visit is usually cheaper once the full annual bill is counted. Above three months, ownership starts to make sense on cost alone before any rental income is considered.
Buyer scenarios
The pure holiday-home owner. Your annual cost is the full stack with no income against it, so budget it as a lifestyle expense rather than an investment. The controllable lines are management, which you may not need at all, and utilities, which fall sharply in an empty unit if you shut the air conditioning down properly.
The owner letting when away. The costs rise rather than fall: cleaning, linen, wear, higher utilities, management. What changes is that revenue now offsets them. Model both sides on the same twelve months, and remember the weeks you occupy are weeks that earn nothing.
The long-term landlord. The simplest position financially. A monthly tenant pays their own electricity, wear is slower, management runs at a lower rate, and the vacancy risk is concentrated into changeovers rather than spread across the year.
The absentee owner with no letting at all. The most expensive way to hold a Phuket condominium, and more common than it should be. If the unit is genuinely unused, the choice is to let it or to sell it, because an empty property still pays every line on this page.
Five tips to keep costs manageable
Buy the CAM rate, not just the price. Two units at the same price in the same corridor can differ by half again on the monthly charge, and that difference compounds every year you own. Ask for the rate per square metre before you shortlist, not after.
Service the air conditioning on schedule rather than on failure. In this climate a serviced unit lasts years longer than a neglected one, and the cost of a replacement compressor exceeds several years of servicing. This is the single line where deferring costs the most.
Take the utility meters at handover, in writing. Disputes over an opening reading are common, cheap to prevent and tedious to resolve months later.
Furnish for durability rather than for the photograph. A sofa that survives three years of guests costs less per year than a cheaper one replaced twice, and replacement is also downtime.
Read the juristic person’s accounts once a year. A reserve fund that is being spent on running repairs rather than built towards capital works is the early warning of a special levy. Ten minutes annually, and it is the only way to see one coming.
The post-purchase sequence is set out in the buying property in Phuket guide.
5-year maintenance escalation model
| Year | CAM only (50 sqm, 60 THB/sqm start) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 36,000 THB |
| 3 | 38,950 THB |
| 5 | 42,000 THB |
If net yield model uses flat CAM, you are overstating year-5 returns.
Owner-use months: hidden cost
| Months personal use | Extra utility (indicative) |
|---|---|
| 1 month | 6,000 THB |
| 3 months | 18,000 THB |
| 6 months | 36,000 THB |
Personal use is not free beyond CAM, but still cheaper than equivalent hotel nights.
Break-even occupancy calculation
The useful version of this calculation is simple, and every owner should be able to do it for their own unit before a broker meeting.
Take the annual fixed cost. CAM, sinking fund, insurance, Land and Buildings Tax, aircon servicing, and any standing utility charges. Call it 100,000 THB for a mid-market unit, yours will differ, and the point is to use yours.
Divide by the net you keep per night let. Not the nightly rate: the rate less cleaning, less the manager’s share, less platform commission. On a unit achieving 3,500 THB a night, the amount reaching you might be 2,800.
100,000 ÷ 2,800 ≈ 36 nights. Below thirty-six let nights a year, the unit does not pay its own running costs and you are subsidising it, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do with a holiday home, and a poor thing to do while believing it is an investment.
Run it again at your actual numbers, and again with the manager’s share raised by five points. The second version is what tells you how much of the return depends on the management terms rather than on the property.
Know which of the two owners you are before the broker meeting. It changes every subsequent decision.
Owner interview: five questions for juristic person
Ask these of the management office, not the sales team, and ask for the answers in writing.
- What is the current CAM rate per square metre, and when was it last changed? A rate unchanged for years in a building with rising costs is a rate about to change.
- What does the sinking fund hold today, and what capital works are foreseen? Lifts, roof, facade and pool plant are the four that empty a reserve. A fund small against the building’s age means a levy is coming.
- Are there arrears on this unit, and what is the building’s overall arrears position? Unit arrears follow the property. A building where many owners are behind has a funding problem that will land on those who pay.
- What do the registered house rules say about letting, and does the building hold a hotel licence? The two are separate questions and both bind you.
- Is there any litigation involving the juristic person or the developer?
Answers belong in your buying file next to the title search, because each one can cost more than a title defect would. A management office that will not answer in writing has answered anyway.
Net yield sensitivity: management fee swing
| Mgmt % | Annual fee | Net rent left |
|---|---|---|
| 15% | 90K THB | 510K THB before other costs |
| 22% | 132K THB | 468K THB |
| 30% | 180K THB | 420K THB |
7 point management swing = 90K THB/year, negotiate one point, fund two years of insurance.
Summary: three numbers to remember
Everything above reduces to three figures, and an owner who knows their own is protected from most of what goes wrong.
The CAM rate per square metre. Multiply by your floor area for the monthly bill, and by twelve for the annual one. This is the number that makes “low maintenance” claims checkable in ten seconds.
The total annual fixed cost. CAM plus sinking fund, insurance, tax, servicing and standing utilities. This is what the unit costs to hold whether or not it earns anything.
Break-even nights. The annual fixed cost divided by what you actually keep per let night. Below that figure you are subsidising the property; above it, it is paying its own way before any return.
Memorise your three before the broker meeting rather than after it. Every optimistic claim about running costs is testable against them, and most do not survive the test.
Maintenance cost FAQ for spreadsheets
Export these lines into your model: CAM, insurance, LBT, AC, repairs, vacant utilities, management %. Seven rows, no mystery; if broker cannot fill them, broker does not know the building.
Maintenance cost is the variable that turns a 7% gross brochure into a 5% net reality, or a 2% disappointment. Model it before reservation, track it monthly after transfer, and renegotiate management when occupancy proves the operator wrong. Review CAM invoices every quarter without exception.
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Frequently Asked Questions
25-120 THB/sqm/month by tier. A 50 sqm mid-market unit at 60 THB/sqm ≈ 3,000 THB/month ($91).
0.03-0.1% residential or 0.3-0.7% commercial on assessed value. On 5M THB: 1,500-35,000 THB/year depending on classification.
Often 194,000-208,000 THB/year ($5,933-$6,361) all-in for a managed 50 sqm Bang Tao 1-bed, ~32-35% of gross rent.
About 81,000-84,000 THB/year ($2,477-$2,569) for CAM, insurance, tax, AC, and minimal utilities.
Short-term: usually bundled via manager. Owner pays vacant-period minimums and personal-stay usage.
Related guides:
Maksim Shchegolev
Founder, MORE Group
Founder of MORE Group. Four years in investment banking before moving to Phuket, where he has worked in the local property market since 2018. Oversees developer relationships and every engagement above $300K.
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