Phuket Rental Yield 2026: The Method | MORE Group

Quick answer: do not underwrite a Phuket condominium on a yield you were given, including any this page used to give. Take the denominator from the price, which is exact and set out below by area and format. Take the numerator from twelve months of owner statements on a comparable unit in the same building, because nobody in Thailand publishes occupancy or achieved rates for privately owned homes. Between the two sits a cost stack, and every line of it is quotable this week, which is why the fraction of gross that survives cannot be stated here either: the largest term in it is the nights that do not sell. A brochure gross is a ceiling and this page no longer restates the band. Patong is the island’s dearest metre at 234,561 THB across 202 priced apartments; Bang Tao runs at 161,000 across 4,589. Which wins on total return is not knowable, and was never measured. Full area tables and fee math below.

The 2026 reference on Phuket rental yields: the short-let versus long-let decision, area-by-area prices from 12,054 priced units, and the cost stack you can get quotes for. No yield figure appears, because none is published.

Phuket rental yield: the half that is knowable, and the half that is not

Start here. A rental yield is income divided by cost. On this island the cost side is exact and we hold it unit by unit; the income side is not published by anyone, in any form, for privately owned homes. This guide gives you the first half in full, shows you the arithmetic that joins them, and tells you the one document that produces the second half for the specific unit you are looking at. What it does not do, from this revision onward, is quote you a yield. An earlier version of this page opened with a 5-12% range by strategy and an area table of gross, net, occupancy and nightly rates; none of it could be sourced and all of it has been withdrawn. One condition sits above all of this: the juristic person has to permit the letting model you are underwriting. If the building bans stays under 30 days, a nightly model is not a reduced model, it is the wrong model, re-run it as a long lease, on a unit above roughly 35 square metres, or the tenant does not exist at all. Ask for trailing twelve-month data from a comparable unit in the building, not a launch brochure.

This is the definitive reference on Phuket rental yields in 2026, written for foreign investors who want to underwrite a deal with real numbers, not developer brochures. It covers the gross-versus-net definition, the ADR × occupancy formula and what each input costs you to obtain, every major area at the prices our records actually hold, the short-let versus long-let decision, juristic compliance, three management models and their contractual cost, the full operating-cost stack, the optimisation levers worth pulling, and the four risks that quietly destroy a headline. It does not contain a yield figure, and the section below explains why no honest version of it could.

If you want one document that lets you back-of-envelope a Phuket investment in fifteen minutes, and stress-test a property manager’s pitch, this is it.

Summary: Phuket Rental Yield in 30 Seconds

What is knowable, and what is not:

• The denominator is exact. MORE Group’s price records hold 12,054 priced apartments. The median is 6,750,000 THB at 150,000 per square metre; by area it runs from 3,310,000 in inland Kathu to 11,070,000 in Patong.
• The numerator is not collected by anyone. Occupancy and achieved nightly rates for privately owned Phuket homes sit in individual management companies’ books. No Thai agency gathers them, no index publishes them, and no site including this one can measure them.
• So a yield by area does not exist. Every one this page used to carry has been withdrawn rather than softened.
• The cost stack is obtainable today, by asking. Management 18-25% of gross on a short-let condominium and 25-30% on a villa; juristic charges 50-80 THB per sqm per month, more in branded buildings; sinking fund; Thai tax. Those are quotes you can collect this week.
• The document that settles it is twelve months of owner statements for a comparable unit in the same building, with every fee shown as a deduction. Nothing else does.
• Format decides the channel. Below roughly 35 square metres a Phuket unit depends entirely on nightly letting, because monthly tenants generally will not take less. 27% of the island’s priced apartments are under that line.

Table of Contents

• What Yield Actually Means
• The Yield Formula
• STR vs LTR by Area
• Yield by Area, Q1 2026
• Yield by Unit Type
• STR Compliance & Juristic Rules
• Property Management: 3 Models
• Operating Costs Breakdown
• 12 Optimization Levers
• Risks to Stress-Test
• Phuket Yield by Area & Strategy 2026, Comparative Table

What “Rental Yield” Actually Means in Phuket (And What Most Investors Get Wrong)?

The most common mistake foreign buyers make in Phuket is setting a developer’s guaranteed gross headline against the net yield they know from home and concluding the Thai investment doubles their return. The two are not the same measurement: one is a promise before costs, the other a result after them, and the figures this sentence used to put on each side have been withdrawn because the Thai one was never measured. By the time you back out the property manager’s 18-25% cut, the juristic fee at 50-80 THB per sqm per month, the sinking fund call, the income tax, the Land and Building Tax, the building insurance, the maintenance reserve at 4-7% of revenue, and the nights that do not book, the gap between headline and net is large. This page no longer puts a figure on either end of that sentence: the 8% gross was never measured and the 5% net was arithmetic on it. What is worth internalising is the shape, roughly half of gross goes before it reaches you, and that half is the part you can price exactly before signing.

On the tax line specifically: the 12.5% house and land tax that this paragraph used to cite was replaced from 2020 by the Land and Building Tax, which charges a low percentage of appraised capital value rather than of rental value. A secondary residential condominium valued at 7,000,000 THB pays on the order of 1,400 THB a year. Short-stay letting sits in a higher band than residential occupation, which is one more reason to settle the permitted use before modelling revenue.

A second error is using purchase price without transfer costs. The honest denominator is all-in cost: purchase price plus 2-6% in transfer fees, plus furniture (300,000-1,200,000 THB for a turnkey condo), plus first-year management onboarding and listing fees, plus initial repairs after handover. Adding furniture to a 7,000,000 THB Bang Tao 1BR pushes all-in cost to roughly 7,800,000 THB. That is an 11% larger denominator, so any gross computed on the purchase price is about a tenth higher than the same revenue divided by what you actually spent, before a single assumption about the revenue itself is examined. The two illustrative percentages this sentence used to run that arithmetic on have been withdrawn; the 11% is a fact about the two prices and stands on its own.

A third error is annualising peak-season ADR across twelve months. Phuket has a sharp seasonality curve set by the monsoon, and the revenue concentrated in the dry half of the year is the reason the error is so costly. The share-of-annual-revenue figure this page used to attach to November-to-March has been withdrawn: it would need a revenue series Thailand does not collect. Multiplying a January nightly rate by 365 produces a fictional yield either way. Model with a rate and an occupancy for each month, taken from statements, and keep the monsoon months visible in the arithmetic rather than averaged away.

If you want the methodology in spreadsheet form, the how to calculate ROI on Phuket property spoke walks through the full template. For a single-area benchmark, see the Phuket rental yield by area 2026 breakdown, it ties the same definition back to specific Bang Tao, Patong and Rawai unit examples.

The Yield Formula: ADR × Occupancy × Days = Annual Income

This is the most useful thing on the page and it is worth being exact about what it is. It is not a projection for a real building. It is the arithmetic, run on assumptions you must replace with figures from a specific unit’s statements before it means anything. Every input below is labelled so you can see which ones you are being asked to supply.

The purchase price is the one input that is real: a 38 sqm Bang Tao one-bedroom at 7,200,000 THB sits close to that area’s median of 7,017,150 on our records. Furniture and transfer costs of 600,000 THB are a quotable figure you can collect this week. Everything from here is assumed.

Step 1, nightly rate by season. Assumed, not observed: 2,800 THB across the five high-season months, 1,800 in the two shoulder months, 1,400 across the five low months. Nobody publishes achieved rates for privately owned units, so replace these three numbers with the ones on a comparable unit’s statements. If the manager will not give them to you, that refusal is the answer to the question.

Step 2, occupancy by season. Assumed, not observed: 88% high, 70% shoulder, 55% low. That is 132 + 42 + 82.5 = 256 booked nights, a blended 70%. Same instruction: this is the second number to replace, and it is the one that moves the answer most.

Step 3, gross revenue. (132 × 2,800) + (42 × 1,800) + (82.5 × 1,400) = 369,600 + 75,600 + 115,500 = 560,700 THB per year, before manager fees.

Step 4, gross yield on all-in cost. 560,700 / 7,800,000 = 7.2% on a fully-loaded basis, or 7.8% on purchase price alone, which is what most brochures quote. Both are outputs of the two assumptions above, not findings. Change the occupancy assumption by ten points and this number moves by more than a percentage point.

Step 5, operating costs. Management at 22%: 123,354 THB. Juristic at 60 THB per sqm per month: 27,360 THB. Sinking fund top-up: 8,000 THB. Repairs and consumables at 5% of revenue: 28,035 THB. Land and Building Tax: assumed at 20,000 THB and flagged as the least certain line here, the 12.5% of assessed rental value this step used to carry was the pre-2020 house and land tax, replaced by an Act that charges a low percentage of appraised capital value instead, on the order of 1,400 THB a year on a residential condominium at this price and materially more in the short-stay band, which the local office will confirm for a specific unit. Income tax: ~30,000 THB. Insurance: 12,000 THB. Total: ~248,749 THB.

Step 6, net income and net yield. 560,700 − 248,749 = 311,951 THB net, which is 4.0% on the all-in cost. Read the gap between step 4 and step 6 rather than either number: the cost stack takes about 44% of gross here, and that 44% is the part of this calculation you can verify in advance by collecting quotes. The two numbers on the income side cannot be verified at all until someone hands you statements.

Run the same arithmetic at a second assumed occupancy of 78% and 3,100 THB blended and it produces roughly 880,000 THB gross and, with the cost lines rescaled, about 530,000 net, 6.8% on the same all-in cost. Nothing about the building changed between the two versions. Two assumptions did, and the net answer went from 4.0% to 6.8%. That sensitivity is the whole lesson of the example: a yield quoted without its inputs tells you nothing at all, and the difference between two plausible input sets is larger than the difference between any two areas on this island. The basis-point comparison this paragraph used to close on has been withdrawn, it measured one assumption against another and called the gap a finding.

STR vs LTR: Which Strategy Wins by Area in 2026

The strategy choice is driven by four inputs: legal allowance (juristic rules), demand profile (tourists vs expats), operating cost tolerance, and how much of the year you want personal access. Use this rule of thumb:

• Pure STR makes sense when: the juristic explicitly allows short stays, the location is within 10 minutes’ walk of a tourist beach or major attraction, the building has pool and amenities that photograph well, and you have (or are paying for) a competent operator. The revenue and cost differentials this bullet used to quantify against long-term letting are withdrawn: no letting series exists for Phuket to have produced either. What is structural is the shape, short-stay grosses more per occupied night and spends more per night to get it, in cleaning, commission and management, and which side wins on net depends on your building’s actual calendar, not on a band.
• Pure LTR makes sense when: STR is illegal in the building, the location attracts working expats more than tourists (Phuket Town, Chalong, Koh Kaew, parts of Rawai), the unit is 2BR or larger and family-sized, or you simply do not want the operational complexity. A single tenant on a twelve-month lease trades headline revenue for a stable calendar and a much smaller cost stack: no changeover cleaning, no platform commission, no vacancy between three-night stays. This page gives no net figure for it, because that would need the rent a specific unit actually achieves. Annual top-up cycles.
• Hybrid makes sense when: you have flexibility, the building allows STR, and you can tolerate the manager juggling two distribution models. The classic playbook: nightly letting through the November to March peak, then a six-month seasonal lease April to October to a digital nomad or low-season expat at 35,000-55,000 THB per month. Captures 80% of STR upside with 50% of the operational drag.

The short-term vs long-term rentals Thailand spoke breaks down the legal differences in detail; if STR is your primary strategy, also read is Airbnb legal in Phuket 2026 and how does Airbnb work in a Phuket condo before signing an SPA.

A common error is choosing strategy before choosing building. Many Bang Tao buyers in 2024-2025 acquired units in juristics that subsequently banned short stays, and discovered their underwriting had been built on a letting model the building no longer permitted, which is not a revenue cut of some measurable size but the removal of one of the two demand pools, and on a unit under roughly 35 square metres the removal of the only one. Always verify the juristic person regulations and any pending committee votes before you commit. The legal due diligence checklist in how to rent out your Phuket condo legally is the right starting point.

What Rental Yield Can I Expect by Phuket Area in 2026?

None that this page can give you, and the honest form of the answer is the table below rather than a range.

A yield needs two numbers. The first is what the property costs, and that is exact: MORE Group’s records price 12,054 apartments across the island, unit by unit. The second is what it earns, and no public body in Thailand collects occupancy or achieved nightly rates for privately owned homes, so it exists only in the books of whoever manages a given building. A previous version of this section printed eight rows of gross yield, net yield, occupancy and nightly rate by area, sourced to “OTA comps, agent intel, and active management contracts”. That is not a source you can check and the figures have been withdrawn.

What replaces them is the half we hold:

Area	Priced apartments	Median unit, THB	Rate, THB per sqm	Median size	What the format implies
Patong	202	11,070,000	234,561	53 sqm	Both channels open; two off-plan schemes only
Karon	281	9,060,000	192,766	47 sqm	Both channels; 232 of 281 not yet built
Bang Tao	4,589	7,017,150	161,000	46 sqm	The deep market, so the comparable set exists
Kamala	699	7,723,650	156,200	47 sqm	Both channels
Surin	108	9,150,000	155,000	60 sqm	Thin market; exit depends on one buyer
Kata	1,048	6,273,725	152,000	45 sqm	Both channels
Rawai	1,291	6,818,000	145,000	51 sqm	Resident tenants as well as visitors
Layan	1,901	6,720,000	143,437	45 sqm	Both channels
Nai Yang	530	5,933,500	142,107	39 sqm	Close to the size line
Nai Harn	277	6,480,000	125,000	54 sqm	Resident tenants as well as visitors
Wichit, inland	374	3,420,000	111,786	31 sqm	Nightly letting only; tenants are residents
Kathu, inland	244	3,310,000	108,214	29 sqm	Nightly letting only; tenants are residents
Chalong, inland	396	3,430,000	98,550	35 sqm	On the size line

MORE Group’s own project price lists. Asking prices for stock on the lists, not transacted prices. Grouped by where the buildings stand: the last three rows are inland stock that our records file under a beach label they are not on, which is why they used to appear inside the Patong and Kata rows.

Read it as the denominator of your own calculation. Two things in it change a yield more than any area premium would.

The cheapest metre is inland and it is a different business. Kathu, Wichit and Chalong run at 98,550 to 111,786 THB per square metre against 234,561 in Patong, and their median unit is 29 to 35 square metres. Those tenants are the residents who work in Patong and Phuket Town, letting monthly on a contract, not visitors letting nightly. Cheap entry and tourist yield are not the same purchase.

Depth decides the exit, not the income year. Bang Tao holds 4,589 priced apartments and Surin 108. Whatever either earns, only one of them has a set of comparables behind it when you sell, and that gap does not appear in any yield table. Bang Tao is the highest-volume zone for foreign buyers, which matters for a different reason than yield: with 4,589 priced apartments it is the one area where a comparable set actually exists, both for underwriting an income assumption and for selling later. The decisive 2026 variable is not the area name but whether the juristic person allows stays under 30 days. The outperformance figure this sentence used to attribute to MORE Group’s shortlist files has been withdrawn: our files hold prices and quota positions, not measured rental revenue, and citing them for a revenue comparison was the wrong kind of sourcing. What the permission actually decides is binary rather than proportional, with it a unit reaches nightly guests and monthly tenants both; without it, only the monthly tenant, and only if the unit clears roughly 35 square metres.

The area character behind those prices is in the Phuket Areas Master Guide 2026 sister hub. For mid-range investors specifically, best Phuket condos for rental income maps these area numbers onto specific projects. If your priority is total return rather than yield-only, capital growth vs cashflow Phuket reframes the same eight areas under a different ranking.

A practical note: high-season STR ADR varies more by individual unit (photo quality, pool view, floor, review score) than by area. A great unit in Karon often out-earns a mediocre unit in Patong. Building selection inside the area is the higher-leverage decision once you have picked the zone.

Is there a rental yield figure for Thailand as a whole?

No, and it is worth being precise about why, because the number gets quoted constantly.

Thailand has no public register of what homes actually let for. The Land Department records transfers and their appraised values, not rents. The Bank of Thailand and the Real Estate Information Center publish price indices and supply data for Bangkok condominiums, not achieved rents or occupancy for privately owned holiday homes. The Tourism Authority publishes arrivals and hotel occupancy, and a licensed hotel is a different business from a condominium unit let through an agent. So there is no official series to average, anywhere in the country.

What circulates instead as a national yield comes from one of three places, and each has a defect a buyer should know about.

Where a national figure comes from	What it actually measures	Why it will not hold for one unit
Portals comparing asking rents with asking prices	Two lists of advertisements	Neither side is a transaction; both are what someone hoped to get
Investor surveys and market reports	Self-selected respondents	Owners who are doing badly are less likely to answer
Developer and agent brochures	A projection, sometimes a target	Written by the party who is selling

The consequence is practical rather than philosophical. A quoted figure of 6 or 7 percent for Thailand cannot be checked, applies to no building in particular, and would in any case be swamped by the four things that genuinely differ from one unit to the next: whether the juristic person permits stays under 30 days, what the management contract takes, how many weeks the owner keeps for personal use, and whether the unit is above or below the size at which a monthly tenant will take it.

What a buyer can actually obtain, and should ask for by name. The management company of a specific building can show what comparable units in that building let for over the last twelve months, from its own statements. That is a real document with a real counterparty, and it is the only evidence on this subject worth acting on. Ask for it before a reservation rather than after, ask for the vacant months as well as the let ones, and ask what the same statements looked like in 2024 and 2025.

The market-by-market entry prices, which are the half of the arithmetic that can be published exactly, are on the whole catalogue, and the letting rules that decide which channel is open to a unit are in the short-stay compliance guide and the rental pool guide.

Phuket Yield by Unit Type: Studio / 1BR / 2BR / Villa

Each unit type has a distinct demand profile and operational rhythm. What this section used to give was an ADR curve and a yield range per type; both are withdrawn, for the reason above. What it gives instead is what each format costs on our own list, and the one structural fact that decides which letting channel is open to it.

Format	Priced units	Share	Median price, THB	Rate, THB per sqm
Under 35 sqm	3,299	27%	4,101,300	137,813
35-50 sqm	3,579	30%	6,080,000	149,248
50-80 sqm	3,468	29%	8,997,675	154,000
Over 80 sqm	1,708	14%	18,315,000	176,618

The rate rises with size, which is the opposite of the usual expectation and worth pausing on: the small unit is not the cheap metre, it is the cheap ticket. Match format to your goal:

• Studios and small one-bedrooms, under 35 sqm. 3,299 priced units, 27% of the island’s stock, median 4,101,300 THB. Length of stay: short. Demand: solo travellers and couples. The defining constraint is not a yield number, it is that Phuket’s monthly tenants generally will not take a unit this small, so the whole return depends on nightly letting and on the building being lawfully able to do it. That is the highest operational intensity (more turnovers per booked night). Highest cleaning cost as % of revenue. Smallest absolute cash flow per unit. Resale market: deep in Patong, Karon, Phuket Town; thinner in Bang Tao where buyer preference shifts to 1BR. Best for cash-yield-first investors with low capital ($80-150K).
• One-bedrooms, 35-50 sqm. 3,579 priced units, 30% of the stock, median 6,080,000 THB. Length of stay: longer. Demand: couples, work-trip extenders, long-stay remote workers. This is the format where both channels stay open, which is the reason it is the deepest foreign-buyer resale market in Bang Tao, Cherng Talay, Kamala, Surin condo. The “default” Phuket investment unit. The best layouts for rental demand spoke shows which 1BR floorplans book first.
• Two-bedrooms, 50-80 sqm. 3,468 priced units, 29% of the stock, median 8,997,675 THB. Demand: families, two-couple groups, longer winter stays. Lower turnover, lower per-booking cleaning cost, more repeat-guest dynamics. A larger unit produces more absolute cash flow than a one-bedroom in the same building. Excellent for family rental demand Phuket playbooks.
• Villas, three to five bedrooms with a private pool. A separate market: 2,268 priced villas at a median 29,800,000 THB and 80,541 per square metre, so a villa buys roughly twice the floor area per baht and none of the land under it. Length of stay: longer. Demand: family groups and multi-couple holidays. Full-service management takes 25-30% of gross here against 18-25% on a condominium, so the same headline revenue arrives smaller. The appreciation rates and the total-return band this line used to carry have been withdrawn: Thailand publishes no transaction index for Phuket, so neither could have been computed. High operating cost (pool, garden, full housekeeping). Best owned through professional management or hotel-style program. See condo vs villa occupancy Phuket for a deeper occupancy comparison.

For investors at the entry level, best ROI budget Phuket and buy-to-rent Phuket complete guide show how to choose between studio vs 1BR within a fixed budget envelope.

Is Short-Term Rental Legal in Phuket Condos in 2026?

The legal stack works in three layers:

1. National law (Hotel Act): Stays under 30 days legally require a hotel licence. Individual unit owners cannot easily obtain one; buildings can register collectively if designed and operated as hotels. Penalty for non-licensed STR has historically ranged from warnings to 5,000-20,000 THB fines, but enforcement is uneven.
2. Provincial / municipal enforcement: Phuket Land Office and the Phuket Provincial Hotel Registration Office have stepped up checks since late 2024. Inspections often follow neighbour complaints, a furious owner-occupier in your building is a far bigger risk than a random government audit.
3. Building-level juristic regulations: Each condo has a juristic person (the legal owners’ committee). Their internal rules can be stricter than national law. Common configurations: (a) Hotel-licensed building, STR fully legal. (b) Mixed-use juristic with a designated rental pool floor, STR allowed only inside the pool. (c) Residential juristic that explicitly allows short stays, grey zone but practiced. (d) Residential juristic that explicitly bans short stays, STR is contractually impossible without selling.

STR compliance snapshot for Phuket foreign buyers (Q1 2026): The practical short-term rental landscape in Phuket breaks into three building categories. There are three categories. A hotel-licensed building allows stays under 30 days legally under the Hotel Act. A building without a licence whose juristic regulations permit short lets sits in a grey zone, tolerated while the internal rules say so. And a building whose committee has banned short letting outright leaves only a long lease. The three shares this paragraph used to give have been withdrawn, nobody publishes a census of Phuket buildings by licence status, so the split was assembled, and the share does not matter to you anyway: what matters is which of the three your specific building is, and that is a document. Before signing a reservation agreement, foreign buyers should request the juristic person regulations and review the last two AGM meeting minutes for any STR-ban votes. Buildings dominated by investor owners carry lower STR-ban risk than those with a majority of resident-owner occupiers. MORE Group pre-screens all shortlisted projects for current STR status before adding them to a buyer’s shortlist.

Before you buy, request and read these documents: juristic person regulations, any minutes from AGM votes on STR in the last 24 months, the building’s hotel licence (if claimed), and any developer letter promising STR rights. Verify with the how to rent out your Phuket condo legally and short-stay compliance Thailand checklists. If you are buying leasehold, the additional layer in can I rent out leasehold property applies.

A building that allows STR today can ban it tomorrow by AGM vote, and many have. To stress-test, look at the unit-owner mix: buildings with a high proportion of resident foreign owners, or Thai family owner-occupiers, are far more likely to vote bans than buildings dominated by foreign investors. The is Airbnb legal in Phuket 2026 spoke documents the 2024-2026 enforcement timeline in detail.

If your investment thesis depends on STR yield, choose buildings that are either hotel-licensed or have a clear, documented STR policy with a stable owner mix. Otherwise, model the deal on a long tenancy alone, taking the rent from a signed lease in the building, and treat any short-let upside as a bonus rather than as the case.

Property Management: Self vs Agent vs Hotel-Style: Cost & Yield Impact

Self-management. Theoretically free. In practice you pay in time: listing creation and photo management, calendar sync across 3-4 OTAs, dynamic pricing reviews twice a week, guest comms in 4-6 languages, cleaner scheduling, key handover (or smart lock setup), maintenance dispatch, replacement linen, monthly accounting and tax filing. Plausible if you live in Phuket and own one or two units. Adds up to 10-15 working hours per booking once everything is included. Quality risk is high because guest experience compounds in reviews, and a listing that slips down the ranking is slow to climb back. The rate and occupancy penalties this page used to put on self-management have been withdrawn, because neither side of that comparison is published for Phuket; what is not in doubt is that the saved fee is only saved if the calendar holds. What that leaves on net against paying an independent manager is not something this page can rank; the time cost is the part you can price, at 10-15 working hours per booking. The can I rent my Phuket condo without management spoke covers tools and software stacks for self-managers.

Independent property manager. Standard market rate: 18-25% of gross STR revenue, with cleaning passed through to guests. LTR: 8-15% of monthly rent plus a one-month finder fee per new tenant. Includes professional photos, multi-OTA listing, dynamic pricing, guest screening, check-in coordination, cleaning supervision, monthly statements, and basic maintenance. A good manager brings pricing software, a photo refresh and a response time you cannot match from another timezone. The revenue uplift this line used to claim over self-management has been withdrawn, no Phuket source measures it, and a fee that pays for itself is exactly the assertion an operator should be made to evidence rather than one a page should make for them. Ask for audited owner statements from at least five existing clients. Quality across the independent firms on the island varies widely and the statements are how you tell. The Phuket property management guide 2026 spoke is the proper deep-dive on selection.

Hotel-style rental pool. 30-45% of revenue, at the top of that range where the operator bundles F&B and front-desk service, sometimes structured as a profit-share or guaranteed return. Full hotel operations: front desk, daily housekeeping, F&B, branded marketing, OTA contracts, dynamic pricing, on-site maintenance, branded amenities. Common in branded residences (Banyan Tree, Anantara, MontAzure, MGallery). The trade is a much larger share of revenue for near-zero operational involvement, investors trade fee for liquidity and simplicity. Often the only viable model for villas and luxury condos, where the operational complexity is too high for a single-unit independent manager.

The honest comparison is not between two yields, because neither can be measured: the two figures this sentence used to weigh against each other have been withdrawn. It is between a passive arrangement and a job. A hotel-style pool takes a larger share and hands you the year back; self-management keeps that share and costs you the guest messages, the changeovers, the pricing decisions and being reachable from another timezone. Price your own hours, add them to the self-managed side, and the comparison becomes one you can actually run.

Operating Costs Breakdown: What Eats Your Gross Yield

The deduction stack is the half of a Phuket yield that can be established before you buy, because every line of it is written down somewhere. Management runs 18-25% of revenue on an independent programme and 30-35% inside a resort estate, both in the management agreement. The juristic fee is quoted per square metre per month, insurance is a policy you can price, and repairs and consumables are an estimate you can sanity-check against the manager’s own history. Thai income tax on the rent follows the simplified method: a 30% deemed expense allowance, then progressive rates on the remainder, with 5% withholding by a licensed manager credited against the bill. What no line of this can supply is the revenue those percentages come off, which is why this page no longer states what fraction of gross survives: that ratio needs the vacancy, and the vacancy is the unpublished number.

Here is the full cost stack for a representative 1BR in Bang Tao generating 700,000 THB annual revenue:

• Property management 22%: ~154,000 THB. The single largest line, and the one to negotiate hardest. Bundled vs unbundled matters: cleaning, linen, OTA fees and credit card commissions can be inside or outside the percentage.
• Juristic / CAM fees: 50-80 THB per sqm per month. A 38 sqm unit at 65 THB averages ~30,000 THB/yr. Often increased 5-10% per year by AGM vote. Branded buildings can run 100-150 THB/sqm.
• Sinking fund: One-off at handover (typically 600-1,200 THB/sqm), with periodic top-ups by AGM vote. Plan 5,000-15,000 THB/yr average across a 10-year hold.
• Repairs, replacements, consumables: 4-7% of revenue. Linen, towels, pool chemicals, A/C servicing, light fittings, soft furnishings, AV repairs. Front-loaded in years 4-7 when furniture refresh hits.
• Income tax: Progressive Thai PIT for individuals (5-35% bracket on net rental after a 30% standard expense deduction), or 20% corporate if held through a Thai company. Effective rate typically 8-12% of net rental for foreign individual landlords.
• Land and Building Tax: since 2020 this replaces the old house and land tax, and the basis changed with it, a low percentage of appraised capital value rather than 12.5% of assessed rental value. Residential use runs 0.02-0.30% of appraised value, which on a 7,000,000 THB condominium is on the order of 1,400 THB a year. Short-stay commercial use sits in a higher band. The gap between the two bands is real and is often a deciding factor between letting long and letting short, so get the assessment for the specific unit rather than a rate from any page.
• Insurance: Building insurance is included in juristic fees; contents insurance for furniture and host liability is 8,000-20,000 THB/yr.
• OTA commissions and credit card fees: 15-18% of revenue if not absorbed inside the management fee. Airbnb 3% host plus 14% service charge to guest, Booking.com 15-18% commission, Agoda 18-22%.
• Vacancy: already inside the rate × occupancy formula, but worth stating separately because it is the term that decides everything and the only one nobody will hand you. The share of nights that sell is not published for privately owned Phuket units; it comes from a specific building’s statements or it comes from your imagination. The fixed costs, juristic fee, insurance and any debt, run through the empty nights unchanged.

The full cost taxonomy is the subject of Phuket property taxes & fees complete guide; the investor mistakes, rental assumptions spoke catalogues the 12 most common under-budget errors. A useful exercise: take whatever gross a developer guarantees you, apply this stack line by line, and see what is left. The net figure this sentence used to predict has been withdrawn, along with the claim that it matches an unguaranteed unit: neither could be measured. The exercise is still worth doing, because the stack is real and contractual, and because a guarantee quoted gross tells you nothing until the deductions are subtracted from it.

Maximizing Yield: 12 Optimization Levers (Furniture, Photos, Pricing)

The gap between a mediocre and a well-run Phuket short-let is large, and how large is not measurable: the figure this paragraph used to give has been withdrawn along with the uplift attached to each lever below. What the levers cost is knowable, and that is how to read the list: photography, dynamic pricing, multi-channel distribution, premium cleaning, hotel-spec linen, written house rules, fast response, named amenities, seasonal pricing tiers, repeat-guest discounts, local partnerships, and a furniture refresh cycle. None needs capital above 50,000 THB. Most need operator discipline and about ninety days.

The twelve levers, ranked by impact-to-effort:

1. Professional photography (huge impact, low cost). A shoot with a Phuket-specialist photographer costs 30,000-50,000 THB, which is a quotable price rather than an estimate. The click-through uplift this line used to claim is not published by any platform and has been withdrawn. Reshoot every 18-24 months and after any meaningful furniture change.
2. Dynamic pricing software. Tools like PriceLabs or Wheelhouse re-price daily against demand, events and your competitive set. Cost: about $20 a month per listing, which is the only figure here anyone publishes. The revenue uplift this line used to give came from the vendors selling the tools and has been withdrawn.
3. Multi-channel listing. Airbnb plus Booking.com plus Agoda plus a direct-booking site through Hostfully or Hospitable. More channels means more places a guest can find the unit; the occupancy uplift this line used to attach to it has been withdrawn, no Phuket occupancy being published to measure against.
4. Premium cleaning standards. Hotel-grade cleaning checklist, photographed handovers, and a dedicated cleaner per unit pair (not a roving freelance) reduce 1-star “cleanliness” reviews, the single most damaging review category for re-bookings.
5. Hotel-spec linen and towels. 600-thread-count sheets, oversized white towels, blackout curtains. 30,000-60,000 THB one-off per unit, a real price. The rate uplift this line used to claim has been withdrawn.
6. Written house rules with check-in pack. Reduces noise complaints, damage incidents and 1-star reviews from misalignment.
7. Sub-30-minute response time. Airbnb’s “response time” metric directly affects search ranking. Use a virtual assistant or automated tools to maintain it 24/7.
8. Premium amenities photographed in listing. Smart TV with Netflix, fast Wi-Fi (post the actual speed test), Nespresso, full kitchen kit, outdoor seating. Each named amenity is one more filter the listing survives; the conversion figure this line used to give was not published by any platform and has been withdrawn.
9. Seasonal pricing tiers with minimum stays. Peak season 4-7 night minimums protect ADR; shoulder 2-3 night minimums maximise nights; low season 1-night minimums fill calendar.
10. Repeat guest discounts. Direct-booking incentive for returning guests bypasses 15-18% OTA commissions on repeat business.
11. Local partnerships. Airport transfer, scooter rental, tour operator, restaurant referrals: bundled into the welcome pack. Adds 4.9-star “would recommend” review intensity.
12. 6-monthly soft furniture refresh. Throw pillows, decor accents, lamps, plants. 5,000-15,000 THB twice a year keeps photos current and review scores fresh.

The combined effect is real and it is not quantifiable from here: every uplift figure attached to these levers comes from the vendors selling the tools, and none of it has been measured on Phuket stock by anyone independent. What the list is for is the questions to put to a prospective manager, one per lever, and the gap between a manager who has answers and one who does not. How much that difference is worth cannot be quantified from any published source, and the two-percentage-point figure this sentence used to end on was an estimate dressed as a measurement.

The best Phuket condos for rental income spoke ranks projects by inherent yield-friendliness (pool view ratio, amenity stack, juristic STR allowance) so you can pick a building that compounds these levers.

Risks: Seasonality, Oversupply, Currency, Guarantee Schemes

Four risks compress a Phuket return and are routinely under-disclosed. Seasonality concentrates the year’s revenue in the dry months, so a shock in those months hits the annual figure out of proportion to its length. Supply: Colliers Thailand counted nearly 25,000 condominium units launched across 2024 and 2025 and forecasts 6,000 to 8,000 more in 2026, most of it in the Bang Tao and Cherng Talay corridor, which is what your unit will be competing against. Currency: income earned in baht and spent elsewhere is worth whatever the rate says on the day, and a move of ten per cent in the rate moves the home-currency value of the whole income by ten per cent. Guarantee schemes: whether the guarantee is priced into the purchase is checkable by comparing the scheme’s price per square metre against unguaranteed stock in the same area, and the premium figure this page used to assert has been withdrawn in favour of that comparison.

Seasonality risk. Phuket’s revenue is concentrated in the dry months, so a disruption there, visa policy, geopolitics, weather, airline capacity, the timing of Chinese New Year, hits the annual figure out of proportion to its length. The 2020-2022 pandemic was the extreme version. The area-wide rate movements this page used to attribute to smaller events have been withdrawn: no published series measures them. The stress test survives without them, and is the more useful half. Take whatever occupancy and rate your model assumes for the high season, cut the occupancy by twenty points and the rate by fifteen per cent, and see whether the deal still works. If it does, you have margin; if it only works on the good case, you are underwriting a good case. Read high season vs low season rental Phuket for a full month-by-month breakdown.

Oversupply risk. The pipeline figure and the absorption and rate-pressure claims this paragraph used to make have been withdrawn; none is published. What our own records do show is the scale of what already exists: Bang Tao carries 4,589 priced apartments across 48 schemes, more than Rawai, Layan, Kamala, Kata and Chalong combined, and only nine of those schemes are finished. Whatever else is coming, that is already the deepest competitive set on the island for a unit letting there. Investors should focus on differentiated product (pool view, large balconies, low unit-density buildings, branded residences) and avoid the most generic “investment block” projects, which compete directly on price into a deepening pool.

Currency risk. Your income arrives in baht. If you spend dollars, euros or pounds, the exchange rate scales the whole of it: a ten per cent move in the rate moves the home-currency value of the income by ten per cent, so whatever the baht produces arrives about a tenth larger or smaller in your own currency, before anything at all happens in Phuket. The specific historical range this page used to quote has been removed rather than left to go stale; check the rate over your own intended holding period. Non-USD investors can see wider swings. This risk does not disappear; it can be partially hedged by leaving rental income in THB and consuming locally, by holding a multi-currency Wise/Revolut structure, or simply by underwriting on a conservative FX rate in your home currency.

Guarantee scheme risk. A developer guarantee is a contract with three questions attached, and none of them is about the percentage. Is the premium priced into the purchase, test that against unguaranteed stock in the same area on our price list, per square metre. Is it funded from rental performance or from your own purchase price: the funding source is in the agreement. And what happens the year it ends, when the fee schedule reverts to whatever the management contract says. The guaranteed return programs reality spoke goes through it line by line. The premium range and the comparison against market yields this paragraph used to assert have both been withdrawn: one was unmeasured, the other requires a market yield that does not exist.

A fifth, often overlooked risk: management quality. How much a poor operator costs you cannot be quantified from any published source, and the figure this line used to give has been withdrawn, but the mechanism is not in doubt, because it compounds. A listing that prices badly in its first season carries a thinner review history into the second. The investor mistakes, rental assumptions spoke catalogues the management-related errors that account for the largest portion of underperformance.

Phuket by area, on the half of the equation that exists

An eight-row table stood here giving, for each area, an average gross yield for short letting, another for long letting, an occupancy band and an average nightly rate, forty figures, none of them measured by anyone. It was the largest single survival on this page, and it sat directly beneath nine separate paragraphs explaining that no such figure is collected in Thailand. It has been withdrawn in full rather than adjusted.

What replaces it is the other half of the yield fraction, which we do hold, unit by unit, and which is the denominator you would have divided by anyway. Every figure below is the median across the priced units on MORE Group’s list, taken as sorted[floor(n/2)]; the three medians are computed over three separately sorted lists and do not divide into one another.

Area	Priced apartments	Schemes	Median price	THB per sqm	Median size	Finished schemes
Patong	202	2	11,070,000	234,561	53 sqm	0
Karon	281	4	9,060,000	192,766	47 sqm	2
Bang Tao	4,589	48	7,017,150	161,000	46 sqm	9
Kamala	699	7	7,723,650	156,200	47 sqm	1
Surin	108	4	9,150,000	155,000	60 sqm	2
Kata	1,048	6	6,273,725	152,000	45 sqm	0
Rawai	1,291	15	6,818,000	145,000	51 sqm	2
Layan	1,901	16	6,720,000	143,437	45 sqm	0
Nai Harn	277	3	6,480,000	125,000	54 sqm	1
Chalong	396	2	3,430,000	98,550	35 sqm	0

Three things in that table decide more about an outcome than any yield band could.

The metre rate is the denominator. Patong at 234,561 THB and Chalong at 98,550 are the two ends of the island, and the gap between them is larger than any plausible difference in what they earn. A yield is income over price, and price is the term you can fix before you commit.

The median unit size decides which tenants exist. Above roughly 35 square metres a unit can take a twelve-month tenant as well as a nightly guest. Chalong sits exactly on that line, Nai Yang at 39 just above it, Surin at 60 well clear. That is the short-let-versus-long-let question answered structurally, without an occupancy figure.

The finished column is where evidence lives. Nine Bang Tao schemes are handed over and can produce an owner’s twelve months of statements. Nothing in Patong, Kata, Layan or Chalong can, because nothing there is built. On an unbuilt scheme the income question has no documentary answer yet, and that is worth more than any band a page could print.

One pattern from the old table survives without its numbers, because it is structural rather than measured: the volume zones and the luxury zones trade occupancy against rate. Patong fills more nights at a lower price; Surin and Layan ask a high price of far fewer guests. No area does both, and the price column above shows why: you pay for the guest you are trying to reach.

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12,054 in 125 schemes

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5,930,000 THB (~$181K)

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Related Guides (Spokes):

This master guide is supported by 20+ in-depth spokes organised in three subclusters:

Yield Strategy

• Phuket Rental Yield by Area 2026
• Best ROI Budget Phuket
• Best Phuket Condos for Rental Income
• Best Layouts for Rental Demand Phuket
• Buy-to-Rent Phuket Complete Guide
• How to Calculate ROI on Phuket Property
• Capital Growth vs Cashflow Phuket

STR / LTR & Compliance

• Short-Term vs Long-Term Rentals Thailand
• How Does Airbnb Work in a Phuket Condo
• Is Airbnb Legal in Phuket 2026
• How to Rent Out Your Phuket Condo Legally
• Can I Rent Out My Phuket Condo
• Can I Rent My Phuket Condo Without Management
• Can I Rent Out Leasehold Property
• Short-Stay Compliance Thailand

Operations & Demand

• Phuket Property Management Guide 2026
• Family Rental Demand Phuket
• High Season vs Low Season Rental Phuket
• Condo vs Villa Occupancy Phuket
• Best Thai Market Rental Demand
• Guaranteed Return Programs Reality
• Investor Mistakes, Rental Assumptions

Get Personal Help

MORE Group is a Phuket-based real estate advisory founded by Maksim Shchegolev, helping foreign buyers from over 40 countries purchase investment property in Phuket since 2016. We are independent of any single developer, charge 0% buyer commission, and have advised on 700+ property transactions across Bang Tao, Kamala, Rawai, Patong, Surin, and Layan. We underwrite from documents rather than from market figures that do not exist for Phuket: the price list, the juristic accounts and AGM minutes, the licence position in writing, the management agreement, and operator references from active landlords. We are a property advisory firm based in Phuket, Thailand, and are not affiliated with any hotel, spa, or resort brand. Contact: info@moregroup.estate · +66 65 119 5327.

Yield numbers on a Phuket spreadsheet are only as honest as the operator behind them. MORE Group works exclusively for buyers, 0% buyer commission, no developer kickbacks, and every shortlist is underwritten from documents: the price list, the juristic position on short letting, the management terms and operator references. If you want a one-page yield model for a project you are evaluating, a stress-tested STR vs LTR comparison for your specific budget, or an honest second opinion on a developer’s “guaranteed return” pitch, talk to us before you wire a deposit.

Frequently Asked Questions

What rental yield can I expect from Phuket property in 2026? +

None that this page can give you, and the ranges it used to print by area have been withdrawn. A yield needs occupancy and the rate actually achieved, and no Thai body collects either for privately owned homes; they exist only in the books of whoever manages a given building. What is knowable in advance is the purchase price, which our records hold unit by unit, and the cost stack, which you can collect quotes for this week. Build the rest from twelve months of owner statements on a comparable unit in the same building. Our own shortlists are built the same way: from a specific unit's statements, not from a house band.

Is short-term rental (Airbnb) legal in Phuket condominiums? +

Officially Thailand's Hotel Act requires a hotel licence for any stay under 30 days. In practice enforcement varies by juristic committee and project type. Always read the juristic person regulations before buying with an STR strategy in mind. The position is building by building rather than area by area, and it is a document: ask the juristic person for the house rules and the licence position in writing before you model any nightly revenue.

What's the average ADR for a 1BR Phuket condo in 2026? +

Unpublished, and this page no longer estimates it. Achieved nightly rates for privately owned Phuket units are held by their managers and aggregated by nobody, so any average quoted to you, including the one that used to sit here, was assembled rather than measured. Ask a manager operating in the building you are looking at for twelve months of actual figures on a comparable unit, high season and low separately. On the purchase side, which we do hold: the median one-bedroom is 7,074,432 THB in Kamala and 9,150,000 across all unit types in Surin, against 5,930,000 in Bang Tao.

What occupancy should I plan for in Phuket STR? +

Whatever a comparable unit in the same building actually ran at, which is a document rather than a number this page can supply. The area figures previously given here were not collected from anywhere. What is structural, and worth planning around, is that Phuket's year is sharply seasonal on the west coast and that a unit under 35 square metres has no monthly channel to fall back on when the nightly market thins. Model on statements rather than on an agent's promise. The claim that operators overstate by a known margin has been withdrawn with the rest: no market data exists to establish it, and quoting one made the page do the thing it was warning against.

How much do property managers charge in Phuket? +

Standard short-term rental management runs 18-25% of gross rental revenue, with cleaning and laundry billed to the guest. Long-term rental is 8-15% of monthly rent. Hotel-style rental pool programmes charge 30-45% depending on what the operator bundles but bundle marketing, dynamic pricing, cleaning, linen, OTA fees and front desk. Self-management is theoretically free but adds 10-15 hours per booking once cleaning, comms and check-in are included.

What's the difference between gross and net rental yield? +

Gross yield = annual rental income divided by purchase price. Net yield = (annual rent minus all costs) divided by purchase price. Costs include management, juristic and CAM fees, the sinking fund, repairs, income tax, Land and Building Tax at the band your letting model puts you in, insurance, and unbooked nights. What fraction of gross survives is not stateable for Phuket, because the biggest term in it is the nights that do not sell and nobody publishes those. Price the deduction lines from the contracts, which you can do this week, and the ratio falls out of your own arithmetic rather than out of a page.

Market signals to watch in 2026

• Common fees, sinking funds and deferred building maintenance can change the real return profile of Phuket condos.
• Rainy season often exposes drainage, waterproofing and maintenance weaknesses that are invisible in sales presentations.
• Before buying for income, investors need to verify building-level rental permissions, juristic office rules and management practice.
• Long-stay and retirement buyers usually prioritize healthcare, daily convenience, noise levels and resale simplicity over peak rental yield.