Condos for sale in Bangkok

Distance to the BTS or MRT

In Bangkok the station decides more than the finish. Our Bangkok condo investment guide calls proximity to a BTS or MRT station the single largest variable in the market, with an effect that drops off sharply with distance, and tells buyers to measure the walk rather than trust a listing’s description of it. A ten-minute walk in the heat is a different product from a three-minute one at the same nominal distance.

The listings these cards were built from rarely state a walking time, so use the district column as a first filter and then walk it. Khlong Toei and Wattana are central Sukhumvit, the stations from Nana through Asok to Phrom Phong; Huai Khwang is the Ratchada and Rama 9 corridor on the MRT Blue Line; Phra Khanong and Bang Na follow the Sukhumvit line east past On Nut; Khlong San and Bang Kho Laem sit by the river.

A new launch or a finished building

Bangkok delivers new condominium stock steadily and in volume, which means your unit competes with next year’s launches as well as this year’s resales, the investment guide notes. Before you commit, it advises checking what is under construction within walking distance of the same station, because that is who you will be pricing against in three years.

A finished building lets you see the common areas, the juristic office at work and the resale prices in the same block. A launch lets you choose the floor and pay in stages. On a new build, the developer’s standard terms usually split the transfer fee and put the rest of the costs on the buyer. And as our capital-preservation guide puts it, the scarcity story that supports beachfront land does not apply to a city that can always build another tower.

For a buyer weighing new launches against supply, that is the practical test: count the cranes around the station before you count the discount. A launch price below the finished building next door is only a saving if nothing cheaper is about to open across the road.

The foreign quota in a central Bangkok building

A foreigner may own a Bangkok condominium unit freehold within 49 percent of the building’s total floor area, paid with money transferred from abroad. In the prime central corridors that allowance is often committed early, the capital-preservation guide notes, so the written quota position is the first question rather than a formality; the investment guide adds that quota is scarcer in prime Bangkok buildings than in most Phuket ones.

None of these cards states a building’s remaining quota, because the sources do not publish it. Ask the developer or the juristic person for a dated letter giving the remaining foreign share in square metres before you pay a reservation fee.

How big a Bangkok project is, and what that changes

Of the 29 projects that state a size, 25 have a hundred units or more; the median is 477 and the largest 1911. A building of several hundred flats is a small town with its own management office, and the quality of that office decides how the lifts, the pool and the security work at seven in the morning. Visit at that hour.

Size also sets your competition when you let the flat. Every vacant unit of the same layout in the same tower is listed against yours, which is why the investment guide stresses that a tower of near-identical units competes first with its own neighbours. A smaller building near the same station can be the easier one to let, even at a higher price per square metre.

Who you are buying alongside

Thai professional buyers are the main purchasers of well-located Sukhumvit stock, so demand does not depend on tourist arrivals. That is the case for a Bangkok condo as a home or a long hold. It also ties the market to Thai borrowing: the investment guide notes that Bangkok is far more interest-rate sensitive than the resort markets, because a much larger share of its buyers borrow.