Developers woo local buyers with discounted sale of luxury condos

Aliwassa Pathnadabutr, managing director at CBRE Thailand, a property consultant, said that the property market in the second quarter of the year is showing positive signs after the government eased lockdown measures imposed during the Covid-19 outbreak. “The demand is starting to climb while developers are launching promotional campaigns to attract buyers to sell their stock of finished condo projects and regain cash flow to compensate the contraction during the outbreak,” she said. “CBRE statistics also show that the number of potential buyers visiting projects’ mockup units in July is higher than that of the same period last year.
“This year the condo market has fewer supplies in the luxury section while most new projects have been focusing on units lower than Bt3 million or less than Bt150,000 per square metre to suit the purchasing power of people during economic contraction,” she added. “As a result, developers of luxury condos, especially in Sukhumvit area that has around 4,000 unsold units, are slashing their price by 5 to 40 per cent so that they could close the project as soon as possible.”
CBRE also found out that in 2019, 61 per cent of buyers bought condos for residential purposes, 34 per cent bought for investment and 5 per cent bought as a second home. However, in the first half of 2020 the number of people buying condos as a second home rose to 25 per cent while those buying for investment went down to 16 per cent, and 59 per cent bought for residential purpose.
“This is because the current economic status is not suitable for reselling so fewer people are choosing to invest in condos, while those who already have a house are looking for condos located in city areas for convenience in commuting,” added Aliwassa.
Meanwhile, Suriya Poolvoralaks, managing director at Major Development Pcl, said that the company’s Munich Sukhumvit 23 luxury condo project is now 70 per cent sold with one-fourth of the buyers foreigners, mostly from Hong Kong.
“The Covid-19 situation has prevented potential foreign customers from coming in so we launched a promotional campaign offering discount of Bt30,000 to Bt80,000 per square metre to attract domestic customers,” he said. “We expect that the move will help drive the sale of the project to 80 to 90 per cent.”