So, There Is Housing Data On Bangkok

[CaptHaddock]

While reading all the interminable bickering between the property optimists and pessimists here on TV, I just assumed that no actual housing data is available on the BKK market since the discussion never got beyond anecdotes. Turns out data on housing is available after all. I stumbled on this interesting site recently:

http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Asia/Th...d/Price-History

Don't know this private company that is in the business of selling property data about housing markets around the world. Their Thailand price report from Sept 2009 does have some interesting observations:

Residential property prices in Thailand dropped further in 2009, because of continuing political tensions and the recession. House prices fell 3.7% during the year to Q2 2009 (1% in real terms), according to the Bank of Thailand (BOT).

Political turmoil has made Thailand significantly less attractive to buyers, especially to foreign buyers. CBRE reported that foreign demand for residential properties had dropped by up to 90% by June 2009. Real house prices in Thailand were 34.2% below their 1992 peak, as of Q2 2009.

...the ratio of outstanding housing loans to GDP remains small at 11% (2008) {Compare to the US market where outstanding mortgages are equal to 100% of GDP, source: http://www.plunkettresearch.com/Industries...33/Default.aspx }

Bangkok is currently experiencing an oversupply of condominiums. The occupancy rate of condominiums sharply dropped to 73.1% in Q1 2009, from 90.9% in Q4 2008, according to Colliers International.

Those items would be discouraging to the property optimists, but there is some good news for them (although it appears to contradict the news of the drop in occupancy):

The average rental yield in Bangkok is around 7.2% in 2009, down from around 7.6% during the previous year, according to Global Property Guide research. The highest yields come from condominiums measuring between 80 to 120 sq. m., which have yields exceeding 7.5%.

And here's an interesting graph on condo development:

Now, isn't that an interesting basis for discussion, data with actual sources?

Edited December 7, 2009 by CaptHaddock

[emsfeld]

Not sure about the other optimists, but I have been quite aware of the figures you are posting.

Residential property prices in Thailand dropped further in 2009, because of continuing political tensions and the recession. House prices fell 3.7% during the year to Q2 2009 (1% in real terms), according to the Bank of Thailand (BOT).

I interpreted that as good news for getting into the market as a buyer. There have been quite substantial numbers of newspaper articles floating around in Q1 2009 expecting figures similar to this and higher.

The SDH market is not of interest to me, but one needs to acknowledge that the drop of 34% is an average drop across Thailand. I'd be interested in geographically more specific figures - my guess would be that the less attractive areas (location wise) pulled the average down considerably.

This is great news and confirms my back of the envelope calculations I did late last year using BoT and Land and Housing Department data on a debt financed (finance extended to households only)/ property market value ratio (I got a figure in the order of 16% if I remember correctly):

...the ratio of outstanding housing loans to GDP remains small at 11% (2008)

This suggests that TH is vastly underleveraged which in turn would suggest more stability in prices due to a smaller number of forced sales as we have seen in western markets.

This I can confirm (thus far):

...the average rental yield in Bangkok is around 7.2% in 2009, down from around 7.6% during the previous year, according to Global Property Guide research. The highest yields come from condominiums measuring between 80 to 120 sq. m., which have yields exceeding 7.5%.

These are just my interpretations/ experiences. As with any data you can interpret them in multiple ways. We've been doing well thus far though.

Edited December 7, 2009 by emsfeld

[hhgz]

The last data available (rather than a year-by-year of 10 year old data) - according to this report - indicates that the price drop was 1% last year.

Compared to uncle franks' prediction of a loss of 50%, and midas and others predicting the complete collapse of the Thai real estate market, it's better than they expected. Compared to the much of the world that has seen a loss of 30%-50% of real estate values in the past couple years, Thailand is doing OK.

Rather than depend on a third-party company, as you described them, why not read the statistics firsthand, available on the Bank of Thailand website?

[emsfeld]

@hhgz:

On top of that, new threads on the-big-real-estate-market-collapse have miraculously disappeared on TV since early March/ April this year, I reckon. In the contrary, most posts were in regards to buying Thai real estate - interesting.