| Samui developers lost Bt17b in 6 months |
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| Written by Chat Anupan |
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Vasan Khongjan, AREA managing director, said his company had completed a survey of the property markets on Koh Samui and two other major expats’ destinations — Phuket and Hua Hin — last June and found that many luxury-villa projects on the island and the other destinations were facing financial problems because of the economic downturn.
Based on the survey, there are 21 luxury-villa projects/549 units on Samui that had gone bankrupt, losing a total of Bt16.943 billion. The average price per unit of these villa units is Bt30.8 million. The AREA report showed that 62 luxury-villa projects with 2,063 units from Phuket, Hua Hin and Samui had been closed down and had incurred total losses of Bt36.391 billion. Samui was the hardest hit among the destinations. Hua Hin had nine luxury-villa projects/413 units closed. The projects had a total cost of Bt1.951 billion and average price per unit of Bt 4.7 million. Phuket had 32 luxury villa projects worth Bt17.497 billion and with an average unit price of Bt15.8 million abandoned. According to the AREA survey, as much as 82 percent of the total value of the luxury-villa projects on Samui had not been recovered. There are at present 46 luxury-villa projects/1,114 units on the island valued at Bt20.673 billion, AREA said. “The Samui property market was the worst hit in the first half, as 82 percent of the property projects were inactive with no sales, activities and construction,” Vasan said. AREA said the slump in tourism since late last year contributed to the failure of property projects in the first half of the year. As of June 30, properties offered for sale in the three destinations totaled 302 projects with 15,551 units, worth a combined Bt178.8 billion. In Pattaya, Vason said, the market was stable as most residential units were in the lower-end segment. |
The property consultancy firm Agency for Real Estate Affairs (AREA) has disclosed that 21 property projects on Koh Samui have been adversely affected by the current global economic crisis, suffering losses of as much as Bt16.943 billion for lack of buyers during the first half of the year.
