Chonburi Condo market on the rise

In the hottest selling areas for condos such as Pattaya, Naklua, Jomtien, and even the proclaimed "Beverly Hills" of Pattaya..Pratumnak Hill, there seems to be one overshadowed market place.

Chonburi province in its own right boasts huge industrial compounds that require corporate housing for both Foreigners and Thal Nationals.

LPN Development is currently estimating demand at 10,000 new condominium units per year to house blue and white collar workers currently working in Chonburi factories and industrial estates. These new projects are slated to very reasonably priced starting at 550,000 Bt and not to exceed 2 Million Bt.

To gain a better understanding of just how much of a housing shortage exists through Chonburi's industrial compounds please check out the article below from "The Nation".

SOMLUCK SRIMALEE
THE NATION October 1, 2012 1:00 am

 

More than Bt20 billion worth of new condominium projects will be launched in Chon Buri province, including Pattaya, in the current second half of the year thanks to strong demand. Most of the demand is for condos priced lower than Bt2 million.

LPN Development says it sees demand in Chon Buri for nearly 10,000 condominium units per year.

These are located near eight industrial estates around the province, such as Amata, Laem Chabang, Saha Group's estate, three projects near Pinthong Industrial Estate, Hemaraj and Panthong Kasem Industrial Estate.

These estates host 479 manufacturing plants that employ more than 211,000 people, 10 per cent of whom are white-collar staff. Chon Buri also has five universities.

LPN Development managing director Opas Sripayak said many employees in the industrial estates and students and teachers in the universities rented serviced or unserviced apartments costing between Bt3,000 and Bt5,000 a month. But Chon Buri province has only 28 apartment projects with a combined 1,262 units, not enough to handle the rising demand.

The company's survey also showed that industrial-estate employees who want to buy a home needed the price not to be higher than Bt2 million.

As a result, the company decided to launch its latest condominium project, Lumpini CondoTown Chonburi-Sukhumvit, worth Bt2.6 billion. The project has 4,181 units at starting prices of Bt550,000, which have utilisation space of 21 square metres.

The project will open for booking next weekend.
By the end of last week, the company had already issued 2,000 queue tags to people interested in booking next weekend, and expects tags to total 2,500-3,000 before bookings open on Saturday.

This is an indication of the strong demand in this market after the company had successful launches of three condominium projects in Pattaya worth Bt8.2 billion in the first half of the year.

Sansiri also will launch its first condominium project in Pattaya, in the Wong Amat area, next weekend called Baan Plai Haad, worth Bt2.2 billion, with 353 units at a starting price of Bt3.59 million.

In the third quarter, Kingdom Property Co launched a condominium project called Southpoint Pattaya, worth Bt2 billion.

In the same quarter, Kotobuki Property launched a condominium project worth Bt95 million at Lamthan, Chon Buri province.

A survey by the Agency for Real Estate Affairs shows 87,500 residential units worth Bt246.5 billion in Chon Buri province, of which 60,241 have sold. The agency believes that the rest will be sold out by the end of the year because this market has strong demand, especially for units priced lower than Bt3 million.

Tourists and ex-pats will have 4 new reasons to smile on Pattaya

There are four new projects in the works for the Pattaya area which will be beneficial to ex-pats as well. 

•    Firstly expats will be able to enjoy these venues and use them to entertain family and friends when they come to visit. 
•    Secondly these venues will help increase the value of their property. 
•    And finally these venues will help reduce Pattaya's image as only a sex tourist destination 

The four projects are worth a total of 2.23 Billion Baht worth of investment and are poised to open next year and include 

1. Kidzania 
2. Ramayan Water park
3. Amazon Falls Water Park
4. Siam World Art Company

Check out this article from the Bangkok Post:

     PATTAYA : Four projects in the tourism sector worth 2.23 billion baht that received Board of Investment (BoI) privileges are poised to open this year and next.

   The first is a Hong Kong investment of 550 million baht by the Kidzania Group, the world's fastest-growing edutainment brand, to set up Kidzania this December at Siam Paragon.

Kidzania is a role-playing activity where children aged 4-12 can try out different adult occupations.

The second project is a 900-million-baht Thai-Russian joint venture to set up Ramayana water park in Chon Buri's Sattahip district slated for next year.

The third is a 620-million-baht project by Pacific Shore Development to set up Amazon Falls Water Park. This joint venture between Hong Kong and Malaysia will be in Pattaya and is slated to open next year.

The last is a 162-million-baht project by Siam World Art Co to set up a cultural centre with investment from South Korea. The centre will be located in Pattaya exhibiting sculpture, paintings and Thai-Korean culture.

BoI secretary-general Atchaka Sibunruang said the board expects higher investment in the tourism sector, especially theme parks that will enable Thailand to compete with Hong Kong's Disneyland, Singapore's water park and Malaysia's theme parks. Amazon Falls will be the first water park in the world to use cartoon presenters.

The Ramayana is billed as the largest water park in Asia Pacific. Once these two open, they should attract investment in other areas, she added.

From 2007-12, a total of 23 projects applied for investment promotion in the tourism sector, totalling 3.48 billion baht.

Three projects totalling 1.47 billion baht were theme parks, four projects totalling 707 million baht were cultural centres, 12 projects worth 417 million baht were hiring boats for tourism, and three projects totalling 215 baht were tourist boat parking areas.

Dr Atchaka said the BoI is revising its promotion policies. The tourism sector will still be given a prominent place, but some adjustments might be made in terms of providing incentives for projects the government prioritises, such as theme parks and water parks.

To this point no global-scale theme park producers such as Disney or Universal have shown interest in investing in Thailand, said Dr Atchaka. Malaysia and Singapore provide many incentives to attract tourism projects, such as racing arenas, she said.

In the past the BoI provided incentives for a variety of tourism businesses, such as racing arenas, open zoos and electric hoists, but have not received any interest from business operators, said Dr Atchaka.