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Hello fellow ceo members. Here's my experience buying condominium in Phnom Penh. This was my first real estate deal in Cambodia. Sorry for my English and hope u find it useful, any comments/remarks are welcome. I have not much free time will post the whole story in a few parts

Part 1. Introduction
Why ?
- Happily live in Cambodia 7+ years. Have stable job with normal income. On my mid 30s, have no family/kids. I think will return to Europe at some point but most likely not for next 2-5 years.
- A bit tired move from one place to another (lived in ~7 different areas, not really big issue but still..)

- Have enough cash to buy without loan, before i just kept it on my saving accounts..
- For sure not as investment (i already share my thoughts here ).. but who knows..


Step #1. Start to monitor condo projects and research areas that prefer to live in.
For me important criterias were:
- close to center (max 20 min by moto).
- quiet area (not near big roads/markets)
- no chinese-managment (i lived in 2 Chinese places, both of them had so many issues...)
- construction must be finished

I made a list of areas that fit my criteria. Then made a list of all condominium projects on each area. For example for Chroy Changvar (i used to live there before and i liked it) list looked like this:
- La Vista
- Morgan Enimaison
- Mekong View (1-6)
- Grand Condo 7
- Bliss residence
- Wealth Mansion
- Vincent
- The Peninsula,
- Mekong Gardens
- Bali Apartments
- ...

Messaged each developer to provide list of available apartments with price and plan. Surprice-surprice ALL developers refused to share it online. Typical response was "this information is not allowed to share" and invite to meet in person to discuss.


In my country this data is always shared. Buyer can monitor online how fast and for what price are apartments sold. After meet in person some of developers provided such list but again not full. One developer just showed spreadsheet but said i cannot take any picture of it. Most typical strategy was to find out what type of apartment i am interested in and then show 1-3 rooms of similar criteria and tell price. Anyway after waste of many hours meeting those agents i had general picture of each developer. All of them mentioned they are ready to discuss discounts.

Conclusions - Developers want buyer to know as less as possible about market situation in they project. They prefer to hold apartments for years but do not decrease prices even if selling take years.
Another finding some apartments that developer showed i can clearly see someone lived before. As i heard typical history of such apartment.. someone bought it with 10% down payment and do not want to pay further so it goes back to developer. That gave me idea that it's must be hard to sell apartments on secondary market..

To Be Continued... (Secondary Market, Price monitoring, Apartment detailed check, Offer, Contract negotiation, Signing, Title transfer, Move-In, ..)

Yes, usually price lists are classified information here But for some reason price per sqm is not. And they usually give masterplan and apartment layouts with size listed so it's not that hard to figure out the base prices. All this is usually available online even.

Hardly in any market the list prices goes down even if there are units unsold 2-3 years after completition. There are public discount campaigns and also private discounts available when asked, in Cambodia as well as in other markets. Completely normal procedure.

It's not an investment if you are planning to live in it yourself. It's a home. That how people should think about it in everywhere in the world.

rogerrabbit wrote: ↑Thu Sep 08, 2022 1:31 pm
Hardly in any market the list prices goes down even if there are units unsold 2-3 years after completition. There are public discount campaigns and also private discounts available when asked, in Cambodia as well as in other markets. Completely normal procedure.

It's not an investment if you are planning to live in it yourself. It's a home. That how people should think about it in everywhere in the world.

Of course not, the sub-prime crisis was just a little misunderstanding. Prfices never fall.
And all those customers who experienced nagative equity and handed in their keys were just joking with us.
/sarcasm

Good point about the price psm, however.

I don't understand the big secret about the price, anyone interested is going to find out anyway.

Part 2. Condominiums from private owner

In general it is easy to differentiate between developer and private sell ad. Sadly for majority of private sells is agent who does ad posting. What i found that quite often private seller price is better then developer's (even for the same building) but is relatively low number of such ads and quite hard to find them. My takeaway was that it is possible to buy apartment from private person for better price then developer but requires more time/effort/bargain.
Since i know how to code i made a script that can optimize every day search and alert me for interesting ads. I also made a list of all secondary market apartments and research how long it's already on sell.. ( some were for 2+ years ) my conclusion was confirmed once again, it's hard to sell, especially if seller need all cash but also not many new ads from private sellers. Took me around 1 month and finally one agent replied me that hes client is interested to sell for price i asked. I will not post what project it is, is not really important. Price was around 30% less then developer price.

So my next steps were
- Background research for developer (previous projects, who is behind company, ..). Asked my Khmer friends about it. Everything seemed fine.
- Asked monthly bills for last 6 months (most important is management fee, if more then 1$ for sqm is bad)
- Went to neighborhood myself at evening time / rainy time. ( to check noise, flood, environment )
- Car/Moto parking are included into management fee
- Found connection of foreign person who lived in that building and asked general questions


Everything seemed fine... time to make final offer and discuss contract..

atst wrote: ↑Thu Sep 08, 2022 7:29 pm I don't understand the big secret about the price, anyone interested is going to find out anyway.

Is not only prices but also number of available apartments over time. E.g in my country u can see nearly real time when apartment is sold and for what price and this is standard for 90% of development projects if company do not post it many people will not be interested to even message them.

rogerrabbit wrote: ↑Thu Sep 08, 2022 1:31 pm It's not an investment if you are planning to live in it yourself. It's a home. That how people should think about it in everywhere in the world.

yes, that is my point also. i would not consider this option if goal is to invest.

Having a few problem's with clearing my room! The landlord has complained about some old items put outside of the door and not in the rubbish area at the end of the street. I sent back apologies, also added that the bin wagon comes round every afternoon too.

mi1 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 08, 2022 9:32 pm
In general it is easy to differentiate between developer and private sell ad. Sadly for majority of private sells is agent who does ad posting. What i found that quite often private seller price is better then developer's (even for the same building) but is relatively low number of such ads and quite hard to find them. My takeaway was that it is possible to buy apartment from private person for better price then developer but requires more time/effort/bargain.
Since i know how to code i made a script that can optimize every day search and alert me for interesting ads. I also made a list of all secondary market apartments and research how long it's already on sell.. ( some were for 2+ years ) my conclusion was confirmed once again, it's hard to sell, especially if seller need all cash but also not many new ads from private sellers. Took me around 1 month and finally one agent replied me that hes client is interested to sell for price i asked. I will not post what project it is, is not really important. Price was around 30% less then developer price.

Yes, exactly.
In Pattaya, where the condo market is more mature and thus has plenty of used condos for sale, those in the know say NEVER buy direct from a developer.
Great posts, keep em coming.

mi1 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 08, 2022 9:48 pm It's not an investment if you are planning to live in it yourself. It's a home. That how people should think about it in everywhere in the world.

yes, that is my point also. i would not consider this option if goal is to invest.
[/quote]

Of course it's an investment for all buyers. Telling people not to think of it as an investment is just another trick to get them to pay too high a price.
Not that anyone is fooled, as we all want to make a profit - even if it's just a paper profit as we never sell.
In China, buying condos has been a very popular place to put your money, or to buy with a mortgage loan. Why? Because the government has managed the real estate market so that it never goes down.It can do that because a) it wants to, and b) because China is a closed economy and it can control anything it wants, so long as it os priced in CNY/RMB. With no downside, buyers have piled in, often buying off plan. Prices are now very high by any global measure and household debt is too high. This is causing economic problems for China as a whole so the policy is to manage down the enthusiasm to buy. For example, new today - Zhengzhou says it's getting tough on unfinished, pre-sold apartments. Among other things, "developers must return the money that homebuyers have paid into escrow accounts and was then used for purposes other than building their apartments." Michael Pettis comments, Developers are unlikely to have the money. If these new regulations have real teeth, they're going to set off a scramble by developers to sell projects or get money from elsewhere to meet these regulations.
As for Cambodia, condos are priced in USD. The Cambodian government does not control the USD, so QED it cannot control the price of condos. That does not mean prices will fall, it just means the government cannot stop them if they do. If the owners are not levered up on borrowed cash (or they can keep rolling over loans), yes they can sit out any soft market. If.
The markets in China and Cambodia are both reliant on people buying to make a capital gain. That is because the rental yields on the vast majority of units is far too low to justify the relevant sale price.
Bottom line - sure buy a condo if you want a place to live in and you've done all your research as OP has done so well.

Part 3. Contract negotiation
I verbally confirmed that i agree with price agents sent me draft contract. There were quite many details but main points of discussion -
- how much money i should transfer after we sign contract but before title fully transferred to my name
- when i can move in.
- what is penalty if either site do not follow contract

Cambodia hard title transfer process can take up to 2-4 months, depending how busy is land department.
The whole process usually looks like this:
- we sign contract in front of developer and witness
- after sign i do first payment
- seller is responsible to start document process to move title to my name
- after seller got title we exchange remaining money for title

Hard title (Strata title for condos) transfer is by default always sellers responsibility.. and seller need to pay 4% tax + some tea money. Seller/Agents tried to convince me that i do not need title. He himself didn't have one. What they have is contract between seller and developer.. with this contract seller could make title to his name any time but he didn't do so to avoid 4% tax. So they suggested me to do the same and offered extra discount and can move in immediately. I did research about legality for this kind of moves.. it seemed like it can work but my conclusion as a foreigners we should refuse all workarounds, except getting hard title on your name
So we back to option with transfer title. My goal was to pay as less as possible before i have hard title on my name. Agents and seller said they want 30% after we sign contract and 70% after i get title. They mention this is a standard for Cambodian market and told that if i want to move in right away then first payment has to be least 50% and this is what we should follow. For my question what will happen if after we sign contract and transfer 30% seller will not do hard title agent replied "it never happened in my career" but if it happens then i should go to court. In my country there's no such issues cause all real estate deals are done via notary, so buyer always sure his money will not be on seller's bank account until it's done deal and vise versa... (as i learned later there are similar possibilities in Cambodia.. but is really uncommon)

I didn't like that idea to transfer 30% and all i got is signed paper contract. I said need a time to think. Meanwhile decided to find out who is real owner. Some tricky questions for building management and i got his name. Cambodian nationality. I did some more research on that person and it turns out he is government lawyer himself... oops. I definitely do not want to have any legal issue with him..