Bangkok property prices continue to rise

Property prices continue to rise in downtown Bangkok, according to CBRE as the market continues to perform well, despite unrest in the Thailand capital this year.

Protests attempting to shutdown the city disrupted confidence in the property market in the first three months of 2014, with interest in Thailand on TheMoveChannel.com dropping. Nonetheless, the city's supply of property, occupancy rates and asking prices all increased in the final quarter of 2013, suggesting the market is in good standing for the year ahead.

"We continue to broadly split our definition of the condominium market between the downtown and the midtown/suburban locations of Bangkok," says CBRE's report. Indeed, the majority of supply is in the midtown/suburban area and mainly consists of one-bedroom units but projects with the highest value are in the downtown area.

There will be limited new supply downtown, but it is a different story in the midtown/suburban areas, with projects expected to reach completion in the next two years. A total of almost 13,000 new condos were completed in both the downtown and midtown/suburban areas this quarter, taking the supply in the downtown and midtown/suburban areas to approximately 390,000 units.

For expats, though, there are fewer larger two or three bedroom units in the most prime downtown areas, which they tend to prefer. As the number of expats increases, CBRE forecast that prices could start to rise.