Is now a good time to buy property in Cambodia?

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Why does buying property in Cambodia look tempting right now?

Cambodia property looks unusually tempting today because sellers and developers have far less pricing power than they had during the boom.

Knight Frank’s latest Phnom Penh review counted 63,334 completed condominium units at the end of 2025, up 9.6% in a year. Yet monitored projects were selling only around 3%–4% of available stock per quarter late in the year, one of the weakest absorption levels of the recent cycle.

Developers have reacted. Nine condo projects launched in Phnom Penh during 2025, with much more emphasis on affordable and mid-market homes rather than another wave of luxury towers aimed at speculative foreign buyers. Two Piphup Thmey projects alone added roughly 1,500 affordable units. Across new launches in the second half of 2025, Knight Frank calculated an average asking price of about $676 per square metre of net saleable area.

That average includes cheaper suburban projects, so it should never be used as the benchmark for a good central Phnom Penh condo. Still, the shift is clear. Developers are chasing price-sensitive Cambodian buyers now, while resale owners have to compete with new-build payment plans and incentives.

The current opportunity comes from that imbalance. Buyers can negotiate again.

Phnom Penh condo indicator	Latest reading	Previous direction	What we take from it
Completed supply	63,334 units	+9.6% YoY	Inventory is still heavy
Mid-tier share	56%	Largest segment	Market has moved toward practical housing
Core/affordable share	23%	Growing	Developers are chasing local buyers
Average new-launch asking price	~$676/m²	Much cheaper product mix	Affordability now drives launches
Quarterly monitored sales rate	~3%–4%	Very weak	Buyers have negotiating power

Is Cambodia’s property market actually recovering now?

Cambodia’s property market is still weak today, even though the wider economy continues to grow.

The IMF’s latest Cambodia mission said domestic demand, construction and real estate remained subdued after economic growth slowed from 6.0% in 2024 to 5.3% in 2025. It expects growth of only 3% in 2026. The World Bank is a little more optimistic at 3.9%, but it also describes Cambodia as being in a property-sector downturn.

The interesting part is what is holding up despite that weakness.

Foreign direct investment reached $5.1 billion in 2025, according to the World Bank, and was associated with around 400,000 formal jobs. Goods exports then increased 17.7% year on year in the first quarter of 2026. Cambodia is still attracting factories, capital and export activity while residential property struggles to absorb the excesses of the previous cycle.

That makes the current market more interesting than a simple recession story. We have a weak property sector inside an economy that is still pulling in substantial outside investment.

It also explains why we would buy individual bargains today without calling a nationwide property recovery.

Indicator	Latest evidence	Direction	What it says about property
Real GDP growth, 2025	5.3%	Down from 6.0%	Economy has slowed
IMF 2026 growth forecast	3.0%	Further slowdown	Weak domestic backdrop
World Bank 2026 forecast	3.9%	Slower growth	Still no recession base case
FDI, 2025	$5.1bn	Strong	New investment continues
Goods exports, Q1 2026	+17.7% YoY	Strong	External economy remains active
Real estate/construction	Subdued	Still weak	No broad property rebound yet

Has Phnom Penh condo oversupply finally peaked?

Phnom Penh condo oversupply is becoming less aggressive, but the city still has too many units chasing too few buyers.

The 63,334 completed units recorded by Knight Frank already represent a large stock for a city of Phnom Penh’s size and income level. The monitored pipeline could eventually push supply above 80,000 units if scheduled projects are completed, although delays, redesigns and cancellations make headline pipelines unreliable.

What has changed is developer behaviour.

Prime and high-end towers once dominated the foreign-investor story. Today, mid-tier units account for 56% of existing supply, while affordable Core projects are taking a larger share of future development. Developers are also concentrating on finishing projects already under construction rather than launching huge speculative schemes.

This is roughly what an oversupply correction looks like in practice: supply growth slows, developers cut prices and ambitions, but the old inventory takes years to clear.

We care much more about occupancy inside a specific building than projections for citywide demand. A tower where lights are on, tenants renew and resale transactions actually happen is worth more to us than a cheaper building surrounded by hundreds of empty competing units.

Are Phnom Penh condos genuinely cheap now?

Some Phnom Penh condos are genuinely cheap today, although the cheapest price per square metre often hides the weakest asset.

Several market estimates put mainstream Phnom Penh condo values roughly 15%–20% below the 2019 peak. IPS Cambodia has recently placed many entry-level units around $1,500–$2,200 per square metre, while CBRE previously reported central-business-district pricing closer to $2,700 per square metre.

Then we have Knight Frank’s roughly $676-per-square-metre average for newly launched projects in the second half of 2025.

The gap tells us more than any single citywide average.

A new $700-per-square-metre unit far from established tenant demand and a $2,500 unit in BKK1 are fundamentally different investments. The first can look spectacularly cheap while remaining difficult to rent and almost impossible to resell without another discount. The second can look expensive while maintaining a much deeper pool of tenants and buyers.

We would compare each property with actual competing units in the same building and neighborhood. Historical launch prices are mostly irrelevant now.

Phnom Penh property type	Indicative pricing	Main attraction	Main risk
New affordable/suburban launch	Around $700/m² in recent launch mix	Very low entry price	Weak liquidity and tenant depth
Entry-level mainstream condo	~$1,500–$2,200/m²	Better balance of price and usability	Huge quality variation
Central established condo	Often ~$2,500+/m²	Stronger tenant pool	Lower headline yield
Distressed resale	Highly variable	Biggest possible discount	Problem building may explain discount

Can Cambodia property still produce a good rental yield?

Cambodia property can still deliver a good rental yield now, with realistic Phnom Penh gross returns often around 5%–7%.

Global Property Guide’s recent Phnom Penh dataset puts average apartment yields at roughly 6.6%. Its sample shows one-bedroom units near 7%, two-bedroom units closer to 5.5% and three-bedroom units around the high-6% range.

Those numbers fit reasonably well with CBRE’s earlier estimate of roughly 5%–6% for ordinary Phnom Penh condominiums.

We would be cautious once marketing material starts promising 8%, 10% or guaranteed double-digit returns. A developer guarantee can simply be financed through a higher sale price, while the actual market rent may be lower once the guarantee expires.

Operating costs change the picture quickly.

Take an $80,000 condo renting for $500 a month. The headline gross yield is 7.5%. If the unit sits empty for one month, leasing and management absorb 10% of collected rent, and repairs and miscellaneous costs reach $900 for the year, cash income falls to roughly $4,050. That is about a 5.1% yield before financing.

A 7% headline yield can still be good. We simply would not treat it as 7% money in the bank.

Example	Price	Monthly rent	Gross yield	Plausible yield after normal costs
Phnom Penh 1BR benchmark	$95,000	$550	6.9%	Roughly 5%
Phnom Penh 2BR benchmark	$220,000	$1,000	5.5%	Roughly 3.5%–4%
Phnom Penh 3BR benchmark	$354,000	$2,000	6.8%	Roughly 5%
$80k value example	$80,000	$500	7.5%	Roughly 5.1%

Is a 7% rental yield enough to make Cambodia property worth buying?

A 7% gross yield alone would not convince us to buy property in Cambodia today.

Cambodia asks investors to accept more resale risk, more building-quality variation and more legal due diligence than mature residential markets. We therefore want something extra in return.

Usually that means getting the property itself at a discount.

Suppose an $80,000 apartment produces around $4,000–$4,500 of annual cash income after normal costs. That can work well over a long holding period. But if we later need to cut the resale price by $12,000 to attract a buyer, roughly three years of rental profit disappear.

Yield and liquidity have to be considered together.

For us, an attractive Cambodia purchase generally needs either a very strong net yield, an unusually low purchase price compared with genuine resale transactions, or ideally both. Paying full developer price for a theoretical 7% gross return leaves too little compensation for the risks we are taking.

Can you easily resell a condo in Phnom Penh?

Reselling a Phnom Penh condo is still difficult today, and this is probably the biggest weakness in the investment case.

Knight Frank’s 3%–4% quarterly sales rate across monitored projects shows how slowly available units are moving. More importantly, an individual owner often competes against the original developer.

That developer can offer installment plans, furniture packages, fee waivers and occasionally rental guarantees. A resale owner trying to recover cash quickly has fewer tools. Price becomes the obvious one.

Liquidity also differs enormously by building. A popular BKK1 project with a visible rental market can find buyers while a physically similar tower elsewhere sits almost frozen.

For that reason, we would never calculate Cambodia returns using an assumed resale after two or three years. The investment should still make sense if we have to own the unit for seven or ten years.

The easiest mistake in Cambodia is focusing on how cheaply we can enter while barely investigating how somebody eventually gets out.

Can foreigners legally buy property in Cambodia?

Foreigners can legally buy qualifying Cambodian condos today, but they still cannot directly own Cambodian land.

Cambodian law allows foreign nationals to own up to 70% of the private units in an eligible co-owned building through strata title. Foreigners generally cannot own units on the ground floor, and ownership of the condominium does not give them ownership of the underlying land.

Cambodia’s Land Law is much stricter about landed property. Land ownership is reserved for Cambodian citizens and qualifying Cambodian legal entities.

A foreign investor can use long-term leases for certain properties, and Cambodian law allows perpetual leases to be assigned, subleased, mortgaged and transferred through succession under the relevant conditions. That can work for some commercial or lifestyle purchases, though it gives us a different asset from a freehold strata-title condo.

We would stay away from informal nominee structures sold as a shortcut around the land rules. Cambodian law explicitly requires Cambodian nationality for land ownership, and private arrangements designed to disguise foreign control can create serious enforcement problems.

For an ordinary foreign residential investor, a clean strata-title condo remains the simplest structure.

Property structure	Foreign buyer?	Direct land ownership?	Our view
Registered strata-title condo	Yes	No	Cleanest normal option
Ground-floor unit under foreign strata rules	Generally restricted	No	Usually avoid
Cambodian freehold land	No direct foreign ownership	Yes for eligible Cambodian owner	Not a normal foreign purchase
Long-term/perpetual lease	Yes	No	Can work with strong documentation
Informal nominee structure	Legally risky	Indirect claim	Avoid

Are Cambodia property titles safe enough?

Cambodia property titles can be safe enough for investment, but we would never buy before independently verifying the exact title and transfer rights.

Cambodia has made major progress registering land and formalizing ownership, and the Ministry of Land Management continues pushing cadastral registration. Still, historical gaps in land records mean the word “title” alone tells us too little.

A registered hard title carries much more weight than informal possession documents. For condominium buyers, a properly registered strata title gives a much clearer ownership trail.

We would have a Cambodian property lawyer verify the seller, title number, encumbrances, building approvals, foreign-ownership quota and transferability before money becomes difficult to recover.

This becomes especially important with resale bargains. A suspiciously low asking price can come from a motivated owner, which is exactly what we want. It can also come from a title problem, unfinished registration, unpaid obligations or a building that never obtained the paperwork buyers assumed existed.

The paperwork needs to be checked before we decide whether the discount is real.

Is buying off-plan property in Cambodia worth it now?

Most Cambodian off-plan property is hard to justify today because completed units already give buyers plenty of negotiating power.

Phnom Penh has more than 63,000 finished condos. We can often inspect the actual apartment, walk through the common areas, see whether elevators work, count occupied units and ask several agents what tenants genuinely pay.

An off-plan purchase removes most of that information.

We have to predict whether the developer finishes on time, whether the final building matches the sales material, whether management is competent and whether rental demand exists when hundreds of units arrive together.

Off-plan can still work when the developer has a strong delivery record and the discount is large enough. A token 5% reduction would not interest us when completed alternatives exist everywhere. Depending on the project, we would start paying attention when the effective price is perhaps 15%–25% below comparable completed units and payments follow genuine construction progress.

Cheap financing terms should not distract us from the purchase price. Cambodia currently offers enough completed inventory that buyers can demand more for taking construction risk.

Is Phnom Penh still the best place to buy property in Cambodia?

Phnom Penh remains the best all-round Cambodia property market for most rental investors today.

The capital gives us the country’s deepest tenant base: Cambodian professionals, foreign companies, embassies, international schools, universities, NGOs and government activity. It also captures much of Cambodia’s office employment and foreign business presence.

That economic depth does not guarantee a good investment. Phnom Penh also has by far the country’s biggest condo oversupply.

Location therefore matters more than the city label. BKK1 has a strong expatriate identity but high entry prices. Toul Kork attracts more affluent Cambodian households and families. Russian Market and BKK2/BKK3 can offer better price-to-rent ratios. Chroy Changvar can produce higher advertised yields, although supply and resale depth require close inspection. Sen Sok has substantial residential development but varies hugely from project to project.

We would choose Phnom Penh when predictable tenant demand matters more than chasing the highest possible capital gain.

Market	What we like	What worries us	Best fit
Phnom Penh	Deepest tenant and employment base	Heavy condo supply	Long-term rental investor
Siem Reap	Very limited condo stock	Tourism weakness	Lifestyle/long hold
Sihanoukville	Very depressed pricing	Resale and recovery risk	Contrarian buyer
Greater Phnom Penh/Kandal	Jobs, logistics, industry	Speculative land pricing	Long-duration local-market thesis

Is Siem Reap a better property investment than Phnom Penh?

Siem Reap property looks interesting because condo supply is scarce, but current tourism numbers make it a riskier investment than Phnom Penh.

Only a handful of strata-title condominium projects exist in Siem Reap. Local market research has recently identified just three major eligible condo developments, partly because planning and height restrictions around the Angkor area limit the type of supply that can be built.

Scarcity sounds attractive until we look at demand.

Angkor Enterprise recorded 359,471 foreign ticket buyers during the first five months of 2026, down 31.9% from the same period a year earlier. Ticket revenue fell about 30% to $17.2 million. The decline had already been around 32% during the first quarter, so this was not one unusually bad month.

As seen above, Cambodia’s wider economy remains resilient in several areas, but Siem Reap depends much more directly on international tourism.

Short-term-rental competition has grown as well. More apartments, villas and guesthouses can enter Airbnb-style accommodation even when new strata-title condo construction remains limited.

We therefore see Siem Reap as a better fit for somebody who wants personal use, can hold for many years and is comfortable with tourism swings. For dependable year-round rental demand, Phnom Penh currently has the stronger case.

Is Sihanoukville finally cheap enough to buy property?

Sihanoukville property is cheap enough to deserve attention now, but we would still classify it as a high-risk recovery trade.

The city went through Cambodia’s most extreme recent property cycle. Chinese investment, casinos, hotels and condos pushed land and development prices sharply higher before tighter online-gambling rules, the pandemic and incomplete projects caused demand to collapse.

The damage is still visible in empty or unfinished buildings.

That history is also why Sihanoukville can offer prices that would be difficult to find in a functioning prime coastal market. Certain condo projects have marketed units around or below $1,000 per square metre, while major new developments and branded hotels are trying to rebuild the city’s tourism proposition.

The upside could be substantial if Sihanoukville attracts sustained tourism, logistics activity and higher-quality development over several years.

We would only buy there at a price where that recovery remains optional rather than necessary. If the investment requires a big rebound in Chinese buyers or rapid resale liquidity to work, we would pass.

Will Cambodia’s new infrastructure push property prices higher?

Cambodia’s new infrastructure should create property winners, but proximity to a new airport or road does not automatically make a property valuable.

Techo International Airport is the clearest example. Commercial operations moved from the old Phnom Penh airport to the new facility in 2025. The first development stage was designed around capacity of roughly 15 million passengers a year, with much larger expansion possible later.

That changes the geography south of Phnom Penh.

Kandal and surrounding industrial corridors are also attracting factories and logistics investment as manufacturers look for cheaper land while remaining close to Phnom Penh’s labor pool and transport network. Cambodia’s continuing FDI inflow strengthens that trend.

We like infrastructure most when the employment effect can already be seen. A condo near functioning factories, logistics centers, schools and road connections gives us several sources of demand.

We become far more skeptical when a land seller adds 30% to the asking price because a highway, canal or development plan may arrive nearby one day.

Buying the economic activity is safer than buying the map.

Are Cambodian banks still a property-market risk?

Cambodian banks remain a real property-market risk today, although the available numbers do not point to an imminent banking crisis.

The National Bank of Cambodia’s latest Financial Stability Review shows deposit-taking institutions with a total capital ratio of about 22% and a liquidity coverage ratio around 179%. Both provide a substantial cushion.

Asset quality looks much less comfortable.

The World Bank has highlighted a prolonged property downturn as one of the reasons non-performing loans have increased. The IMF now describes real-estate weakness and deteriorating asset quality as key financial-sector vulnerabilities, particularly because property connects household, developer and bank balance sheets.

Cambodia also has an unusually large financial system relative to its economy. The National Bank puts credit at around 128% of GDP. When property loans turn bad in a highly leveraged economy, cleaning them up can take years.

Dollarization adds another wrinkle. Much of Cambodia’s property market operates in US dollars, which is convenient for foreign investors and limits currency-conversion headaches. It also means borrowers feel high global dollar interest rates more directly.

For a cash buyer, bank stress can eventually create excellent deals as indebted owners and developers become more flexible. We simply would not assume all distressed inventory has already cleared.

Are Cambodia property taxes low enough to make buying worthwhile?

Cambodia’s annual property taxes are light, while the 4% transfer tax is large enough to discourage short holding periods.

The standard stamp duty on a transfer of immovable property is generally 4% of the taxable value. Cambodia also levies an annual property tax of 0.1% on the relevant taxable property value above the statutory threshold.

The government has repeatedly used temporary stamp-duty exemptions and preferential policies to support residential transactions. The General Department of Taxation published another property stamp-duty exemption and preferential-policy notification recently, so buyers should check the treatment of their specific transaction before completion.

We would still model the investment using normal taxation until an adviser confirms the exemption applies.

A $100,000 property that later sells for $110,000 has made only a $10,000 headline capital gain. A 4% transfer charge represents $4,000 before legal costs, agency commissions, furnishing, maintenance and any resale discount.

Cambodian property makes much more sense as a multi-year investment than a quick flip.

What kind of Cambodia property would we actually buy today?

We would currently look for a completed one- or two-bedroom strata-title condo with visible occupancy, decent management and a motivated resale seller.

In Phnom Penh, we would rather buy inside a building that already works than gamble on a beautiful brochure. We would visit at different times of day, inspect the common areas, compare every competing rental listing we can find and ask several agents what units have actually rented for.

Smaller units usually give us a wider tenant pool and a lower resale ticket size.

We would also push hard on price.

A well-run building in an established Phnom Penh neighborhood may become attractive at 5%–10% below recent genuine transactions. If vacancy is high or many identical units are for sale, we would want something more like 15%–20%. An off-plan development, distressed Sihanoukville asset or project with obvious execution risk should offer an even bigger margin.

The seller’s original purchase price tells us almost nothing. A condo launched at $150,000 and advertised now at $105,000 still looks expensive if comparable owners are quietly accepting $90,000.

What matters is the price we can obtain relative to what another informed buyer would pay today.

Is now a good time to buy property in Cambodia?

Yes, selectively: now can be a good time to buy property in Cambodia if we are patient, can hold for years and buy a strong asset at a real discount.

We would not describe Cambodia as having reached a clean property-market bottom. The latest IMF assessment still calls real estate subdued. Phnom Penh continues to carry more than 63,000 completed condos. Sales remain slow, banks are dealing with weaker asset quality, and Siem Reap’s tourism figures have recently moved in the wrong direction.

Yet buyers now have something they did not have during the boom: leverage.

Developers have moved downmarket, resale owners face much tougher competition and affordable projects have reset expectations on pricing. Meanwhile, Cambodia continues to receive billions of dollars of foreign investment, merchandise exports are growing quickly, large infrastructure is actually opening and the economy is still expanding.

That combination can create excellent individual purchases before the national market looks healthy.

We would be comfortable buying a completed Phnom Penh condo today if the title is clean, actual rental demand is visible, the building is properly managed and the purchase price is clearly below comparable transactions. A realistic 5%–7% gross yield helps, but we would also insist on enough of a discount to compensate for slow resale.

We would be much more cautious with off-plan luxury towers, informal foreign land structures, tourism-dependent investments and properties whose numbers only work if prices rebound quickly.

Cambodia currently rewards buyers who can afford to be picky.

The broad market still has problems. That is exactly why some of the individual deals are becoming interesting.

Fact-checked and reviewed by our local expert

✓✓✓

Nicholas Runtic

CEO and cofounder of LDP Group

Nicholas Runtic is CEO and co-founder of LDP Group, helping international professionals build tax-efficient real estate portfolios across Germany. With experience spanning Big Four firms, private banking, and property investment, he brings a structured and quality-focused approach to identifying and managing long-term opportunities.

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A team specialized in real estate investing in APAC countries (Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, etc.).

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