Is Phuket property in a bubble right now?

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Why are people suddenly asking if Phuket property is in a bubble?

Phuket property looks much more bubble-like today because supply kept growing after sales had already started falling hard.

The newest island-wide numbers make the concern much easier to understand. Krungsri Research's latest Phuket housing outlook found that developers launched 7,205 residential units in 2025, down 52.6% from the extraordinary 2024 level. Yet sales fell even faster: 5,374 homes were sold, down 61.1%. By year-end, 14,008 homes were still unsold, 33.3% more than a year earlier.

The money tied up in those unsold homes is even more striking. Krungsri put remaining inventory at THB 193.7 billion, up 50.3% in a single year. That means the increase is concentrated disproportionately in expensive property rather than cheap mass-market housing.

There is still plenty of real demand in Phuket, so calling the entire market a speculative fantasy would go too far. But this is no longer the simple post-Covid boom of 2022 or 2023. Sales have cooled, developers are sitting on substantially more stock, and the market is trying to absorb homes that were conceived when almost everything in Phuket seemed easy to sell.

Phuket residential market	2024 to 2025 change	Latest level	What it tells us
New launches	-52.6%	7,205 units	Developers already pulled back
Residential sales	-61.1%	5,374 units	Demand fell even faster
Unsold homes	+33.3%	14,008 units	Inventory is accumulating
Unsold inventory value	+50.3%	THB 193.7B	Expensive stock is piling up
Condo units still unsold	+36.2%	12,346 units	Condos carry most of the inventory

Has Phuket property supply already outrun demand?

Yes, at an island-wide level Phuket currently has more new property than buyers are clearing fast enough.

The cleanest way to see it is to compare the stock left behind after the boom. Krungsri counted 12,346 unsold condo units at the end of 2025, up 36.2% in one year. Condos alone represented THB 112 billion of remaining inventory.

Even after developers slammed the brakes on launches, new supply was still unusually high. Phuket's 7,205 residential launches in 2025 were roughly 1.8 times the 2019 pre-pandemic level. So "launches are falling" can be true while the market is still producing a lot of homes.

Colliers reaches a similar conclusion from a different dataset. Its latest Phuket report describes condo supply as highly competitive and warns of absorption pressure for projects that do not have a strong location or obvious reason to choose them.

The distinction is important. Phuket does not have too many of every type of property in every location. It has too much interchangeable stock chasing the same groups of foreign buyers in several heavily developed pockets.

Developers can still sell a great project. Selling an average one is becoming considerably harder.

Are Phuket villas already in a bubble?

Phuket villas are the closest part of the market to a genuine bubble right now.

The latest villa numbers are difficult to soften. Krungsri found that only 475 villas were sold in 2025, down 69.6% from the previous year. Remaining villa inventory jumped 56.4% to 2,043 units.

The absorption rate collapsed from 6.3% per month to 1.8%. At that pace, Krungsri calculates that existing villa stock would take around 50 months to clear. A year earlier, the equivalent figure was only ten months.

That is a huge change in market speed.

Developers have reacted. New villa launches dropped 60.6% to 641 units, and CBRE counted only 224 villas launched across 16 projects during the first half of 2026. Most of the new CBRE-tracked stock sits in the THB 15 million to THB 35 million range rather than the broader middle market.

We should therefore be much sharper on villas than on Phuket condos generally. Four years of aggressive development created a luxury-villa market whose supply is now running well ahead of current sales velocity.

Prices do not have to crash immediately for that to hurt buyers. Fifty months of inventory can produce discounting, longer resales, developer incentives and much weaker negotiating power for owners.

Phuket villa market	Previous reading	Latest reading	Change
Villa sales	1,563 units approx.	475 units	-69.6%
Remaining villa inventory	1,306 units approx.	2,043 units	+56.4%
Monthly absorption	6.3%	1.8%	Sharp deterioration
Time to clear inventory	~10 months	~50 months	5x longer
New villa launches	1,627 units approx.	641 units	-60.6%

Are Phuket condo prices getting detached from reality?

Some new Phuket condos are clearly priced ahead of the resale market, and that gap is one of the strongest signs of overheating.

C9 Hotelworks compared Phuket's primary and secondary condo markets and found non-branded new units averaging roughly THB 139,000 per square metre. Comparable secondary stock averaged about THB 100,000.

Buying new therefore came with a 39% premium.

A new building should cost more. Buyers get newer facilities, contemporary layouts, fresh common areas and, sometimes, a much better product. Phuket land and construction costs have also risen sharply.

Still, 39% is a lot to recover when the owner eventually becomes a seller.

That is where the bubble risk becomes practical. A developer can spend heavily on marketing, showrooms, overseas agents and staged payment plans to sell a new condo at THB 139,000 per square metre. Five years later, the owner has to compete with every other resale listing around them without the same sales machine.

C9 also found the island's median condo price around THB 144,000 per square metre in its 2025 market study. We are no longer talking about a tiny luxury corner of Phuket. New-build pricing has moved far enough from older stock that resale value needs much more scrutiny than it did during the early boom.

Are Phuket branded residences pushing prices too far?

Phuket branded residences can justify a premium, but some of the premiums now being charged leave very little room for an average project.

C9 found branded Phuket condos averaging around THB 181,000 per square metre versus THB 141,000 for non-branded units, a 28% difference. For landed property, the gap was much larger: around THB 162,000 per square metre for branded homes versus THB 73,000 for non-branded stock.

Buyers are paying for more than a logo. Hotel management, rental distribution, concierge services, design standards and a recognizable international operator can genuinely improve a property.

The problem comes when buyers assume that every baht of the developer premium will still exist on resale.

The branded market is also getting crowded. C9's latest Asian research values the regional branded-residence pipeline at roughly USD 40 billion, up more than 30% year on year. Phuket is one of the most active parts of that expansion.

Scarcity is changing. Owning a branded residence in Phuket once meant owning something unusual. Buyers entering today increasingly need to ask which brand, which beach, which developer and which exact unit they own.

That will probably create a much wider performance gap between the best branded projects and the rest.

Is Bang Tao and Cherngtalay becoming overbuilt?

Yes, Bang Tao and Cherngtalay now carry a concentration risk that is hard to ignore, even though they remain Phuket's strongest property locations.

C9's broader Phuket supply work counted 43,481 residences available in the primary market and placed 21,625 of them in Cherngtalay. That is about 48% of Phuket's entire primary residential inventory in one area.

And more is coming.

C9's latest Bang Tao study found nine hotels and nine branded-residence developments scheduled between 2026 and 2030. Together they contain 1,640 hotel rooms and 1,649 branded residences. Retail is expanding too, while North London Collegiate School and other international-school investments are strengthening the district's appeal to families.

There is a good reason developers keep building here. FazWaz analyzed 54,628 property enquiries from December 2025 through May 2026 and found Choeng Thale, covering Laguna, Bang Tao and Layan, ranked first for both rentals and purchases. It generated 9,954 enquiries, roughly 18% of the island total.

The area therefore has unusually strong demand and unusually large supply at the same time.

For now, demand is keeping Bang Tao attractive. The risk comes from extrapolating that success indefinitely. Almost half the island's primary stock cannot keep concentrating in one corridor without eventually making individual projects compete much harder for the same buyers and tenants.

Bang Tao / Cherngtalay	Latest evidence	Scale
Primary residences in Cherngtalay	C9 Phuket supply study	21,625 units
Share of Phuket primary inventory	Calculated from C9 data	~48%
Buyer + tenant enquiries in Choeng Thale	FazWaz six-month dataset	9,954
Share of Phuket enquiries	Calculated from FazWaz data	~18%
New branded residences scheduled through 2030	C9 Bang Tao study	1,649
New hotel rooms scheduled through 2030	C9 Bang Tao study	1,640

Are Phuket rents still strong enough to support property prices?

Yes, Phuket rental demand is still genuinely strong today, but it supports cheaper and mid-market homes much better than the luxury stock developers keep adding.

FazWaz recorded 39,042 rental enquiries over six months across its property-platform network. Rentals represented 71% of all Phuket enquiries, or roughly 2.5 rental enquiries for every purchase enquiry.

The median requested rent was only THB 35,000 per month.

That number tells us much more than a glossy villa listing does. Nearly 22,724 rental enquiries were below THB 40,000 per month. Another 8,098 were between THB 40,000 and THB 75,000. Demand became much thinner above THB 150,000, where FazWaz recorded 2,848 enquiries.

One-bedroom units were the most requested product, with 12,562 rental enquiries.

The encouraging part is that rental budgets recently moved higher. Monthly medians went from THB 30,000 early in the observed period to THB 35,000, then THB 40,000 and THB 38,000. That gives landlords some evidence of genuine pricing power.

But we should not use a healthy THB 35,000 rental market to justify any purchase price. A THB 5 million condo and a THB 25 million condo can be competing for completely different tenants.

Phuket has tenants. What the market increasingly lacks is unlimited numbers of tenants willing to pay luxury rents.

Monthly rental budget	FazWaz enquiries	Share of rental demand
Under THB 20,000	11,396	29%
THB 20,000-40,000	11,328	29%
THB 40,000-75,000	8,098	21%
THB 75,000-150,000	4,990	13%
Above THB 150,000	2,848	7%

Is Phuket tourism still growing fast enough to justify the property boom?

No, Phuket tourism is currently healthy but basically flat, so developers can no longer rely on explosive visitor growth to absorb every new property.

CBRE's newest Phuket figures put airport passenger arrivals at 4.39 million in the first half of 2026, down 1.4% from 4.46 million during the equivalent period a year earlier.

Hotels tell a similar story. CBRE found occupancy down 0.8 percentage points while average daily rates increased only 0.9%.

C9's hotel dataset is slightly different but points in the same direction: average daily rates rose about 5% while occupancy fell around 6%. Bang Tao itself managed a strong 20% increase in hotel room rates despite a 2% occupancy decline, showing that premium parts of Phuket still have considerable pricing power.

None of this looks like a tourism crisis. Phuket remains an enormous international destination.

It does remove one of the easiest arguments used during the boom, though. Developers can no longer say that rapidly rising tourist numbers will naturally fill the next wave of villas, condos and hotel residences.

Property supply is still expanding while tourism has entered a much flatter phase. From here, more of the housing market has to be supported by residents, long-stay foreigners and repeat property buyers rather than an ever-growing stream of tourists.

Are foreign buyers abandoning Phuket property?

No, foreign buyers are still unusually strong in Phuket, even while foreign condo demand across Thailand has weakened.

This is one of the most important pieces of evidence against calling Phuket an island-wide bubble that is already bursting.

Thailand's Real Estate Information Center reported a 17.3% year-on-year fall in foreign condo transfers nationally during the first quarter of 2026. Chinese buyers in particular became more cautious.

Phuket moved in the opposite direction. Krungsri's latest analysis, using official transfer data, found foreign condo transfers in Phuket up 52.2% year on year to 420 units. Transfer value jumped 76.2% to THB 2.4 billion.

CBRE also reported that 67% of its Phuket residential buyers during the first half of 2026 were international.

The buyer pool has become more varied too. CBRE saw demand from the UK, Russia, Canada, India, the US and several European countries. FazWaz's enquiry data went even wider: 62% of its Phuket demand came from overseas across 141 countries.

This diversification gives Phuket a real advantage. A collapse in one nationality no longer automatically destroys the market.

Foreign demand can still turn quickly, and Phuket remains unusually dependent on internationally mobile money. But as of now, actual transfer data shows foreigners leaning into Phuket rather than fleeing it.

Foreign demand indicator	Thailand overall	Phuket
Foreign condo transfers, latest Q1 YoY	-17.3%	+52.2%
Phuket foreign transfers	—	420 units
Phuket transfer value YoY	—	+76.2%
CBRE international buyer share	—	67%
FazWaz overseas enquiry share	—	62%

Is Phuket property mostly speculation, or do people actually live there?

Phuket now has much deeper long-stay housing demand than it did before the pandemic, which gives the boom a real economic base.

The rental figures already point in that direction. FazWaz recorded almost 15,000 enquiries for houses and villas in only six months, alongside more than 20,000 for condos and apartments. That scale is difficult to explain through holiday speculation alone.

The physical geography of Phuket is changing too.

Bang Tao and Cherngtalay have accumulated supermarkets, gyms, restaurants, offices, healthcare, international schools and large retail projects. C9's latest Bang Tao research specifically links the next wave of investment to the area's transition from resort strip to international residential hub.

International education is especially relevant because schools create sticky demand. Families that move children to Phuket generally need year-round housing, cars, healthcare, shopping and services. They behave very differently from tourists renting for ten nights.

Remote workers, entrepreneurs and people splitting their year between Phuket and another country add another layer of demand.

We should therefore resist one of the easiest bubble narratives: that thousands of Phuket homes are being sold to investors with nobody underneath them.

There are people underneath them.

The bigger problem is that developers may now be building more expensive homes than that growing resident base actually needs.

Have Phuket developers started getting nervous?

Yes, developers clearly became more cautious after the 2024 frenzy, although they have not stopped betting on Phuket.

Krungsri found new residential launches falling 52.6% in 2025. Villa launches fell even harder, by 60.6%. That is a serious supply response rather than a minor adjustment.

The reason is visible in the inventory figures. Developers finished 2025 with THB 193.7 billion of unsold housing, so launching another giant wave at the same pace would have been reckless.

Yet the latest CBRE data shows developers have not retreated altogether. New Phuket condo project launches increased 44.8% in the first half of 2026 compared with the previous six months. Large publicly listed Thai developers remain among the most active players.

The behavior has changed, but developers have not left.

Developers are still convinced Phuket has a future, particularly at the luxury end and in proven locations. What has disappeared is the assumption that almost any product will sell quickly.

Krungsri expects developers to focus more on small luxury projects, branded residences and homes in locations with obvious resale and rental demand. Colliers similarly describes the market as becoming more selective.

That shift usually appears after the easiest money in a property cycle has already been made.

Could delayed Phuket condo completions be hiding the real oversupply problem?

Yes, delayed completions may currently be giving Phuket's rental and resale markets more breathing room than they will have later.

CBRE recorded only three condo projects completing during the first half of 2026, totaling 1,196 units. That was 56.8% fewer completions than during the previous half-year because several projects were delayed or not ready for handover.

Launches and completions therefore tell very different stories.

A condo sold off-plan in 2024 does not compete for tenants in 2024. It becomes a competing rental only after handover. The same applies to resale: investors cannot all discover what their completed units are really worth until enough projects have finished.

This creates a lag in Phuket's bubble test.

The island has already accumulated 12,346 unsold condos in Krungsri's dataset. C9 separately counted more than 43,000 residences available across Phuket's primary market in its broader supply study. Those methodologies measure different things, but both point to a very large stock of property still moving through the development and sales system.

As more units reach completion, we should expect the clearest pressure first in projects containing hundreds of similar investor-owned one-bedroom apartments.

A landlord with the only modern one-bedroom apartment near a beach can charge a premium. A landlord competing with 80 owners in the same building has a much harder job.

Which Phuket properties look most bubble-like today?

Generic luxury villas and heavily marked-up new-build investment units currently look much more vulnerable than scarce, proven Phuket property.

Krungsri found 57.8% of the value of all Phuket's unsold residential inventory sitting in condos, with THB 112 billion of unsold condo stock. It also found the island's remaining inventory becoming increasingly concentrated at the expensive end of the market.

The average newly launched villa was particularly expensive. Krungsri puts average villa pricing around THB 44.8 million per unit, with individual projects ranging from roughly THB 12.9 million to THB 140 million.

That creates a mismatch with the actual buyer pool.

FazWaz's six-month enquiry data puts the median Phuket purchase budget at only THB 7.5 million. Of 15,586 purchase enquiries, 5,826 were below THB 5 million and another 3,414 were between THB 5 million and THB 10 million. Only 1,112 enquiries had budgets above THB 50 million.

So the broadest demand sits much lower than the product getting the most attention.

We would be most cautious with villas whose rental assumptions require consistently exceptional nightly rates, condos bought far above nearby resale prices, peripheral projects sold mainly through future-infrastructure promises, and large projects where dozens of owners will eventually list nearly identical units.

Prime beachfront land follows a different logic. So do genuinely scarce units in established developments and homes bought close to realistic resale value.

The phrase "Phuket property" hides an enormous spread of risk these days.

Would a Phuket property bubble actually end with prices crashing?

Probably not. Phuket's current excesses are more likely to show up first through slow resales, discounts and disappointing yields than through a sudden island-wide price collapse.

A lot of Phuket property is owned by relatively wealthy cash buyers. Those owners are under less pressure to sell than heavily leveraged homeowners in a conventional mortgage crisis.

Developers also have ways to lower the effective purchase price without cutting the advertised price. Furniture packages, commission subsidies, payment terms, guaranteed-rent packages and transfer incentives can all become more generous while the official price per square metre barely moves.

Owners can do something similar by simply waiting.

Imagine somebody buys a condo for THB 10 million and sells it for the same THB 10 million five years later. The headline price shows no crash. After inflation, maintenance fees, furnishing, taxes, missed investment returns and selling costs, the owner has still taken a meaningful loss.

Phuket's 39% gap between new non-branded condo prices and secondary stock already gives us a version of this problem. The painful moment may come when recent buyers try to resell rather than when developers publish lower price lists.

A slow bubble deflation can be much less dramatic to watch and just as disappointing to own.

What would prove that Phuket's property boom is really breaking?

We would call Phuket's property boom genuinely broken if today's inventory problem starts dragging down rents, resales and foreign demand at the same time.

Villa inventory is already flashing red. Overall unsold stock is rising. Tourism is flat. New-build premiums remain large.

Those weaknesses have not yet contaminated every part of the market.

Foreign condo transfers in Phuket are currently increasing strongly. Rental enquiries remain deep. Cherngtalay continues to attract more buying and rental interest than any other Phuket submarket in FazWaz's dataset. Developers are still launching new projects, albeit much more selectively than during the peak.

The next test is completion.

If thousands of previously sold condos reach handover and rental budgets continue rising, Phuket can work through a surprising amount of inventory. Strong projects may keep selling while weaker developments slowly discount.

If completions rise while rents soften, foreign transfers fall, secondary listings multiply and villa absorption stays around today's depressed level, the diagnosis changes quickly.

We would then have the classic combination a property bubble eventually struggles to survive: too many owners trying to monetize assets built for a level of demand that no longer exists.

So, is Phuket property in a bubble right now?

Partly yes. Phuket has an island-wide oversupply problem today, while villas, expensive new developments and parts of Bang Tao/Cherngtalay have gone far enough that calling them bubble-like is justified.

The freshest numbers make a softer conclusion difficult to defend. Residential sales fell 61.1% in 2025. Unsold units increased 33.3%. The value of that remaining inventory jumped 50.3% to almost THB 194 billion. Villa sales collapsed 69.6%, and the latest calculated villa absorption rate implies roughly 50 months of stock.

Those are serious excesses.

At the same time, Phuket still has something many genuine property bubbles lose before they burst: buyers and tenants.

Foreign condo transfers on the island recently rose 52.2% year on year even as Thailand's national foreign-transfer market contracted. FazWaz recorded 54,628 buyer and tenant enquiries in six months, with 71% coming from renters. Choeng Thale remains exceptionally popular. Rental budgets have recently moved higher rather than lower.

That evidence keeps us from declaring the whole island a bubble ready to pop.

The more accurate picture is that Phuket built too much, too quickly, at prices increasingly aimed at wealthy foreigners. Demand has remained strong enough to prevent a broad correction, but it is no longer strong enough to make all that supply look comfortable.

The villa market has already crossed the line into clear oversupply. Generic new condos bought at large developer premiums are risky. Bang Tao still has the demand to justify its status as Phuket's hottest property district, but almost half of the island's primary residential inventory sitting around Cherngtalay is an extraordinary concentration, especially with another wave of branded residences coming.

For now, the likely correction is selective rather than spectacular. Weak projects can sit unsold. Villa owners can wait much longer for buyers. Developers can offer incentives. Rental yields can come in below projections. New-build buyers can discover that resale prices are materially lower than the prices they originally paid.

An island-wide crash is not our base case today.

But calling Phuket simply "a strong property market" is now too generous. The boom has produced real excess, and some parts of the island are already behaving exactly the way an early property bubble behaves when supply finally catches up with enthusiasm.

Fact-checked and reviewed by our local expert

✓✓✓

Attaya Suriyawonghae 🇹🇭

Real Estate Broker, Zest Real Estate

Attaya is a certified Thai Real Estate Broker who knows the Phuket market inside and out. With years of experience, she can guide you through the intricacies of the island's vibrant real estate scene, whether you're seeking a luxurious beachfront villa or a high-growth investment opportunity. After speaking with her, we reviewed the blog post, corrected a few points, expanded on others, and added her personal experience.

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BAMBOOROUTES

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

We are a team of financial experts, legal professionals, developers, and local real estate specialists dedicated to helping people like you avoid mistakes when investing in real estate in a foreign place, particularly in Phuket. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can check our presentation page.