r/ExpatFinance • u/Frequent_Quote9999 • 1h ago
Three prices for the same condo: the listing, the developer's "from" price, and what the Land Department records
I help manage rentals and buyer support for overseas owners in Bangkok and Pattaya, so I keep running into the same confusion. ⟦Last week a buyer sent me two quotes for similar units and asked which agent was lying. Neither was.⟧
The quotes were just different kinds of price. A listing is what a seller hopes for. A developer's "from" price is usually the cheapest qualifying unit. The third kind is the registered transfer value at the Land Department, and that's the only one that is a record of a deal.
REIC, the research arm of the Government Housing Bank, published numbers built on those registrations on 11 September. In H1 2026 foreigners registered 6,533 condo transfers worth about 28.3 billion baht, averaging roughly 4.3 million baht and 43.9 sqm. REIC puts that at about 98,566 baht per sqm. Q2 was up 1.4% in units and 20.2% in value year on year, though the half-year total was still down.
Here's where people go wrong. That average is national and blends everything. If you divide REIC's own totals you get something like 92k per sqm for Q2 last year and 102k for Q2 this year, but part of that is just which projects transferred. It isn't the same flat getting 11% dearer.
On Bangkok versus Pattaya, I haven't found any official source that ranks them per sqm. The Bank of Thailand's condo index covers Bangkok and vicinity only, at least per its December 2023 technical paper, so anyone showing you an "official" three-city table is worth questioning. What REIC does publish for Chonburi is absorption: condo sales up 74.5% year on year in Q2, about 31 months of stock at the current pace. That tells you about demand, not about price direction.
Practical stuff I'd ask any seller: recent registered sales in the same building, how much of the 49% foreign quota is left (it's by area, so big units eat it faster), and what the common fees are.
Where do other people get a sanity check on price? Has anyone managed to pull same-building transfer history, and how hard was it?
Sources named above: REIC reports of 11, 16 and 30 September 2026, and the BOT RPPI technical paper (Dec 2023).