When the lock down was announced all customers we had been working on returned to their home countries within just a few days leaving lots of "unfinished" business.

Some cases where in the last stages of negotiations or even price and terms were agreed upon and then everybody put their purchase on hold or pulled out.

Later: Lock down left many people with free time and internet and social media as their predominant tool of communication so we got lots of inquiries from abroad

Nearly simultaneously Thais and foreigners  staying in Thailand began to inquire. As inter provincial traveling was restricted we prepared lots of viewings beforehand and as restrictions were lifted the number of viewings increased to nearly last year's level.

With zero or negative interest rates investment in properties has been regarded as an alternative for quite a time. It isn't hard to  get a positive ROI when competing against ZERO interest rates!

The second group of customers are people who live in Bangkok or other provinces who are looking for a holiday, second home in Pattaya. With better highways (one more just had a soft opening) Pattaya and surrounding areas are becoming increasingly popular with Thais and foreigners living in Bangkok. As Bangkok is very expensive compared with Pattaya some customers even scale down (for example when lease contracts expire) and add a second home around Pattaya.

The new highway has an exit at Ocean Marina. This increased the prices of condos in the 2 towers at the marina a lot. Therefore we  expect similar effects with the high speed train getting on track.

In the meantime the Thai government announced a massive plan to develop U-Tapao Airport, the investment budget will be 290 Billion Baht, for the article in Bangkok Post click HERE

https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/1928332/cabinet-approves-b290bn-upgrade-for-u-tapao-airport

 

Land prices in general and especially close to new infrastructure projects have increased disproportional over the last few years.

Look at land prices as "futures" for the real estate market, you need it to build upon! The idea of Pattaya becoming a "suburb" of Bangkok is materializing: compare this with other big cities like London or Berlin this is not hard to predict, we are actually only lacking a bit behind. 

The "working from home" caused by the lock down will lead to a new kind of time management: we don't need to be in the office every day at a fixed time, lots of work can be done online. Many factories in the outskirts of Bangkok can be reached faster from Pattaya than from the heart of Bangkok! The official policy for the EEC is to reduce the proportion of the GDP earned by tourism by increasing manufacturing, service industry and administration. 

Pattaya as a "safe haven" in times of corona might be an underlying motive but the image of Pattaya and Thailand as a whole has improved substantially over the last decade: the quality of properties has improved and the prices are still reasonable.

Healthcare is now "top notch", personal safety is high, the Thai currency is probably the best performing world wide (making properties and living expensive but also reflecting confidence from investors).

Pattaya has top class restaurants and shopping malls, lots of international schools or schools with English program, is probably one of the best places for golf and so on...

All this accumulates to Pattaya being seen as a multicultural city where East meets West. When you ask me personally why I love Pattaya: I got everything here what I need for daily life, the whole area is booming so I expect my business to continue to grow (my son as a Master of Laws left Bangkok a year ago to join our company!) but one of the main attractions is the variety of people from all over the world I meet as customers, many of them becoming friends.

Temporarily we are surely suffering from travel restrictions as customers cannot come to view properties, therefore we offer real time viewings via video calls. Transfers of properties can be done via Power of Attorney, not a difficult thing as we have been doing our legal paperwork mostly in-house since we started Siam Properties 20 years ago.

We got lots of inquiries for bargains at "corona prices".

We don't see the market as a whole going down for a longer period but there are good deals within the market that might not be there a year from now.

We as Siam Properties (and several other agents) are part of a network where we exchange our bargains so all of our customers can benefit from low prices. These offers might not be (or not all of them) on the agent's websites so you better contact your favorite agent directly.

Huge demand is for studios or one bedrooms below 2 M Baht, customers come from all over the world with no specific continent or country sticking out. Very popular are the so called “resort style” condominiums: several low rise blocks (up to 7 floors) with a gigantic pool area, daybeds, gym, coffee shop, childrens' playground.

And it is a perfect time to buy off plan one of these new and fancy condo projects: all developers offer some promotion like free furniture packages and/or discount on the price, better payments plans can be negotiated etc.

Some agents like Siam Properties offer huge cash backs (some 3 %, for most projects 5%, for some even more) that can directly deducted from the contract payments that have to be done usually after 30 days. So instead of 30% it will be only 25%. Assuming the average price of a condo in a new project ranging from 100-130 000 US% the saving will be 5- 6500 US$, not a small amount that can be spend somewhere else!

Chinese had been the largest groups of buyers into these 5 Star Projects as Pattaya prices are a fraction of what you have to pay in Hongkong, Beijing, Shanghai etc. Design like these project are influenced by the new upper market Asian style, for the individual unit as well as for the common areas like roof top terraces, sky gardens, lobby, pool areas etc.

Buyers are equally split into self-users and investors with many developers combining both investment strategies by giving a rental guarantee for the first few years and including a 15 or 30 days per year self use clause.

Nevertheless a lot of people "play the waiting game", putting the final decision on hold until the future becomes "more clear". 

Surely we humans will overcome this crisis and our lives will be back to pre corona levels in all prospects? Our lives have developed in a certain way over centuries and millenniums despite The Plague, The Spanish Flu, World War I and  and so on.

The most successful people in history could see long term trends, were not impressed but short term panic and acted against the current:

 

As Warren Buffet always states: be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful,