Which Housing Markets Do Cambodia's Indicators Actually Cover?

Cambodia does not have one public number that simultaneously answers questions about a unit's price, transaction volume, new construction and rental demand. The National Bank of Cambodia's residential property price index is a price series; administrative statistics separately count properties sold and projects approved; professional research may estimate the existing condominium stock in Phnom Penh. All of them concern property, but they observe different things.

That is why two credible sources can move in different directions without contradicting each other. More approved projects do not mean the same number of buildings were completed. A larger completed stock does not imply an equal increase in sales. A residential price index does not have to track the average price of newly launched condominiums. Before comparing the signals, the unit being counted has to be clear.

Geography can change the meaning just as much. A national count of condominium sales says something about activity across Cambodia, but it does not by itself describe Phnom Penh. Knight Frank's existing condominium supply series, by contrast, is specifically a Phnom Penh condo measure, so it should not be extended to the whole country or to landed housing.

For a buyer, the practical lesson is that the authority of the publisher does not make every figure suitable for every question. An official series may be the right tool for financial-stability monitoring or administrative activity, while a segment-specific market study may be more useful for understanding competition among condos. The problem begins when the boundaries of one series quietly expand into a claim about “the market” as a whole.

The National Bank of Cambodia's Residential Property Price Index is the clearest example of why an indicator's name is not enough. NBC's data page was still publishing the series in May 2026, and current releases distinguish at least Cambodia as a whole, Phnom Penh and other provinces. The detailed IMF methodology report published in 2024, however, described the underlying data as residential-property loans from commercial banks. Cash purchases, developer financing and financing through foreign banks were outside that dataset. The same report said there were too few observations for condominiums and apartments, so the published RPPI covered houses. Newer NBC tables show a continued and updated series, but the public release does not provide enough evidence to relabel it as a condominium price index.

Administrative figures answer a different set of questions. In its Financial Stability Review 2024, NBC, citing the real-estate regulator, reported 2,275 condominium units sold in 2024, up 35.6% from the previous year, while house sales fell to 1,744 units. That is a count of sold properties, not a price index. The figure is national in the cited presentation; it does not turn into a Phnom Penh measure or reveal the price of a particular condo segment.

Project approvals are a separate flow again. Financial Stability Review 2025 reports 55 approved residential projects in 2025, up from 40 in 2024, including 41 housing projects and 11 condominium projects alongside other categories captured by the administrative series. An approval records an administrative stage. Construction, changes to a scheme, completion and handover still sit between approval and finished housing, so an approval count should not be read as completed supply.

Professional market research gets closer to the physical condominium market, but it has its own coverage. Knight Frank put Phnom Penh's existing condominium supply at 63,334 units in H2 2025; two completed developments added 1,770 units during the same half-year. The report also gives an average selling price of US$676 per sq m of net saleable area for new launches in H2 2025. These are useful segment measures, but existing stock, newly completed units and the price of new launches are three different indicators. None of them, on its own, is the average achieved transaction price for every condo sold in the city.

Property platforms observe another market layer. Realestate.com.kh's 2026 condo guide says the company completed more than 2,000 condominium transactions—sales and rentals—over the preceding 24 months. That is valuable evidence of activity inside the platform's own business, but without an external denominator it should not be treated as a census of the entire market. It also needs to stay separate from live listings on the same site: a seller's asking price and a completed transaction answer different questions.

The Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey 2023 observes something different again: households and occupied dwellings rather than property transactions. NIS reports that 25.9% of Phnom Penh households rented their dwelling and 70.0% owned it. That is useful context for how households occupy housing in the capital, but it is not the renter share of the condo sector, a vacancy rate for a building or a measure of demand for a particular unit type. APS Research Center likewise describes its research base as a combination of agency transaction data, field surveys and secondary sources, reinforcing the point that professional-market figures need to be read within the method and coverage of the specific report.

The same label—property market—can hide very different units of observation. This table shows the question each series can answer without stretching its meaning.

If the question is “where is the broader housing market moving?”, the NBC RPPI provides useful context, particularly because the publication contains a separate Phnom Penh line. That is still not enough for a condominium purchase. The latest detailed public methodology describes a loan-based house index, while the current table does not publish a separate condo index. RPPI movement is therefore best read as context for the housing segment it covers, not as an automatic adjustment to the price of an apartment in a tower.

For “how many condominiums are being sold?”, the administrative sold-property series is closer to the question. It is useful because it separates condominiums from houses, but the 2024 count is presented nationally. Without a city breakdown, it does not tell a buyer how many of those sales occurred in Phnom Penh, which price tiers they belonged to, or how much came from new development versus resale. A change in transaction count also says nothing by itself about the average transaction price.

For competition and the physical scale of the segment, Phnom Penh-specific professional research is more relevant. Knight Frank's 63,334-unit figure describes existing condominium supply at the end of H2 2025, while the 1,770 units completed during the half-year are additions from two identified projects. The 11 condominium projects approved administratively in 2025 sit earlier in the development cycle. These figures become informative when read as different stages—approval, construction, completion and existing stock—not when treated as interchangeable measures.

Price questions require an even tighter choice of series. Knight Frank's average new-launch price applies to new supply in a specific period and to the area convention used in the report; live listings show what sellers currently ask; Realestate.com.kh's proprietary data reflects transactions handled by the platform. The same building can look different across those sources because a developer sale, a resale and a listing may have different incentives, furniture packages, payment terms and square-metre definitions.

CSES renter share answers a different question again: how common renting is among Phnom Penh households. It is useful social context, but it does not establish condo demand in a particular district or reveal vacancy in a selected building. Once the decision has narrowed to one property, broad market indicators need to give way to comparable units in the same building or a genuinely similar segment, the actual deal terms and building-level rental evidence where it is available.

Even an unchanged series title does not guarantee that an old and a new value were compiled in exactly the same way. The IMF's 2024 technical-assistance report on Cambodia's RPPI recommended changes to data cleaning, stratification and parts of the compilation process, together with recalculated indexes for comparison with the published series. NBC continues to publish the index in newer releases. For a historical chart, that makes it safer to use one current vintage of the series rather than splice an old saved value to a new release without checking whether the series has been revised.

A change in coverage breaks comparability even faster. A national count of condominiums sold cannot be placed beside Phnom Penh's existing condominium stock and turned into an “absorption rate”: the first is a flow of sales recorded over a period, while the second is a stock of units at a point in time. A meaningful rate would require a compatible numerator and denominator, the same geography, and a clear rule for which projects and transactions enter both sides.

Price measures are particularly sensitive to market composition. An average price for new launches can change sharply because a half-year contains more affordable or more premium projects, even if like-for-like units have barely moved. A quality-adjusted price index is designed for a different purpose. A live-listing median answers a third question and depends on which units are advertised at that moment and how duplicate listings are handled.

Two growth rates are directly comparable only after at least four things line up: the same property type, the same geography, the same event being measured and a compatible indicator definition. If one of those changes, disagreement does not by itself show that a source is wrong. It often shows that similarly named figures are observing different slices of the market.

Even a well-chosen market indicator remains context. It can show that condominium stock is large, that administrative sales have accelerated, or that a particular price series is falling. It cannot automatically produce the fair value of a unit on a specific floor with a specific view, layout, furniture package and condition. That requires genuinely comparable listings and, where available, completed transactions from the same building or a closely comparable property set.

Market-wide statistics also do not establish the legal and commercial facts of the chosen purchase. They say nothing about whether the seller can transfer the unit, what title will be delivered, whether management fees are outstanding, which payments are included in the price, whether the unit carries existing obligations, or whether a promised rental arrangement matches the contract. A good market benchmark can make an unusually high or low story easier to spot, but it cannot replace the documents and terms of the deal itself.

The same limit applies to rental analysis. Phnom Penh's household renter share, overall condominium stock and platform activity can all show that a rental market exists and provide scale. They do not reveal occupancy in the selected building, downtime for the specific unit, actual owner expenses or how a headline rent changes after discounts. The closer the decision gets to one property, the more building- and unit-level evidence matters; broad indicators become a plausibility check rather than a ready-made valuation.