Phnom Penh The Cost of an Extra Condo Bedroom

A second bedroom rarely appears as a standalone feature added to an otherwise identical condo. The two-bedroom plan is usually larger, may have another bathroom, may sit on a different stack or corner and can be sold under a different unit type altogether. The full price gap therefore measures a move into a different product within the building, not a separate market price for one room.

Norea Square makes the point clearly. The developer's published Type 1A one-bedroom is 49.06 sq m gross and starts at US$63,446 after the stated launch discount, while the Type 2A two-bedroom is 85.58 sq m and starts at US$110,679. The additional US$47,233 buys another 36.52 sq m as well as another bedroom. Odom Living sits in a very different price bracket but shows the same structural issue: the official one-bedroom starting price is US$275,000 and the published 1A type is 78 sq m; the two-bedroom starts at US$410,300 and the 2D type is 111 sq m.

Comparability can still break inside one project. A starting price may be tied to a particular floor or campaign, a resale unit may include furniture or a tenant, and one portal may quote gross floor area while another uses internal area. A one-bedroom-plus-study or flex room is not automatically equivalent to a conventional two-bedroom merely because a listing label makes it look similar.

That is why citywide bedroom averages are only background here. They combine buildings, neighbourhoods, ages and sales channels that can move price more than the bedroom count itself. For a real purchase decision, the useful reference is the closest one-bedroom alternative in the same development, on the same area basis and under similar commercial conditions. The prices below are current asks or published price-list figures, not achieved transaction prices.

Across the six projects that can be reduced to a usable same-project comparison, the purchase-price gap is strikingly wide: from US$17,850 at Kingston Royale to US$151,920 at G.A.T.O Tower. Relative to the one-bedroom reference, that is roughly 34% to 107%. The spread is more informative than a single average because base pricing, layout size and the way prices are published differ materially from project to project.

G.A.T.O Tower is the cleanest illustration of a large percentage gap that is mostly a size story. The current project listing shows a 45 sq m one-bedroom on the 28th floor at US$142,425 and a 93 sq m two-bedroom on the same floor at US$294,345. Both work out to US$3,165 per sq m. The US$151,920 difference, about 107%, arrives with another 48 sq m; the two-bedroom is effectively more than twice the published floor area.

Norea Square sits in a lower price bracket: its published launch types move from US$63,446 to US$110,679, a US$47,233 or roughly 74% increase, while gross area rises by 36.52 sq m. Odom Living moves from US$275,000 for the published 78 sq m one-bedroom reference to US$410,300 for the 111 sq m two-bedroom, adding US$135,300, about 49%, and 33 sq m. Unlike G.A.T.O, the published price per square metre is also higher on that two-bedroom type, so area alone does not account for the full difference.

Time Square 11 BKK3 offers a useful same-floor check. Current portal data show 45 sq m for a one-bedroom and 75 sq m for a two-bedroom on the seventh floor at the same US$1,299 per sq m. Applying that rate gives implied totals of about US$58,455 and US$97,425, a US$38,970 gap for 30 additional sq m. Those totals are calculated from the published rate rather than separately quoted full prices, so they should be read as a transparent arithmetic comparison, not as two confirmed contract prices.

At the lower end, Kingston Royale currently shows 43 sq m at US$52,500 and 67 sq m at US$70,350, a US$17,850 or roughly 34% increase for 24 more sq m. Diamond Bay Garden publishes starting prices of US$159,461 for one-bedroom types and US$228,734 for two-bedroom types, a US$69,273 or roughly 43% increase. Its areas are ranges rather than a single mapped pair, so the row is useful for product-level context but carries less precision than a specific matched plan. Taken together, the examples show the cost of moving up within each building; they do not establish a citywide bedroom premium.

The sales channel matters most at the ends of the range. A developer price list describes new inventory and may include a time-limited campaign, while a resale ask is set by an individual owner and can sit below the development's published table. That means Kingston Royale's US$17,850 gap should not be compared directly with Odom Living's US$135,300 gap as evidence that an extra bedroom is somehow cheaper in one building. Each row is designed to measure the upgrade inside its own project, not to rank developments against one another.

Snapshot as of 29 September 2026. Evidence strength varies by row: G.A.T.O Tower and Kingston Royale are closer to specific current units; Norea Square and Odom Living use published types and starting prices; Time Square 11 uses a common per-square-metre rate on the same floor; Diamond Bay Garden uses starting prices with area ranges. Cost per added sq m is a pair-level expansion metric, not a bedroom price.

In the more precisely matched rows, the move to two bedrooms comes with roughly 24–48 additional square metres. That is too much physical space to describe the entire purchase-price gap as payment for one room. G.A.T.O Tower adds 48 sq m while keeping the published rate at US$3,165 per sq m; Norea Square adds 36.52 sq m; Odom Living adds 33 sq m; Kingston Royale adds 24 sq m. Diamond Bay Garden is less exact because its starting prices are attached to area ranges, so the honest result there is an added-area band of roughly 29–45 sq m.

Dividing the extra purchase price by the added area gives a useful unit-specific expansion measure. It is about US$744 per added sq m at Kingston Royale, US$1,293 at Norea Square, US$1,299 at Time Square 11, US$3,165 at G.A.T.O Tower and US$4,100 at Odom Living. Those numbers are not a ranking of value across developments. They inherit each building's location, specification, floor position, fit-out and pricing policy; their purpose is to explain how the larger layout changes the cost inside that particular comparison.

Floor area and room function can also point in different directions. Odom Living publishes an 80 sq m one-bedroom 1B type, which is larger than the 75 sq m two-bedroom currently shown at Time Square 11. That is a cross-project example and should not be used to calculate a bedroom premium, but it illustrates the practical trade-off: one large bedroom and a generous living area serve a different need from two smaller enclosed rooms. Bedroom count cannot replace a floor plan, and total square metres cannot tell you how useful the second room is.

The area basis matters most when a source publishes both gross and internal figures. Norea Square lists Type 1A at 49.06 sq m gross and 38.35 sq m net, while Type 2A is 85.58 sq m gross and 66.90 sq m net. Mixing gross for one unit with net for the other would distort every downstream metric. The calculator therefore assumes the same area definition for both inputs and does not try to infer room quality from a marketing floor plan.

A second check is to compare the capital per added square metre with the ordinary price per square metre inside the same pair. At G.A.T.O Tower the two figures are identical because both selected layouts are published at US$3,165 per sq m. At Odom Living the incremental figure is higher than the one-bedroom's per-square-metre price, which signals that the upgrade contains something beyond a simple area multiplication. The comparison does not identify the cause by itself, but it tells the buyer when a single area rate no longer explains the price gap.

Formula: premium = two-bedroom price minus one-bedroom price; added area = two-bedroom area minus one-bedroom area; capital per added sq m = premium divided by added area. Both areas must use the same basis. The defaults reproduce Norea Square's published June 2026 launch example and are not a Phnom Penh market average; the calculator does not project yield or resale performance.

Service charges rise with floor area only when the building actually bills on a per-square-metre basis and the chargeable area is defined. Kingston Royale's project page states US$0.90 per sq m per month. Applying that rate mechanically to the published 43 and 67 sq m pair would add US$21.60 a month, or US$259.20 a year. The public page does not specify which area definition the management office uses, however, so that number is best treated as an illustration of the formula rather than a confirmed owner liability.

Odom Living shows why missing fee details should not be filled with a plausible-looking number. Public third-party pages quote conflicting management-fee figures and bases for the residential component. Until a current management schedule or contract establishes the applicable rate and chargeable area, an exact annual increase from 78 to 111 sq m would create false precision. Utilities are even less suitable for a bedroom-based rule because electricity and water depend on actual use.

For rent, the most useful comparisons are within completed buildings, not a citywide average. R&F City currently shows a one-bedroom around 54 sq m asking roughly US$450 per month and two-bedroom examples around 76–77 sq m asking about US$500–650. That is a US$50–200 uplift in those particular listings, but R&F sale asks also overlap widely because floor, furnishing and seller circumstances vary. The rental difference therefore cannot be turned into a payback period for the purchase premium.

Le Condé BKK1 provides a different current snapshot. Excluding serviced-apartment offers and the unusually large 180 sq m two-bedroom, standard one-bedroom condo asks in the live feed sit around US$600–800 per month, while standard-size two-bedroom examples are around US$1,000–1,250. These are landlord asking rents, not signed leases, and the two-bedroom side is much thinner, so the range should not be presented as a precise building median.

A higher monthly ask only becomes economically meaningful when it is set beside the extra purchase capital and recurring ownership costs. An extra US$200 or US$400 a month does not by itself answer whether a purchase premium of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars makes sense. A unit-level assessment needs the acquisition price, achieved rent, vacancy, management, repairs and the building's documented charges. Public listings can show the current asking landscape; they cannot prove future net return.

It is mathematically possible to divide the annual asking-rent uplift by the added purchase capital. The current evidence is too uneven to make that ratio meaningful because the sale and rental references often concern different units, dates and fit-out conditions. This page therefore does not calculate it. Keeping the actual asks beside their limitations is more useful than producing a clean percentage that could be mistaken for a return forecast.