Time Square 9 — The Gatsby Residence

The Gatsby theme is a real product choice rather than a reason to assume investment performance. The developer uses a 1920s Art Deco vocabulary for the façade and shared interiors and has published an extensive amenity programme: a rooftop pool and children’s pool, fitness facilities, a yoga studio, meeting rooms, a lounge and café, games space, a poker room, cigar lounge and private cinema. For an owner-occupier, the question is whether those spaces genuinely improve day-to-day living. For a landlord, the relevant question is whether the target tenant values them enough to support rent and occupancy after service charges. More amenities also mean more equipment, staffing and common areas to maintain. The public primary material does not provide an approved long-term operating budget, so it would be premature to turn the amenity list into a net-yield assumption. The management fee, reserve fund, parking rights and rules for owner use should be checked against the current sale pack rather than inferred from renders.

The address is one of the easier parts of the proposition to understand. The developer and the principal agency sources consistently place Time Square 9 on Street 278 in BKK1. This is a central-city product, not a resort scheme, so the natural demand cases are an owner who wants to live in BKK1, a tenant who prioritises central Phnom Penh, or a future purchaser seeking the same location. Location alone, however, does not make every stack equivalent. Orientation, heat exposure, street noise, proximity to parking ventilation or rooftop plant, and whether a view can be protected by surrounding development can all change the quality of two otherwise identical layouts. Before selecting a unit, the useful document is the typical-floor plan showing unit numbers, lift core, stairs, service rooms and compass orientation. A high-floor premium only makes sense when the buyer knows what that floor and stack actually deliver.

Megakim is not a first-time developer. Its own portfolio pages identify Time Square 1, Time Square 2 and Time Square 3 as earlier developments, with Time Square 2 described as completed in 2021 and Time Square 3 in 2023. Time Square 306, also known as Time Square 5, is described as having topped out in September 2024. That history is useful, but it should not be simplified into a blanket claim that every prior Time Square project has already been delivered exactly as sold. The official Time Square 9 page calls TS6 one of the completed projects, while the wider project catalogue describes Time Square 302 / Time Square 6 in language that does not cleanly support the same status. A buyer doing developer due diligence should therefore sample individual prior buildings: completion date, handover quality, occupancy, title issuance and how defects or delays were handled. The number of simultaneous new towers also matters because execution capacity is tested across the whole pipeline, not one sales brochure at a time.

The developer gives an expected completion around 2029. Third-party project sheets commonly narrow that to late 2029, while some separate construction completion from a handover date in early 2030. Those dates can coexist because structural completion, practical handover and individual title registration are not necessarily the same event. What matters financially is the sale agreement: the contractual handover date, any grace period, how instalments are tied to construction milestones, and what remedies apply if delivery slips materially. The June 2026 groundbreaking confirms that Time Square 9 moved beyond a purely conceptual launch, but a ceremony is only a starting point for monitoring execution. A serious off-plan review should keep checking visible site progress against the payment schedule rather than assuming that a published target year will automatically be met.

Cambodian ownership law also needs to be read on its own terms. A qualifying foreign buyer can own an eligible private unit in a registered co-owned building, but not the underlying land. Foreign ownership is capped at 70% of the total surface area of all private units in the building, and ground and underground floors are excluded from foreign ownership. Time Square 9 is marketed by agencies as strata-title eligible, and the developer displays licensing and title-related material on its project page. For an apartment that is still being built, however, that should not be treated as proof that a final strata title for the selected future unit already exists. The transaction file still needs to establish the seller entity, the land and project rights, the foreign quota for the selected unit, the sale agreement, the building’s co-ownership structure and the route from construction to the buyer’s registered unit title. That distinction is central to evaluating an off-plan condominium responsibly.