Phuket Condo Market: Cross-Source Evidence

Two reputable reports can appear to disagree while both are describing the market correctly. CBRE reported a 44.8% half-on-half increase in new Phuket condominium project launches in H1 2026, while REIC's nationwide series showed foreign condominium transfers down 8.8% year on year. The first is about new product entering the market; the second records completed legal transfers across Thailand.

Publication date and data period also need to be separated. A report released in August may cover January through June, whereas a marketplace page reflects the inventory and asking prices shown when the page is viewed. Treating both as a single 'current market' reading hides that timing difference.

Coverage changes the meaning again. Thailand-wide data cannot be relabelled as Phuket data, and a four-province southern survey is not an island-only condominium series. The same caution applies to product type and market stage: condo-only figures, mixed residential stock, primary launches and resale listings answer different questions.

A useful comparison starts only after the event, time period, geography and property type line up. Differences that remain after those four checks are much more informative than headline numbers placed side by side without context.

These measures are grouped by what they actually capture, not combined into a synthetic market index. Trend comparisons are useful only within a consistently defined series.

CBRE's latest public Phuket figures cover H1 2026. New condominium project launches were 44.8% higher than in H2 2025, yet only three condominium projects totalling 1,196 units were completed during the half-year; completions were down 56.8% from the previous half. Those figures describe the pipeline at two different stages, so a stronger launch period can coexist with fewer units reaching completion.

REIC answers a different question. Across Thailand, 6,533 condominium units were transferred to foreign buyers in H1 2026, down 8.8% year on year, with transfer value of THB 28.267 billion, down 1.5%. These are registered ownership transfers, not Phuket off-plan reservations or developer sales, and the nationwide total cannot be turned into a Phuket demand figure.

Online behaviour is much closer to the top of the funnel. C9 Hotelworks' analysis of the FazWaz network recorded 54,628 Phuket enquiries from 141 countries between December 2025 and May 2026. Rental accounted for 39,042 enquiries, or 71%, while 15,586 were sales enquiries. That dataset is useful for reading current intent and audience mix, but an enquiry may never become a booking, purchase or title transfer.

C9's dedicated property report is older and should be treated as such. Its Q1 2025 snapshot counted 33,704 condominium units across 124 active developments on Phuket. It is a structural reference for the scale of active primary-market supply at that time, not a live 2026 inventory number.

FazWaz provides a more current marketplace view. On the Phuket condominium page checked on 27 September 2026, the platform displayed 16,677 condos for sale, a median asking price of about THB 6.67 million and roughly THB 152,000 per square metre. Those are platform asking metrics; the card count is not a deduplicated island-wide stock figure, and the median is not a completed-transaction benchmark.

The first source of divergence is transaction stage. A project can enter a launch series as soon as it reaches the market, generate portal enquiries immediately, and appear in a legal transfer series much later. Reservations, contracts, construction, payments and handover can sit between those points.

The underlying property base also changes from source to source. A research house may track active primary developments, a marketplace may show every card matching a filter, and an official registry records completed legal transfers. Even when all three use the word 'condominium', they are not necessarily counting the same universe of units.

Geography creates another split. A nationwide foreign-buyer series can fall while Phuket behaves differently, and areas within Phuket can move in different directions as well. A Thailand total therefore needs to stay labelled as a Thailand total.

Timing completes the picture. Consider a new development launched this month: it may enter CBRE or C9 supply data, appear in listings and generate enquiries almost immediately, while a registered transfer may come much later after the contractual and completion stages. The asking price can remain visible throughout. None of those records needs to be wrong for the numbers to tell different stories.

CBRE provides a clean within-series comparison for Phuket launches: H1 2026 new condominium project launches were 44.8% above H2 2025. In the same reporting framework, completions moved the other way, falling 56.8%. Averaging those percentages would erase the distinction between projects entering the market and projects reaching completion.

REIC's H1 2026 national series shows why metric labels matter even within one official source. Total housing ownership transfers were up 17.6% year on year, condominium transfers overall were up 24.1%, while foreign condominium transfers were down 8.8%. Each number is valid for its own population; none by itself is a complete description of Phuket.

A single FazWaz page is a snapshot, not a time series. A defensible trend would require the same filters at repeated dates and a stable understanding of how listings and duplicates are handled. Without that consistency, changes in visible card counts or asking medians should not be presented as a market trend or rolled into a proprietary composite index.

Public coverage of Phuket is uneven. REIC's current foreign-transfer release provides a nationwide H1 2026 series, but it does not publish a complete Phuket-only transfer table in that same release. REIC also held a 2026 Southern housing-market seminar, yet the accompanying materials are sold separately; figures that are not publicly readable are not treated here as public evidence. The freely accessible regional release in the referenced series is for H1 2025 and covers four southern provinces, so it cannot stand in for a current Phuket-only series.

Commercial research and marketplaces fill some gaps, but their coverage is proprietary. CBRE and C9 maintain their own project universes and definitions, while FazWaz reflects its own platform and does not present the visible card count as an official deduplicated island inventory. That is why 16,677 displayed condo listings should stay labelled as a platform count.

A market-wide statistic cannot value one apartment. Project and phase, size, floor, view, condition, ownership structure, foreign-quota availability, payment terms and the date of the offer can all change the relevant price. For an actual purchase decision, broad market evidence is context; the unit's comparable listings, documents and transaction terms carry more weight.