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 When is the best time to buy land on Koh Samui?
As you fly into Koh Samui from Bangkok, the vast amount of clearings in the coconuts, in the hills, and on the beaches, are highly visible. The island looks like a patchwork quilt. It’s when you arrive, however, that you realize that aside from being the idealistic tropical holiday destination that it is renowned for being, Koh Samui is in fact one big building site. Beyond the beaches and outside the luxury resorts, up hills and off bumpy tracks, Samui’s property boom is in full swing.
1998 was the year that saw land and house prices begin to soar on Koh Samui. Infrastructure had improved and the backpacker bungalow resorts had been virtually all squeezed out by the higher end developments. The price of land and house has, as a mean figure, since that year, gone up in value by between 20 and 30 percent per annum. There has been and unavoided fast pace of development here that has stirred up an atmosphere of excitement, and has placed Koh Samui firmly on the map. Many on the island's real estate developers have put their development concepts on show in Hong Kong and Singapore, and have generated that same enthusiasm within potential clients and investors in those cities. The amenities that are cropping up everywhere certainly aids their cause, with the airport now boasting direct international flights to and from Hong Kong, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur. A government airport in the south of the island, where many developers have also embarked on projects, is supposedly in the pipeline, which can be all but good news for the future of the island. Factors have worked against Samui a couple of years back, with the vicious rains that went on longer than expected, costing over Bt300 million in damage; the tragic murder of backpacker Katherine Horton steering tourists away from the island. So then, there is still ground to cover, but nothing that will stand in the way too long. One only has to look at Phuket which is ten years ahead of Samui when it comes to dealing with the industry, to see that in the face of adversity, the industry recovers with time. The tsunami devastated that island, crushed the tourism industry, froze land prices, and even drove a lot of investors to look elsewhere, Samui being high on the list. But now, Phuket has come back and profits started to be made again by a stunned population. |
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