On 19 September 2026 the Agency for Real Estate Affairs put a single number on the table: Phuket's existing residential stock is 90,597 units across 806 projects, worth B705.1 billion, of which 76,582 units and B527.8 billion have sold. At the island-wide pace of 5.2% of stock per month, that leaves roughly 19.2 months of supply if no new project ever broke ground again. Read as one number, it looks like a balanced market with a slightly long tail. Read properly, it is an average of things that behave nothing alike: city condominiums clear at 8.1% per month while houses, townhouses, shophouses and land move at about 3%. That gap is the whole story, because it decides whether you are competing with other buyers or being competed for by developers. The practical conclusion for 2026 is that you do not buy "Phuket" at the island average, you buy one property type in one district, and that pair sets your leverage.
The headline number and what it actually measures
The AREA survey, presented by agency president Dr Sopon Pornchokchai at a seminar at the Pearl Phuket hotel, counts projects, not every roof on the island. It covers 806 surveyed developments holding 90,597 units worth B705.1 billion. The 85% sold figure repeated in headlines is the share of units sold inside those surveyed projects. It is not an occupancy rate, and it says nothing about how many sold units are lived in, rented out or held empty as a currency hedge.
The supply side is where the pressure sits. New supply launched in 2026 comes to 13,779 units worth B176.5 billion, putting Phuket first among all 76 Thai provinces by value of new residential supply, ahead of Chonburi at B151.8 billion, Rayong at B51.5 billion and Chiang Mai at B49.3 billion. One small island is out-launching the entire Eastern Seaboard by value. That is a statement about capital flows and a warning about absorption at once. The full presentation is covered in the original report on The Phuket News.
One structural detail matters more than it looks. The average Phuket project holds 112 units against roughly 250 in Bangkok. Small projects mean many developers, balance sheets of very different strength, and no single player able to hold the price line across a sub-market. In a slowdown that shows up as uneven discounting rather than an orderly correction, which favours a patient buyer and punishes anyone who assumes the asking price in one project tells them anything about the project next door.
Why the island-wide average hides the real market
Composition is what makes 5.2% misleading. By unit count the resort segment is led by condominiums, with 40,263 units, or 44% of stock, while resort villas account for 6,830 units, or 8%, together about 52% of all units. By value the ranking flips: resort condominiums hold B339.2 billion and resort villas B221.7 billion, so roughly 80% of the market's money sits in the resort segment. A note on the data: the original report swaps the labels on these two lines and credits villas with 40,263 units. The arithmetic rules that out. Read that way, the average resort villa would cost B5.5mn and the average resort condominium B49.7mn, which contradicts AREA's own figure of about B32mn for a new villa and contradicts our catalogue. Thalang alone is credited with 24,994 resort condominiums, which is impossible if the island holds only 6,830. We quote the figures in the correct order.
Fast-moving city condominiums, bought by residents who want to be near work, schools and hospitals rather than a beach, clear at 8.1% a month. Land, houses and shophouses, large tickets with narrow buyer pools, clear at roughly 3%. The resort product most international buyers actually want sits between them at 4.9%. Averaging the three produces a number that describes no real buyer's experience. Our quarterly work reaches the same conclusion from a different direction, and the Phuket market report for Q2 2026 sets out how the split has moved through the year.
What our own catalogue shows: median prices by district
AREA counts projects. We count live listings. As of 21 September 2026 our catalogue holds 3,477 active properties, 2,130 for sale and 1,347 for rent. Island-wide, the median villa asks B27,395,000, about $783,000, across 1,135 listings, and the median apartment asks B8,400,000, about $240,000, across 922 listings. Townhouses sit at B12,850,000 and penthouses at B35,715,000. Entry points are far below the medians: the cheapest catalogue villa is B3,800,000 and apartments start at B1,558,800, which tells you the distribution has a long tail rather than a hard floor. Conversions use 35 THB to 1 USD. These are asking prices, so read them as the top of a negotiating range.
| District | Villas (listings) | Median villa, THB | Median villa, USD | Apartments (listings) | Median apartment, THB | Median apartment, USD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bang Tao / Laguna | 724 | 28,374,500 | ~811,000 | 436 | 9,860,000 | ~282,000 |
| Layan | 74 | 39,000,000 | ~1,114,000 | 47 | 10,092,500 | ~288,000 |
| Surin | 19 | 36,000,000 | ~1,029,000 | 71 | 6,000,000 | ~171,000 |
| Mai Khao | 10 | 29,742,500 | ~850,000 | 15 | 14,937,000 | ~427,000 |
| Kamala | 49 | 24,900,000 | ~711,000 | 64 | 7,920,000 | ~226,000 |
| Rawai | 58 | 16,950,000 | ~484,000 | 74 | 5,891,875 | ~168,000 |
| Nai Harn | 41 | 13,500,000 | ~386,000 | 27 | 6,100,000 | ~174,000 |
| Naithon | 15 | 16,000,000 | ~457,000 | 36 | 12,750,000 | ~364,000 |
| Nai Yang | 18 | 20,509,000 | ~586,000 | 61 | 3,700,000 | ~106,000 |
What the district spread is telling you
The villa column runs from B13,500,000 in Nai Harn to B39,000,000 in Layan, a spread of nearly three times for a product brochures describe with the same three words. Surin shows the sharpest internal contradiction on the island: a B36,000,000 median villa against a B6,000,000 median apartment, because the villa stock there is new and close to the beach while much of the apartment stock is older and set back. Mai Khao is the opposite case, with a high apartment median of B14,937,000 driven by a few branded resort residences across only 15 listings, far too thin to treat as a stable benchmark.
Rawai and Nai Harn remain the districts where a freestanding villa under B17,000,000 is still realistic, with Kamala at B24,900,000 sitting between the south coast and the west-coast premium. Concentration matters for liquidity: Bang Tao and Laguna alone account for 1,829 active listings, with Rawai at 224, Kamala at 223, Nai Harn at 214 and Surin at 170. A thick market is easier to buy into and easier to exit, while a district with ten villa listings can look cheap or expensive purely by accident of what is listed this month. Our running Phuket property prices by area tracker updates these medians as stock turns over.
Absorption by property type and your negotiating position
The table below turns AREA's absorption rates into something actionable. The months of supply column uses the same arithmetic AREA applied to derive 19.2 months island-wide. It assumes no new launches, which will not happen, so read it as a ranking of relative pressure rather than a forecast.
| Property type | Monthly absorption | Implied months of supply | What it means for your negotiating position |
|---|---|---|---|
| City residential condominiums | 8.1% | about 12 | The tightest segment on the island. Stock moves in roughly a year, so expect firm asking prices, short decision windows and little beyond a furniture package or a fee waiver. If you want a specific layout in a specific building, speed matters more than haggling. |
| Resort condominiums and resort villas | 4.9% | about 20 | Where most international buyers sit, close to the island-wide average. Real negotiating room exists on completed and resale units, and more on projects with large unsold remainders. Ask how many units in that building or phase are still unsold before you name a number. |
| Houses, townhouses, shophouses, land | about 3% | about 33 | The slowest segment, with narrow buyer pools and long marketing periods. A patient buyer has genuine leverage, especially on land and shophouses. The same illiquidity works against you at exit, so enter only with a long holding horizon. |
The asymmetry is the point. Anyone looking at apartments for sale in Phuket needs to know which of the two condominium categories a building really belongs to, because a city-oriented block near Kathu and a resort block on the west coast share a legal form and nothing else. Anyone looking at villas for sale in Phuket is by definition in the slower half of the market and should behave accordingly.
Thalang: the district that carries the market
By project count Thalang leads with 411 developments, ahead of Mueang Phuket at 281 and Kathu at 84. Within Thalang, resort condominiums account for 24,994 units, which is 54% of the district's stock, and B236.8 billion, or 53% of its value. The largest concentration of resort condominium risk on the island sits in one district, and its growth zones are Cherng Talay, Bang Tao, Layan, Srisoonthorn and Thepkrasattri.
Rising land and construction costs are already pushing new development outward into Upper Thalang, Srisoonthorn, Mai Khao, Pa Khlok and Chalong. For a buyer that cuts two ways: established west-coast addresses keep a scarcity premium because no more beachfront can be created, while newer inland and northern pockets offer better entry prices but depend on infrastructure and on the first wave of residents actually arriving. Our earlier piece on the Phuket paradox of 2026 covers why island demand stayed resilient while the national picture softened.
Rental yield: what 7.9% and 8.6% do and do not mean
From the same catalogue, the median long-term rent is B180,000 a month for a villa across 106 listings and B60,000 a month for an apartment across 67 listings. Against the median asking prices that implies a gross yield of 7.9% for villas and 8.6% for apartments.
Those are gross figures, and the word matters. They are calculated before management fees, common area charges, maintenance, repairs, furniture replacement, insurance, vacancy between tenants and taxes. Villas carry the heavier operating load because pool servicing, garden work and larger repair bills do not scale down. Net returns will be materially lower, and how much lower depends on your management arrangement and your real vacancy, not on a brochure projection. Treat any guaranteed-return offer as a pricing mechanism embedded in the purchase price rather than as free income, and rerun the arithmetic with the guarantee removed.
Ownership structure: check it before you pay a deposit
A foreigner can hold a condominium unit in freehold within the legally defined foreign quota of that specific project. The quota is calculated per building, so a unit you like may or may not be available in freehold on the day you sign, and the position changes as other units transact. Villas are different, because foreign land ownership is restricted and villa purchases are commonly structured through leasehold or a Thai company. We recommend no particular structure, and no structure should be assumed safe because it is common. Ownership structure, quota position and title documents all need verification by an independent lawyer of your own choosing before any deposit is paid, whether you are buying real estate for sale in Phuket from a developer or from a private seller.
Demand side: tourism, flights and who is buying
Thailand is targeting B2.7 trillion in tourism revenue for 2026, split roughly B1.6 trillion inbound and B1.1 trillion domestic, against B2.6 trillion in 2025, with a growth target of at least 7% and a B3 trillion goal for 2027. Baseline arrivals are forecast at 32.6 to 32.7 million against an official target of 33 million, well above the 28 to 31 million worst case discussed earlier in the year, as set out by Nation Thailand.
Airlift into Phuket is expanding for the coming high season: Virgin Atlantic from London Heathrow in October 2026, SAS from Copenhagen between 9 December 2026 and 29 March 2027, and Norse Atlantic from London Gatwick from December 2026 to mid-April 2027. Regionally, TransNusa opened Bali to Phuket on 9 September 2026 with flight 8B541 arriving full at 174 passengers, now four times a week on an A320-200 for roughly 700 seats a week, reported by TAT News.
On the buyer side, AREA identifies Russian and CIS purchasers as a significant group, with recovering demand from China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan and continued activity from the UK, Germany, France, the Middle East and India. The newer cohort is digital nomads, technology founders and high-earning remote workers, who want year-round liveability, connectivity and proximity to services rather than pure beach frontage. That is a large part of why city-oriented condominiums clear at 8.1%.
One caution: national arrival totals do not translate into occupancy for any individual unit. Hotel supply is growing too, with more than 8,000 rooms under construction across 41 projects, including Accor's 48-key Navera Phuket MGallery opening in Surin in Q4 2026, per C9 Hotelworks. Professionally operated rooms compete directly with private short-stay rentals on both price and service.
Infrastructure: the Kathu to Patong tunnel and the 2031 horizon
Phase 1 of the Kathu to Patong expressway is targeted to open in October 2031. The mountain tunnel would cut the trip from about 30 minutes to about 5, with projected traffic of 50,000 to 60,000 vehicles a day. The bore has been reduced from 17 metres to 14 metres and is under review by EXAT, which also plans to raise B20 billion for Phase 1. The schedule runs through cabinet submission in December 2026, completion of land expropriation in January 2027, contractor selection in April 2027, a construction start in October 2027 over four years, completion in September 2031 and opening in October 2031, according to Nation Thailand. Every step in that chain has slipped before on Thai megaprojects, and a five-year timeline with expropriation still pending is not a reason to pay a premium today. Treat the tunnel as optionality you are not paying for.
Risks worth naming
Three deserve honest weight. Supply: B176.5 billion of new launches in one year on one island is a lot of product chasing a buyer pool that has to keep growing, and the slower segments already sit above 30 implied months. Operating drag: gross yields of 7.9% and 8.6% are not what lands in your account, and the gap is wider for villas. Illiquidity: segments that take two to three years of implied supply to clear on the way in take a long time to clear on the way out. None of this argues against buying. It argues for buying a defined segment in a defined district at a negotiated price, with the ownership structure checked first.
Where to go from here
The most useful thing a buyer can do in this market is narrow the question: decide the property type, decide the district, then look at how much unsold stock sits in that specific project or how many comparable listings sit in that specific district, and negotiate from there. If it helps to have the underlying catalogue data pulled for a shortlist, including current medians, listing counts and rental comparables for the districts you are weighing, the InDreams Phuket team is glad to put that together for you. No obligation attached, and if the answer turns out to be that this is not the right moment for the property you had in mind, we would rather tell you so.
