Phnom Penh Real Estate ROI: Eight Buildings and What They Cost in 2026
Ask what a Phnom Penh condominium costs and you will get an average. Averages are useless here: the same city holds completed one-bedrooms at $40,500 and riverside apartments at $3,784 per square metre, and the gap between two towers in the same district can be eighty percent. What matters is which building, and what you are paying for.
So rather than quote the market, this article opens our own book. Eight buildings, fifty-eight units currently listed, with the price per square metre calculated from each listing individually.
What the market pays, in one paragraph
Global Property Guide put gross rental yields for Phnom Penh apartments between 5.22% and 7.4% in the first quarter of 2026, averaging 6.5% across the city. That is high for the region. It is high partly because prices have been falling — Phnom Penh was down 4.52% year on year in January 2026, after twenty-nine consecutive months of national decline — and because roughly 64,000 condominium units are available across Cambodia.
We work through what that 6.5% becomes after tax, vacancy and charges in our companion article on rental yields in Phnom Penh. The short answer is closer to four percent for a non-resident owner. This article is about the other half of the equation: what you pay to get in.
Eight buildings, from $957 to $3,784 per square metre
Every figure below comes from our own listings, priced in September 2026. The price per square metre is the median of the units we hold in that building.
| Building | District | Units listed | Price range | Median price/m² |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kingston Royale | Boeng Tompun | 8 | $40,500 – $81,200 | $957 |
| Time Square 11 | BKK3 | 5 | $49,168 – $97,425 | $1,299 |
| Time Square 9 | BKK1 | 5 | $102,000 – $221,000 | $1,700 |
| J Tower 1 | BKK area | 8 | $73,000 – $285,000 | $1,767 |
| La Vista One | Chroy Changvar | 7 | $130,000 – $700,000 | $2,442 |
| Le Condé BKK1 | BKK1 | 13 | $80,000 – $6,500,000 | $2,857 |
| G.A.T.O. Tower | BKK1 | 5 | $98,000 – $367,000 | $3,161 |
| Odom Living | Chamkarmon | 7 | $275,000 – $759,500 | $3,784 |
Two notes before anyone draws conclusions from the ranges. The Le Condé upper figure is a duplex penthouse of more than a thousand square metres, not a representative apartment; the median per square metre is the number to read. And a range is our current stock, not the developer’s full price list — buildings sell their cheaper stock first, so what remains on the market skews upward as a project matures.
The entry level: under $1,300 per square metre
Kingston Royale in Boeng Tompun is the cheapest completed stock we carry: one-bedrooms of 43 to 55 square metres between $40,500 and $52,000. Time Square 11 in BKK3 sits just above it at $1,299 per square metre, sold off-plan.
At this level the arithmetic is obviously attractive and the question is entirely about tenants. Boeng Tompun is south of the centre, past the old lake, and its rental demand is local and thin. A single new building opening two streets away changes your vacancy rate. The gross yield on paper is the highest in the city; the realised yield depends on months you cannot predict.
The middle: $1,700 to $1,800 per square metre
Time Square 9 in BKK1 and J Tower 1 in the BKK area sit here, and this is where most foreign buyers who intend to let should probably be looking. You are inside the districts where the embassies, the international schools and the regional offices are, in completed buildings with a letting history you can actually check, at roughly half the price per square metre of the prime towers a few streets away.
J Tower 1 is worth a particular mention because it is a resale market. Units trade there, which means you can ask what they traded for — a luxury you do not have with an off-plan purchase.
The riverfront: around $2,400 per square metre
La Vista One in Chroy Changvar is the peninsula play. Chroy Changvar has been the subject of infrastructure promises for a decade and is now genuinely building out. Prices reflect the expectation rather than the current rental market, and the units are larger — our stock there runs from 57 to 296 square metres, against a city median of 60.
This is a capital-growth position, and it should be judged as one. If the bet is right, the yield was never the point.
Prime: $2,850 to $3,800 per square metre
Le Condé BKK1, G.A.T.O. Tower and Odom Living in Chamkarmon are the top of the market we handle. Serviced buildings, corporate tenants, branded management, and at Odom a scheme integrated with an office tower.
The honest framing: at $3,784 per square metre with a market that rents at $1,000 to $2,000 a month for a good two- or three-bedroom, the gross yield here is structurally lower than at the entry level. What you buy instead is occupancy, a tenant who pays on time, a building that is maintained, and an asset that resells. That is a legitimate trade. It is simply not the same product as Kingston Royale, and it should not be compared on yield alone.
Why one district holds an eighty percent spread
Look again at BKK1. Time Square 9 is listed at a median of $1,700 per square metre. G.A.T.O. Tower, in the same district, is at $3,161. Le Condé sits between them at $2,857.
Eighty-six percent of difference inside one district is not a location premium. It is the sum of four things that no district-level table will ever show you: the age and specification of the building, whether it is serviced or bare, the reputation of the management company, and the share of units already held by absentee owners who will compete with you for tenants.
This is the single most useful thing we can tell a buyer about Phnom Penh. District-level averages — the ones every guide publishes — hide a factor of two. Choose the building, not the postcode. Our apartments for sale in BKK1 page carries the current stock across all three of these towers, which makes the comparison easy to do for yourself.
How to read a developer’s yield projection
Off-plan sales in Phnom Penh are routinely marketed with a guaranteed return, a buyback option, or a hotel-brand management agreement. None of these is dishonest in itself. All three deserve the same four questions.
Who is the guarantee with, and what are they worth? A rental guarantee is a contractual promise by a company. If that company is a special-purpose vehicle created for the project, the guarantee is worth what the vehicle holds. Ask for the guaranteeing entity’s name and its accounts, not the brochure.
Is the guaranteed yield calculated on the gross price or the net? A guaranteed 8% on a price inflated by 10% to fund the guarantee is a 7.2% yield with extra steps. Compare the guaranteed price per square metre against the resale stock in the same building. If it is materially higher, the guarantee is already in your purchase price.
What happens in year six? Guarantees typically run three to five years. Ask what the building rented for after previous guarantee periods expired — in a completed phase, or in the developer’s earlier projects. A development with no track record cannot answer this, which is itself the answer.
Who controls the letting, and can you opt out? A mandatory rental pool means the operator decides the rent, the tenant and your own access to the apartment. That can be exactly what an absentee owner wants. It should still be a choice made knowingly, in writing, before signing.
Our guide to buying property in Cambodia covers the strata title mechanics, the foreign ownership rules and the purchase process that sit underneath all of this.
What to check on any building on this list
The service charge, per square metre, per month, in writing. It is the running cost that varies most between the eight buildings above, and the one most often discovered after completion.
The proportion of units sold to foreign buyers. Cambodian law caps foreign ownership at 70% of a building’s private units, above the ground floor. A building close to the cap is a building where a large share of owners are absentee landlords — your competition in the rental market.
What the building actually rents for today. Not the projection. Ask the management company what comparable units are let at this month, and check it against what is advertised online.
The exit. Cambodia’s 20% capital gains tax on immovable property is currently deferred to 1 January 2027. Price your purchase as though it arrives on schedule.
Where to start looking
All eight buildings above are on our books. Our Phnom Penh real estate page carries the full list of 115 properties, and apartments for sale in Phnom Penh narrows it to the 83 units this article is about. Two projects have pages of their own: Le Condé BKK1, and Diamond Bay Garden on Koh Pich, from $126,165.
For the wider country, our Cambodia property page covers Sihanoukville and the provinces, and the Cambodia articles section carries the legal, tax and visa detail.
We are not the selling agent for most of the developments listed here, which is why this page carries prices rather than promises. Ask us for current availability in any of these buildings and we will send the live list.
Prices from our own listings as at September 2026, calculated per listing. Yield and price-trend data: Global Property Guide, Q1 2026 and January 2026. Supply figure: Realestate.com.kh, March 2026. Capital gains tax position: Prakas 496 of 18 July 2025. This article is general information, not investment advice.
