Rental Yields in Phnom Penh: What 6.5% Actually Pays in 2026
Most articles about Phnom Penh open with the yield figure and stop there. Six percent, eight percent, sometimes nine. The number is not wrong. What is missing is everything that turns it into money in your account — and one date, 1 January 2027, that changes the arithmetic of selling.
Table of Contents
Where the 6.5% comes from
Global Property Guide, which builds its figures from advertised sale and rental prices rather than from agency estimates, put gross rental yields for Phnom Penh apartments at between 5.22% and 7.4% in the first quarter of 2026, for a city average of 6.5%. The national average across Cambodia was higher, at 7.54%.
That average of 6.5% is genuinely high. Bangkok condominiums sit closer to 4 to 5%, Ho Chi Minh City lower still. If the only question were gross yield, Phnom Penh would win most comparisons in the region, and that is exactly how it is usually presented.
Gross yield is a ratio, though, and a ratio has a denominator.
Why the yield is high — the part that rarely gets printed
Cambodian residential prices have been falling. The same source recorded a 4.52% year-on-year decline in Phnom Penh in January 2026, and nationwide prices that had fallen for twenty-nine consecutive months by that point.
A yield rises when rents go up. It also rises when prices go down, and that is largely what has happened here. Buying into a 6.5% yield created by a falling denominator is a different proposition from buying into one created by rising rents, and an investor is entitled to know which he is looking at.
The supply side explains most of it. Realestate.com.kh counted roughly 64,000 available condominium units in Cambodia in its March 2026 market guide — a stock built during the 2016 to 2019 boom and delivered into a market that has not grown into it. Completed towers compete for the same pool of tenants, and the pool is dominated by expatriate professionals, regional staff and Cambodian households moving up, not by the mass-market volume that would absorb 64,000 units quickly.
None of this makes Phnom Penh a bad market. It makes it a buyer’s market, which is a better thing to be told than a boom. Prices that have corrected for over two years, in a dollarised economy where rents are also quoted in dollars, are the reason the yields are where they are. The risk you are taking is the possibility of further correction; the compensation is the income.
What an apartment actually costs, from our own listings
Rather than quote a market average, here is our own stock. We currently list 83 apartments and condominiums for sale in Phnom Penh. The price per square metre is taken from each listing individually, and houses, villas, penthouses and commercial buildings are excluded so that the comparison is like for like.
| District | Listings | Median price/m² | Median size | Median price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chamkarmon | 5 | $3,871 | 129 m² | $488,000 |
| Chroy Changvar | 5 | $2,842 | 84 m² | $238,700 |
| BKK1 | 38 | $2,050 | 60 m² | $127,500 |
| BKK3 | 6 | $1,299 | 45 m² | $61,700 |
| Boeng Tompun | 8 | $957 | 52 m² | $48,900 |
Five and six listings are small samples and we will not pretend otherwise. BKK1, with thirty-eight, is the one figure here we would defend as representative: our BKK1 stock runs from $1,444 to $4,118 per square metre, and the median of $2,050 sits where most of the completed, lettable stock in that district sits.
Read by size rather than by district, across the whole city:
| Layout | Listings | Median size | Median price |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-bedroom | 49 | 45 m² | $79,000 |
| Two-bedroom | 21 | 84 m² | $145,000 |
| Three-bedroom | 11 | 125 m² | $367,000 |
The one-bedroom is the rental instrument in this city. Forty-five square metres at $79,000 is the unit an expatriate manager rents, and it is where nearly two thirds of our Phnom Penh stock sits. The three-bedroom is a family home or an owner’s apartment; it rents slowly and to a much smaller market.
From gross to net: the deductions that matter
Take a BKK1 one-bedroom at our median of $127,500. One of our own BKK1 rental listings, a one-bedroom in a serviced building, is advertised at $650 a month. That is one data point and we present it as one, but it gives $7,800 a year and a gross yield of 6.1% — close enough to the 6.5% city average to work with.
Now take the deductions, in the order the money leaves.
Rental income tax. A resident individual pays 10% of the gross rent, with no deduction of expenses. A non-resident pays 14%, withheld. Most foreign buyers are non-residents, so on $7,800 that is $1,092 gone before anything else. The absence of deductible expenses is the important part: this is a tax on turnover, not on profit.
Vacancy. In a market with 64,000 available units, one empty month a year is a conservative assumption, not a pessimistic one. That is another $650.
Annual property tax. The tax on immovable property is 0.1% of the administration’s assessed value above roughly $25,000. On a unit assessed at $127,500 that is around $100 a year. Small, but it is charged whether the apartment is let or not.
Management. Unless you live in Phnom Penh, someone has to find tenants, collect rent and handle repairs. Eight to ten percent of collected rent is the normal range, so budget $600 to $780.
Service charge and sinking fund. This is the number you must obtain from the building before you buy, because it varies more than anything else on this list. Ask for the monthly charge per square metre and the sinking fund contribution in writing, and ask to see the last two years of the co-owners’ accounts. A building with a pool, a gym and 24-hour reception costs money to run, and a building that has deferred its maintenance will ask you for it later.
Run those through: $7,800 gross, less $1,092 tax, less $650 vacancy, less $100 property tax, less $690 management, leaves $5,266 before the service charge. On $127,500 that is 4.1%, and the service charge takes it lower.
So the honest headline is not 6.5%. It is roughly four percent net for a non-resident owner who is not in the country, against a gross figure of six and a half. That is still a real return in a dollarised economy. It is simply not the number in the advertisement.
The 2027 date that changes the exit
Cambodia legislated a 20% capital gains tax on immovable property years ago and has postponed it repeatedly. Under Prakas 496, issued on 18 July 2025, it was deferred again — to 1 January 2027.
Two things follow. The first is that a purchase made today sits on the wrong side of that date if it is held for any normal investment period: the gain accrued from 2027 onwards is, as the law currently stands, taxable at 20%. The second is that the same deferral did not extend to everything. Share transfers and other capital assets came into scope on 1 January 2026, which matters if you were planning to hold the property through a Cambodian company and sell the company rather than the apartment.
It may be postponed again. It has been before. But an investment case built on the assumption that it will be postponed forever is an investment case built on a hope, and the sensible course is to price the property as though the tax arrives on schedule and treat a further deferral as a bonus.
This is also the strongest argument for buying on income rather than on capital appreciation in Phnom Penh right now. Rental income is taxed at a known rate today. The exit is the part with the open question.
Where the yield actually is
Three patterns come out of our own book, and they are worth more than a general ranking of districts.
BKK1 is the liquid market, not the high-yield one. It is where the tenants are, where resale is easiest, and where the price per square metre reflects both. At $2,050 per square metre you are paying for the certainty of letting the unit. Our apartments for sale in BKK1 are the starting point for an investor who wants occupancy over headline yield.
The outer districts buy yield with risk. Boeng Tompun at $957 per square metre is less than half the BKK1 figure, and the arithmetic of a $48,900 unit is obviously more attractive on paper. The question is who rents it. Tenant demand outside the central districts is thinner, more local, and more sensitive to a single new building opening nearby. Higher gross, higher vacancy, longer resale.
Riverside and the new bridges are a capital-growth bet, not an income one. Chroy Changvar at $2,842 and the Koh Norea developments are priced on where the city is going rather than on what they rent for today. That may prove right. It is not a yield strategy, and it should not be sold as one.
What to check before you commit
Four checks, in the order they will save you the most money.
Confirm the title is strata. Foreigners can own a private unit in a co-owned building in their own name, with a strata title, provided it is not on the ground floor. Land is a different matter entirely, and so is any arrangement involving a nominee. Our guide to freehold versus leasehold in Cambodia sets out what each structure gives you, and the fuller guide to buying property in Cambodia covers the process end to end.
Ask what the building is actually letting for, not what it is projected to let for. Any developer will quote a projected yield. Ask instead for the current asking rents of units already let in that building, or in the one next door if it is off-plan. Then check those against what is advertised online this week.
Get the service charge and the sinking fund in writing. Covered above. It is the single most common gap between a projection and a bank statement.
Ask whether a rental guarantee is attached, and who stands behind it. Guaranteed-yield schemes are common in Phnom Penh off-plan sales. A guarantee is only as good as the company giving it, and in a market with 64,000 available units, a developer promising 8% for five years is telling you something about how hard the units are to let.
Where to start looking
We currently list 115 properties in Phnom Penh, of which 83 are apartments and condominiums. Our Phnom Penh real estate page carries the full list, and the apartments for sale in Phnom Penh page narrows it to the units this article is about. For the wider country, our Cambodia property page covers Sihanoukville and the provinces.
If you want the case-by-case version of the arithmetic above, our Phnom Penh ROI case studies work through actual developments. If you are looking at Cambodia as a place to live rather than only to invest, the retirement visa guide is the practical starting point, and the rest of our Cambodia articles cover the legal and tax detail this piece only summarises.
We are not the selling agent for most of the developments we list, which is why these pages carry figures rather than adjectives. Ask us for current availability on anything mentioned here.
Yield and price data: Global Property Guide, Q1 2026 and January 2026. Supply figure: Realestate.com.kh, reported by Cambodia Investment Review, March 2026. Capital gains tax position: Prakas 496 of 18 July 2025, deferring the 20% tax on immovable property to 1 January 2027. Rental withholding rates of 10% for residents and 14% for non-residents as at September 2026. This article is general information, not tax or legal advice. Take Cambodian advice before committing to a purchase.
