Phuket's property market in mid-2026: low season, high signal

The wet season is supposed to be when Phuket slows down, but this year the numbers are not really cooperating. A mid-year reading from ground level in Cherngtalay, optimistic but, I hope, realistic.

Mid July in Phuket is normally a good time to take stock. The island is quieter, the rain should be falling, and building sites pause for breath. I run a sports and well-being business in Cherngtalay and I have watched the property cycle here from close range for a few years now, as an operator rather than an agent, which gives you a slightly different view of things. What I am seeing this year, both on the ground and in the published research, is a market that is maturing rather than cooling.

A Cherngtalay barometer: what our own numbers show

A tennis academy turns out to be quite an honest barometer of demand for the island, since nobody flies eleven hours to train somewhere they have doubts about. Our May dipped as it does every year, although it still finished about a third ahead of last May. June then came in around 60% up on the year before, and July, supposedly the quietest stretch of the calendar, is tracking roughly 90% ahead of last July and looks likely to be our strongest month since we opened. First half revenue is up about a third overall.

Just as telling is who is actually on the courts. Around 86% of our guests this year are international, from somewhere near fifty countries, and visitor numbers are growing at about 50% like for like on last year. The typical guest is in their thirties, travelling with a partner or family, staying longer and spending across the island while they are here. This is the long-stay, lifestyle-led demand the research houses keep describing, and we see it every week regardless of season.

The mix of nationalities is worth a look too. Our top ten countries are led by China, Hong Kong, Russia and Singapore, which between them account for well over half of our international guests. That is a noticeably more Asian mix than the property enquiry data, which is led by the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia, and I take it as a healthy sign, since it suggests the island is drawing from more directions than any single dataset shows.

The skill profile is the part I find most interesting. Around two thirds of our guests rate as starters or recreational players, with only a small share at advanced level and essentially nobody professional. These are not touring pros looking for a training block. They are ordinary travellers, many of them beginners, flying into Phuket in the low season with a specific purpose in mind. Travellers with intent, in other words. To me that says Phuket is starting to stand out as a destination in its own right, with a life well beyond the Patong, Phi Phi and Rawai circuit that most visitors used to arrive for.

One more cut of our data is worth sharing, because it says something about how people use the island rather than just how many arrive. Looking only at international guests, two behaviours stand out. Guests from our Asian markets, led by Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, book their trips up to two weeks ahead, which is the behaviour of people planning a visit around a purpose. Guests from Russia and continental Europe book only a day or two out and come back again and again, with Russians averaging around nine visits a year. (Frankly, I do not believe anyone is making that flight nine times a year!)

The more likely explanation is that many of these guests give Russia as their home country while effectively living here in Phuket, which the one or two day booking window also supports. Britons and Americans sit somewhere between the two groups, booking around a week out and returning roughly seven times a year. Whichever way you read it, booking at short notice several times a year is not tourist behaviour. It is what residents and long-stay visitors do, and it is precisely the demand base that the rental data, the villa numbers and the Colliers report all point to.

What 54,628 property enquiries say about Phuket demand

In June FazWaz presented an unusually useful dataset at the Phuket Property Exchange, a record of 54,628 real property enquiries made between December 2025 and May 2026, representing some 272 billion baht in stated budgets. Three things stand out from it. Phuket is rental led, with 71% of all demand being to rent, which is where the liquidity and the yield actually sit. The median asking rent stepped up roughly 20% across the period and held there, unlike the one-off spike in March sales which reversed the following month. And 62% of demand originates overseas, from 141 countries.

"Phuket is a truly global market. 62% of demand originates from overseas, from 141 countries. That diversification is structural resilience." FazWaz demand presentation, Phuket Property Exchange, June 2026 (via The Thaiger)

The demand also concentrates close to home. Cherngtalay, or the Choeng Thale corridor of Laguna, Bangtao and Layan, tops the island for both rental and sale enquiries, accounting for roughly 18% of all Phuket demand while commanding the highest prices per square metre. I should declare the obvious bias here since I live and work in this corridor, but the numbers are FazWaz's rather than mine, and they match what we see day to day, with demand running from one-bedroom rentals through to family villas.

The sales side backs this up. Knight Frank Thailand reports villa sales rose 12.9% in 2025 even as condo demand softened, with Bangtao, Layan, Kamala and Cherngtalay the most sought-after locations, and west coast land prices projected to keep rising simply because there is so little of it left.

"Today's buyers are seeking more than a holiday home. They are looking for privacy, space, lifestyle and long-term value." Nattha Kahapana, Partner and Managing Director, Knight Frank Thailand (Bangkok Post, July 2026)

Inside the Colliers Phuket residential report

The report I would encourage anyone with an interest in this market to read properly is Colliers' Phuket Residential Market 2025–2026, subtitled From Rebound to Reinvention, because the subtitle is doing real work. Colliers describes a market still in an expansionary phase, driven by sustained tourism growth, the return of international buyers and improving developer confidence, but it is careful to separate the two halves of the story. Condominium demand moves with foreign buyer cycles, currently supported by rising interest from Russian and Middle Eastern buyers as global capital shifts and sentiment in Dubai softens. Villa demand it treats differently, describing it as "a more structural shift toward low-density, lifestyle-driven living". Structural is the important word there, since cycles turn but structures tend to persist.

The supply side is where the discipline shows. New launches declined in 2025 on higher construction costs and slower absorption, and Colliers expects 2026 supply to stay below even those levels, with developers prioritising differentiated projects, prime locations and phased launches. Crucially, it does not read the softer sales numbers as weak appetite.

"Residential demand in 2025 has moderated from earlier peak levels, primarily reflecting supply-side pressures rather than a weakening of underlying demand." Colliers Thailand, Phuket Residential Market 2025–2026 (April 2026)

My reading of all this is that the froth is being worked out of the market while the substance stays. Colliers notes that buyers are increasingly purchasing for end use, wanting larger units, more privacy and homes suited to long-stay living rather than purely short-term investment returns, which matches exactly what we see in who is actually on the island. And its closing recommendations, which cover prime west coast locations, low-density villa product, genuine differentiation, staggered launches, pricing discipline in the mid-market and integrated mixed-use developments with "wellness and sports facilities", read to me less like advice and more like a description of what the island's better operators are already doing. Generic mid-market condos will have a hard couple of years. Well located, properly differentiated, end-user product should hold its pricing power. For anyone buying, that is about as healthy a market structure as you could ask for.

The realistic part: visas, enforcement and hesitant buyers

I would rather this piece read as honest than as marketing, so here is what I am watching. A few developments around Pasak have visibly slowed, although that happens every wet season and I would caution against reading much into it. The buyer hesitancy is more substantive. Immigration rules have shifted quickly, including a reduction in visa on arrival eligibility and length of stay for some nationalities, with almost no notice. Enforcement has tightened on unlicensed hotels and on nominee shareholding structures, and even long-standing resorts bordering national park land around Sakoo and Naithon have faced inspections. All of it makes headlines, and headlines pause purchase decisions.

What the enforcement is actually doing, though, is professionalising the market. Licensed operators, clean leasehold and ownership structures and honestly run rental products all come out of this in a stronger position, which is much the same selectivity Colliers describes on the supply side. The generic and the grey-area projects will struggle while the compliant and the differentiated ones get on with it, and I am comfortable being invested in a market that rewards doing things properly. (I am a Kiwi after all, we're terribly compliant!)

Meanwhile some of the least glamorous news might be the most useful. This wet season has been unusually dry and the local Aor Bor Tor has used it well, resurfacing roads, redoing the high voltage lines and keeping the roadsides maintained to a standard I have not seen before. Small things, but they change a visitor's first impression of the island. Add the proposed airport over the border in Phang Nga and the transport upgrades Knight Frank expects to open up northern Phuket, and the infrastructure story is finally starting to catch up with the demand story.

Where the Phuket market lands in 2026

Put it all together and you have a rental led market with a durable 20% step-up in rents, demand from 141 countries that no single economy can switch off, villa sales growing at double digits, scarce west coast land, and regulation tightening in ways that favour people who do things properly. There will be friction along the way, and the condo mid-market in particular will have to work for its sales. But the underlying question for any property market is whether people genuinely want to be in the place, and from where I stand, watching the courts fill up through a wet season that never quite arrived, Phuket keeps answering yes.