What it costs to own a condo in Phuket

The asking price and the transfer fee get you into the deal. What follows is a bill that arrives every month: the building's service charge, electricity, water, internet. Once a year the land and building tax joins them. Next to the purchase price the amounts look small, but they repeat — and they are worth working out before the deal rather than after it.

What the bill is made of

An owner's costs fall into two groups. The first arrives on a schedule and can be calculated in advance to within a few hundred baht. The second turns up irregularly, and nobody can put an exact figure on it before the deal.

• Common area fee — a rate per square metre per month, paid in advance
• Electricity — metered, at a rate set inside the building by the management company
• Water — metered, again at the management company's rate
• Internet — a separate contract with a provider for your unit
• Land and building tax — annual, assessed by the municipality
• Irregular: repairs, replacing appliances, contents insurance, special levies voted by the owners' meeting

The service charge: the largest predictable line

The condominium sets the rate, and project records state it in baht per square metre per month. Multiply it by your area and you have the monthly figure. The calculator below starts from the median across our own catalogue, with the spread between the lower and upper quartile shown beside it: buildings differ.

The charge is paid in advance, usually a year at a time; some projects ask for two years at handover. The rate is not frozen either. A number of developments write a step-up into their terms from the third year, which makes the headline figure a first-two-years figure rather than a permanent one.

What the fee actually covers is set by the condominium's regulations. Typically that means security, cleaning of the common areas, power and water for those areas, servicing of the pool, lifts and generator, and insurance of the building itself. Repairs inside your unit are never included.

Power and water: the in-building rate is not the utility's rate

Inside a condominium the bill for electricity and water comes from the management company, not from the utility. It buys the supply and rebills residents at its own rate, which is often higher. The practice is legal and common rather than a trick. Ask for the figure before the deal: over a long hold the difference is visible, and once the contract is signed it is no longer up for discussion.

What to ask the management company

• The rate per kWh and per cubic metre of water — in writing, not verbally
• Whether a minimum charge applies while the unit stands empty
• Who reads the meters, how often, and how a bill is disputed
• Whether refuse collection sits inside the service charge or is billed separately

Land and building tax

The owner pays this once a year. The rate and the base come from the statute: the assessment runs on the appraised value and on how the property is used, not on the contract price. Reliefs exist, but they are not universal, and a property that is not your main home is treated differently. The municipality raises the assessment, and neither the seller nor the agency can move it. Confirm the rate for your own case before the deal — the calculator below keeps it as a separate field.

Run the numbers for your own unit

Put in your area, your price and the rates from your own contract. The calculator returns the monthly bill, the annual total, and what the annual cost of ownership comes to as a share of the price. That share is what a rental yield should be measured against: income is what remains after costs, not before them.

What the calculation leaves out

• Fit-out and furniture, where the unit comes without a furniture package
• Contents insurance — the condominium's policy covers the building, not your belongings
• The management company's commission on letting the unit
• One-off payments at purchase: the sinking fund, meter connection, and the transfer fee

Those one-off payments are handled by the calculator in our guide to taxes and purchase costs, and the instalment shares by construction stage sit on every listing page. Holding costs do not make a purchase worse, but they belong in the arithmetic from the start. If you plan to let the unit, subtract the annual total from the rent before you quote yourself a yield.