Half the market loves to talk about entry. A smart investor thinks about exiting from day one because liquidity in Phuket has long ceased to be automatic.
In the Phuket market, everyone loves to talk about how to buy. It's a feel-good theme: emotion, choice, growth, beautiful neighborhoods, and the feeling that you're almost sitting on a deck with a view. They talk much less often about how to exit an asset later. Apparently because the word liquidity doesn’t look so nice next to palm trees. But in vain. It is liquidity that distinguishes an investment from an expensive souvenir.
According to C9 Hotelworks, Phuket had approximately 40,600 residential units in active supply across 343 projects as of Q1 2025. This means a simple thing: in the secondary market you compete not only with neighbors in your complex, but also with a new product that constantly appears on the market. If a property is weak, the market is not obligated to save it simply because it is on an island.
The exit begins at the moment of entry. It is not the loudest, but the most understandable objects that are sold more liquidly: convenient layout, good microlocation, adequate area, clear form of ownership, normal management, normal history of the object and a product that can be explained to the next buyer without a theater. The longer the legend has to be told, the more disturbing the property itself usually becomes.
Many people overestimate rarity and underestimate versatility. A very specific unit with an eccentric layout, unusual finishes or a very narrow use case may look spectacular but be a hard sell. A universally good property often outperforms it in terms of liquidity simply because it suits a larger number of buyers and tenants.
A separate factor is the condition of the complex several years after completion. In Phuket, management is eating up capitalization faster than many people want to admit. Tired common areas, poor maintenance, conflicting legal office, cheaply aging design and weak service very quickly turn a once beautiful project into an object with explanations. And any object with explanations always sells worse than an object without justifications.
Another mistake is to confuse the desired price with the market price. It is especially dangerous to set a price on a resale property based on your emotional history of ownership. The market doesn’t really care how much love you put into the furniture or how beautiful you had breakfast on the balcony. The market cares about comparable lots, the condition of the product, the speed of exit and how much a new buyer can integrate this asset into his logic.
A good asset in Phuket is not only one that is nice to buy. This is one that is not painful to sell. Therefore, if an object is difficult to explain before purchasing, it will almost certainly be difficult to sell later. And yes, this is a boring criterion. That's why it's so useful.
