Hong Kong investors Chiang Mai

Hong Kong investors have always looked overseas for property investments.

Favored destinations in the past have included London, Vancouver, Toronto or Sydney plus various US cities. Often Hong Kong people have purchased second homes or maybe an apartment for their University-aged children to live, or simply as just investments for the future.

Yet, over the last 1-2 there have been an increasing number of investors from Hong Kong making a life-style choice type of purchase by acquiring an apartment or home in Chiang Mai.

In fact, up until recently, Hong Kong investors made up some 10-15% of overseas investors into Chiang Mai’s real estate market—primarily looking for residential accommodation either as a second home or a planned future residence. There are also a growing number of Hong Kong residents also looking to start-up or take-over an existing business in Chiang Mai with a view to obtaining long-term residency.

Why Chiang Mai? Well, 5 top reasons:

house and condominium prices are still affordable—or, should it be said, for Hong Kong investors, cheap! It’s possible to rent a house or generously sized condo for between HK$6,000-9,000 [Baht 24,000-36,000] per month or buy a reasonable home in the HK$1.0-2.5M [Baht 4M-10M] range. In fact, with judicious selection, it’s possible to get a lot of property for these sorts of figures.

- For those purchasers eligible to buy land and build a luxury house of around 300-350m2, it’s still possible—with a variety of lovely plots with mountain, rice field or water views—for an outgoing of between HK$2.0-5.0M [Baht 8.0-20M]—a price range which will buy you very, very little in Hong Kong’s seriously expensive property market!

Chiang Mai has everything that a big city has, including an international airport, renowned international schools and hospitals, internationally known Universities, numerous shopping centres and a host of recreational activities—yet it is not plagued by big city problems and everywhere is just so accessible.

- The lifestyle is both relaxed yet the city busy enough to enable many investors to work from Chiang Mai, even if they have businesses elsewhere—and a myriad of improvements to communications between Chiang Mai and the ASEAN region, this can only get better;

although the city has had a huge increase in tourism over the last 3 years, if you don’t go into the main city areas, you’d hardly notice; in addition, it’s possible to enjoy some of the more adventurous tourist activities such as zip-lining or riding an elephant—even if you are a resident!

the weather is, generally, very pleasant in Chiang Mai—indeed, there is a real change of seasons. At times, it can even get cold… well, around 11-13C some nights. Late autumn evenings are, usually, fairly crisp and clear;

a final point to make Chiang Mai attractive to Hong Kong investors are the long standing cultural and language links between China, Hong Kong and northern Thailand, with 3^rd and 4^th generation Chinese people well established in the city and surrounding environments

We expect this trend of investment from Hong Kong into Chiang Mai to continues for the foreseeable future. Indeed, savvy investors and those looking for a better lifestyle for themselves and their children than that which can be obtained in Hong Kong are already getting well established in the city!