Realty World to sell unused homes for property developers
Property broker Realty World Alliance Co Ltd will likely reduce its 2006 sales target of Bt2.8 billion to account for the drop in consumer spending power in the wake of rising oil prices and interest rates.
The company's president and managing director Visit Kunatharakul said yesterday that its sales in the first five months were 20 per cent lower than the target following a drop of 20 to 30 per cent in property resales from the same period in 2005. Last year the company posted around Bt2.4 billion in sales. Another negative factor that has caused the company to miss its target is the political uncertainty, Visit said. Recently, various economic agencies have revised downward their projections of the country's economic growth by 50 to 100 basis points to around 4-4.5 per cent. Investments by corporations and consumer spending have also fallen. Visit announced, however, that Realty World Alliance was set to launch a new marketing strategy by adding a number of new products, including newly constructed houses, into its home listings. The listings will now consist of unsold homes in various developers' property projects, mostly located in Bangkok and its surrounding areas. Visit explained that some projects had about four or five unsold homes left sitting after the projects were closed out. If the developers do not have funds to look after these units, Realty World Alliance approaches them to sell the leftover homes on their behalf. "There are around 30 newly built homes worth [a total of] Bt120 million from projects that were partially developed added to the new listings," said Visit. "The company expects to post Bt50 million worth of sales each month from these new products." These leftover homes will be available in early July. Prices range from Bt3 million to Bt6 million per unit. Most of them are single-family homes. "We believe the overall number of leftover newly built homes should be not less than 5 per cent of the 60,000 new housing units built this year," said Visit. Property developers, homebuyers, and the company itself would all benefit from the new marketing scheme, he said. He said property developers would be able to sell their leftover homes with lower sales expenses, while homebuyers would have a chance to buy a home at an average discount of 10 per cent from standard prices. The company will also earn revenue from brokerage fees for selling the houses. Sasithorn Ongdee The Nation
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