At Northpoint's official launch last weekend, Raimon Land announced that it had sold 25 per cent of the 370 units in its two towers at the Amat Beach property.

"The response has been quite good," said CEO Nigel Cornick Cornick, who now sits on a slew of new properties, including Northpoint, together worth more than Bt20 billion.

The 12-rai Pattaya site is one of three spectacular projects to be launched by the company.

The other two are "The Heights", a luxury hilltop condominium overlooking the sea in Phuket, and "The River", a riverfront residential-retail property on the Chao Phya River overlooking The Oriental and Shangri La hotels.

"We have spent more than Bt50 million on the show rooms at the Northpoint site," said, Cornick who presided over the extravaganza that drew several thousand people - locals and foreigners - at the welcome party on Saturday.

The estate was able to accommodate the hundreds of vehicles that formed a queue almost a kilometre long in the soi leading to the site.

Cornick, anticipating that huge crowds would turn up, had ordered enough food and beverages to meet the surge of visitors that piled in deep into the night.

At 10pm, home-buyers were still streaming in. The who's who of Thailand's property industry - including CB Richard Ellis chairman David Simister, Bouygues Thailand's managing director Jean-Marie Verbrugghe and Woods Bagot chief executive Tim Beaumont - were among the VIPs attending the show.

Verbrugghe, who had worked on several Raimon Land projects over the past few years, said Northpoint was a crowning achievement as it further raises the quality of luxury homes in Pattaya.

When the company launched its first Pattaya project - the Northshore - on Beach Road Soi 5, the response was so healthy it prompted Cornick to quickly locate a new site to satisfy demand.

Pattaya two years ago was still reeling from a 12-year real-estate crash that saddled the resort town with thousands of scrappy, low-quality homes.

Until Northshore, developers were reluctant to enter Pattaya because the last meltdown had burnt so many players, including many big companies and banks.

But with the surge in Bangkok's real estate and a wave of foreign speculators, Pattaya was soon crowded with punters.

Cornick went for a longer-term play, investing heavily in Northshore, salvaging the once-abandoned ugly project and turning it into one of Pattaya's more regal-looking pieces of architecture.

Even with the recent softening of real-estate transactions in Pattaya, with many punters exiting with considerable losses, Raimon has ridden the downturn fairly well, having earned a reputation for honouring promises and delivering quality apartments.

Cornick sees Northpoint as just the tip of the iceberg for Raimon Land, as the company has many more exciting projects in

store.

Apart from The River, the company is expected to embark on more projects in Bangkok and a top-end villa project near Amanpuri resort in Pattaya.

Itthi C Tan

The Nation

Nak Lua, Pattaya