Advertorial: Rooftop Real Estate knows the market and what investors can hope to gain from it
“Foreign investors who hedge their bets on the promising Cambodian real estate market might well feel like contestants on the famous TV game show The Price Is Right,” says Olivier Cerejo-Meneses, CVEA external affairs foreign spokesman and co-founder of Rooftop Real Estate. For the past four years, the country’s GDP has gone up and land prices have increased yearly by 13% to 15%. The potential for coming years is therefore anyone’s guess.
Historically, Cambodia is a country still recovering from the tragedy of war but one recent and encouraging step towards a better future was the Kingdom’s first land registering drive, which is still underway. Buying a soft title deed in Cambodia doesn’t mean an investor is obliged to report the price or other details, either. Underestimated price declarations are used today as a solution to avoid the 4% tax. There is no tax history in the country, nor is there any eagerness to submit declarations. The Cambodian tax department is perfectly aware of these issues, and they are working to establish their own valuation boards, collaborating with the private sector and the national Cambodian Valuers and Real Estate Association. But there is still a ways to go.
The real-estate market today focuses only on the capital earnings value market and not on the regular income, or rental, market. Thus, foreign investors can settle in and wait to be called down to the podium, ready to win big in the game that is the new Cambodian real-estate market.