Housing speculation in Bangkok: lessons for emerging economies

This paper discusses the state of housing speculation in Bangkok and the extent to which the 1997 financial crisis has affected the housing market. Since the mid-1980s, housing production in Bangkok has reached an extremely large volume and the private sector has played the dominant role in this development. However, due to the inadequacy of market information, uninformed speculation, and excessive production, some 350,000 fully completed housing units, most of which have been sold by their developers, remain unoccupied in Bangkok. This large surplus of housing has hindered the recovery of the market after the crisis. The implications of this experience support the view that there is a need to establish a property information centre and an estate management bureau to support efficient recovery of the market.