Siem Reap Property: One Monument Sets Every Price

Quick answer: Siem Reap is a single-asset market. Angkor generates the visitors, the visitors generate the hospitality economy, and the hospitality economy generates every rent in the city. Ticketed international visitors fell 30.7% in the first seven months of 2026, and a buyer who does not have a view on that number does not have a view on Siem Reap property.

Every property market has a driver. Most have several, and the interaction between them is what makes forecasting hard. Siem Reap has one, it is publicly counted, and it is published monthly. That makes this an unusually transparent market to underwrite, and an unusually concentrated one to own.

What the gate count did in 2026

Angkor Enterprise publishes ticketed international admissions, and the 2026 figures are the most important data any Siem Reap buyer will see.

Period	International ticketed visitors	Ticket revenue
January to July 2025	618,771	$28.6 million
January to July 2026	428,223	$20.3 million
Change	Down 30.7%	Down 29%
Full year 2025	955,131	$44.71 million

Nationally the picture is softer but similar in direction: Cambodia received 5.57 million international arrivals in 2025, down 16.9% from 6.70 million in 2024, with guidance of 5.6 to 5.8 million for 2026. Siem Reap fell considerably harder than the country, which is what a single-asset market does when its asset draws fewer people.

The national comparison and the capital’s very different demand base are set out in Phnom Penh versus Siem Reap.

Why the fall is volume rather than pricing

The two published series make a useful ratio. Divide revenue by visitors and you get spend per ticketed arrival: about $47 across the first seven months of 2026, against roughly $47 for the whole of 2025.

That flat line matters more than it looks. If revenue had fallen faster than visitor numbers, the market would be facing a discounting problem: cheaper tickets, cheaper tours, cheaper rooms, and a hospitality economy repricing downward. It did not. Revenue fell slightly less than volume, meaning the visitors who arrived spent as before.

For a property owner the distinction is the difference between a demand problem and a pricing problem. Siem Reap has the first. Fewer tenants, fewer guests and fewer staff are needed, but the value of each remaining one has held. A market with a pricing problem has to rebuild its position; a market with a volume problem has to wait for arrivals, which is a different kind of risk with a different remedy.

The airport that was built for a different market

Siem Reap Angkor International Airport opened on 16 October 2023 at a cost of about $1.1 billion, roughly 40 kilometres east of the city, with a 3,600-metre runway to 4E class and a design capacity of 7 million passengers a year.

Measure	Figure
Build cost	About $1.1 billion
Opened	16 October 2023
Distance from the city	About 40 km east
Design capacity	7 million passengers a year
Passengers, first half of 2026	714,133
Implied annual run rate against capacity	Roughly a fifth

Read that table as a statement about timing rather than about failure. The infrastructure is genuinely good, and it removes a constraint that limited Siem Reap for decades. It was also sized for a market that has not arrived, and its distance from the city added a transfer to every visit at the moment visitor numbers were falling.

For a buyer the practical reading is that airport capacity is not a demand signal. Capacity permits growth; it does not create it. A sales pitch built on the airport is describing a possibility, and the gate count is describing the present.

What is actually for sale in Siem Reap, and at what price?

Foreign-eligible stock here is strata condo rather than land or houses, and it prices against the capital rather than against the tourist economy. General condo pricing runs $1,100 to $2,700 per square metre, with newer prime foreign-eligible strata at $2,000 to $3,000, against a Phnom Penh citywide average near $1,800.

What buyers search for	What is actually available to a foreigner
Houses for sale in Siem Reap	Landed stock, closed to foreign freehold
Condos for sale in Siem Reap	Strata above ground floor, inside the 70% total-area cap
Apartments for sale	The same strata product under a different label
Land	Closed to foreign freehold; lease or structure only

Three checks before any offer here:

1. Confirm the unit is strata registered and above the ground floor.
2. Obtain the quota extract in square metres, dated.
3. Price against the Phnom Penh baseline of $1,800 per sqm, not against Angkor visitor numbers.

Our analysis of this market is that the search term and the buyable product diverge more sharply in Siem Reap than anywhere else in Cambodia. Buyers arrive looking for a house near the temples and discover that the only instrument open to them is a strata unit in a small pool of foreign-eligible buildings, priced at or above the capital’s average in a city with a fraction of the capital’s year-round tenant demand, and with a resale pool narrower again. That gap is the single most useful thing to establish before a viewing trip, and the foreign ownership rules settle it in one reading.

How much of this market can a foreigner actually buy?

Segment	Share of the residential market	Open to a foreign buyer
Landed houses and villas	About 55%	No
Borey townhouses	About 20%	No
Condominiums	About 20%	Yes, above ground floor, inside the 70% cap
Shophouses	About 5%	Ground floor excluded

A fifth of the market is the practical universe here, and that fifth is concentrated in a small number of buildings. Siem Reap’s condominium stock is thin by capital standards, so a foreign buyer’s genuine shortlist is short, comparable evidence for valuation is scarce, and the resale pool at exit is the same narrow group of buyers who are reading the same gate count.

Two of the market’s foreign-eligible projects are profiled in Angkor City and Rose Apple Square.

What Siem Reap property costs, and what the yield claims rest on

Line	Siem Reap	Reference
General condo pricing	$1,100 to $2,700 per sqm	Phnom Penh average $1,800
Newer prime foreign-eligible strata	$2,000 to $3,000 per sqm	Above the capital’s average
Agent-quoted yields	Around seven to eight per cent	Asking-side, not transacted
Indicative range on entry pricing	6% to 9%	Same caveat
Guesthouse rooms, end 2024	4,552, down year on year	Supply is contracting
Provincial hotel occupancy	Nearer 60% than the national 70%	Seasonal and thin

Two things in that table deserve to be read together. Prime new strata here asks more per square metre than the Phnom Penh average, and the yield quoted against it comes from agents rather than from completed transactions, in a market whose demand fell almost a third year on year.

That does not make the pricing wrong. Siem Reap’s prime stock is genuinely scarce and genuinely well located, and scarcity supports price. It does mean the yield claim and the price claim rest on different foundations: the price is defensible on supply, and the yield is a forecast dressed as an average. Model it on today’s occupancy instead, and treat the agents’ average as the number to test rather than the number to use.

Hospitality-specific economics are set out in the hotel and guesthouse investment guide.

Advantages and disadvantages of a monument-dependent market

The advantages begin with transparency, which is rarer than it sounds. Siem Reap publishes its demand driver monthly, so an investor here can monitor the thing that matters instead of inferring it. Supply is disciplined (guesthouse room count has been falling rather than rising), and the city has world-class infrastructure that arrived early rather than late. Entry pricing outside the prime band is well below the capital. And Angkor is not going anywhere: this is a demand shock, not an obsolescence story.

The disadvantages are concentration and depth. One driver means no diversification within the market: a bad year for arrivals is a bad year for every asset class in the city at once. Only a fifth of the residential market is foreign-eligible. Comparable evidence for valuation is thin, the resale pool is small, and tourism-linked rental demand is seasonal in a way that Phnom Penh’s corporate and domestic demand is not. A unit that lets well in the dry season may not let at all in the wet one.

Is the expressway a reason to buy?

The proposed Phnom Penh to Siem Reap expressway covers 249 kilometres at about $2.5 billion, with a further 151 kilometres from Siem Reap to Poipet at about $1.7 billion. China Road and Bridge Corporation has completed a feasibility study. No construction start date has been set.

A completed expressway would materially change Siem Reap by making it a weekend destination for the capital’s own population, adding a domestic demand stream to a market that currently has almost none. That is a genuine structural upside and it is worth watching.

It is not, at this stage, a reason to pay more. A feasibility study is the beginning of a process whose remaining steps (financing, procurement, construction, and several years of building) have no published timetable. Price the city on the arrivals it has, and treat the road as an option you have not paid for. The Techo airport corridor near the capital shows what the same story looks like once construction is actually underway, and is covered in the Techo corridor.

Who Siem Reap suits, and who it does not

It suits an owner-occupier or part-time resident who wants to be in Siem Reap for its own sake, at a price well below the equivalent in the capital, and who is indifferent to the rental market. It suits a long-horizon contrarian who believes arrivals recover and wants to buy scarce prime stock while the gate count is bad: a coherent position, provided it is taken deliberately and with the current numbers in hand.

It does not suit an income investor who needs predictable monthly cash flow, because the demand is seasonal and currently contracting. It does not suit a buyer who needs a reliable exit inside five years, because the resale pool is small. And it does not suit anyone being sold the airport, the expressway and the 2019 visitor numbers in the same conversation.

What to verify before a Siem Reap purchase

Check the current month’s Angkor admissions before you sign anything, and check them again before the balance falls due. This is the rare market where the key indicator is public, timely and free.

Then do the ordinary work. Ask how much of the 70% ceiling remains unsold, by area, and take the answer in writing. Establish the title type and the registration route, and budget the 4% transfer tax on the assessed value the tax administration sets. Read the co-owners association accounts, because a building with high vacancy is a building where the sinking fund is under pressure. Ask for actual completed resales in the same building rather than asking prices. If the purchase is off-plan, ask for the Prakas 047 developer deposit receipt against a banking sector carrying an 8.9% non-performing loan ratio.

Finally, model the rental year in two halves rather than as an average, since a single annual figure hides the whole of Siem Reap’s risk.

Step-by-step, the buying process is mapped in due diligence; the national picture is in the 2026 market outlook.

Frequently Asked Questions

How dependent is Siem Reap on Angkor? +

Almost entirely. Ticketed international visitors ran 428,223 in the first seven months of 2026, down 30.7% from 618,771 a year earlier, and ticket revenue fell 29% to $20.3 million. Local rents, hotel occupancy and retail turnover all descend from that count.

Is the fall in visitors about price or volume? +

Volume. Revenue divided by visitors gives about $47 a head in the first seven months of 2026 against roughly $47 across the whole of 2025, so spending per arrival barely moved. Fewer people came; those who came behaved the same.

What about the new airport? +

Siem Reap Angkor International Airport opened on 16 October 2023 at about $1.1 billion, roughly 40 km east of the city, with a 3,600-metre 4E-class runway and capacity for 7 million passengers a year. It handled 714,133 passengers in the first half of 2026, roughly a fifth of capacity annualised.

How much of the Siem Reap market can a foreigner buy? +

About a fifth. Landed houses and villas are roughly 55% of the residential market, borey townhouses about 20%, condominiums about 20% and shophouses about 5%. Only the condominium slice is available, above the ground floor and inside the 70% cap.

What do Siem Reap condos cost? +

Roughly $1,100 to $2,700 per square metre across the market, with newer foreign-eligible strata in prime locations at $2,000 to $3,000, above the $1,800 Phnom Penh average, in a market with a fraction of the capital's tenant depth.

Are the seven to eight per cent yields real? +

They are asking-side quotes rather than transacted returns, and they were produced in stronger visitor years. Model any Siem Reap yield against current occupancy, because the tenant demand behind it is tourism demand.