De Castle Review: One Brand, Two Buildings, Two Districts

Quick answer: There is no De Castle on Koh Pich. There is De Castle Diamond on Street 315 in Toul Kork, and De Castle Royal in BKK1, two buildings from one Korean developer, in districts whose per-square-metre pricing differs by nearly two to one. A listing that says only “De Castle” has not yet told you what is for sale.

This page previously described a “De Castle Koh Pich” and priced it as an island condominium. No such building appears in any developer, portal or island record. What exists is a two-building brand in two mainland districts, and this page now covers what a buyer actually needs to tell them apart.

What De Castle actually is

De Castle is a Korean developer’s residential brand in Phnom Penh with two principal buildings: De Castle Diamond on Street 315 in Sangkat Boeung Kak 2, Khan Toul Kork, and De Castle Royal in BKK1. The shared name conceals a genuine difference in district, tenant and price.

	De Castle Diamond	De Castle Royal
District	Boeung Kak 2, Khan Toul Kork	BKK1
District band	~$1,400-$1,900 per sqm	$2,800-$3,500 per sqm
Layouts	Two and three bedrooms, large	Central premium stock
Neighbourhood	Universities, hospital, TK Avenue	Embassies, restaurants, expatriate core
Amenities	Parking, gym, lounge, indoor pool	Central premium amenity
On Koh Pich?	No	No

Our read of the brand is that it is perfectly respectable and slightly dangerous, and the danger has nothing to do with construction. Both buildings are ordinary strata towers with the usual amenity, and each is a reasonable purchase in its own district. The problem is that Phnom Penh’s listing culture leans heavily on brand names, and “De Castle” is a name that spans two markets whose pricing differs by a factor approaching two. A buyer told that De Castle units “trade around a certain figure” has been given a number that is either far too high or far too low for the specific asset in front of them, and neither the agent nor the buyer necessarily notices. That is the entire subject of this page, and it is worth more to a purchaser than another description of a swimming pool.

The Toul Kork profile and the BKK1 profile set the two bands this brand straddles. For pricing discipline see the resale valuation guide, and for the broader pattern of names doing work that facts should do, the property scam checklist.

How does foreign ownership work in either building?

The rule is the same in both and it is the ordinary one: strata co-ownership, above the ground floor, inside the cap of 70% of the total private-unit area of that co-ownership building. What differs is which ledger you are entitled to see.

Ownership item	Position	What to demand
Legal basis	Strata co-ownership, Sub-Decree 126	Certificate for the named building
Foreign cap	70% of that building’s private-unit area	Dated extract, in square metres
Two buildings	Separate ledgers	The one your unit is in
Title	Individual strata title	Land Office verification
Seller	Owner resale in both cases	Encumbrance search per title
Documents	Co-ownership regulations	Per building, not per brand

What we could verify is that both routes are standard and clean. The building-specific instruction is unusually simple and unusually easy to skip: make every document name the building, not the brand. A quota ledger headed “De Castle” without a qualifier is not evidence about your unit; a set of co-ownership regulations for the wrong tower tells you nothing about the one you are buying into; and a title search run on a name rather than a parcel is not a search. This sounds pedantic until you notice that a buyer working remotely, through translated documents, with a brand that spans two districts, has three separate opportunities to end up holding paperwork about the wrong asset. The counter-move costs nothing: require the sangkat and street on every page you are shown, and reject any document that identifies the property by brand alone.

The general framework is in can foreigners buy property in Cambodia, the cap in foreign ownership and strata title, and the working order in due diligence step by step. Buying without being present is covered in buying property in Cambodia remotely.

What the two districts pay, and why the gap matters

BKK1 trades at roughly $2,800 to $3,500 per sqm; Toul Kork at roughly $1,400 to $1,900, against a city average near $1,800. A brand-level comparable that ignores which side of that gap a unit sits on is not a comparable at all.

Input	Toul Kork	BKK1
Price band	~$1,400-$1,900 per sqm	$2,800-$3,500 per sqm
Typical tenant	Local professionals, academic, medical	Expatriate, diplomatic, corporate
Rent band	$400-$1,000/month, 1-2BR	$650-$1,350 for a one-bedroom
Unit sizes	Large layouts common here	Efficiency prized
Vacancy backdrop	~15% citywide	~15% citywide
Service charge	~$1.50 per sqm per month	~$1.50 per sqm per month

Insider tip: when an agent offers “recent De Castle transactions”, ask for the sangkat of each one before you look at the price, sorting the list by district takes a minute and routinely splits it into two clusters that have no business being averaged. Our analysis of brand-led listing markets finds the error runs in both directions and is rarely deliberate: a Toul Kork seller anchors on a BKK1 sale and overprices; a BKK1 buyer anchors on Toul Kork evidence and lowballs a fair asking price into a wasted month. Both are avoidable with one question. The size dimension compounds it: large three-bedroom layouts of the kind recorded in Diamond, around 229 sqm gross, price very differently per square metre from the compact central units that dominate BKK1 evidence, so even a correctly-districted comparable needs a size check before it means anything.

The valuation method is in the resale valuation guide and the negotiating use of comparables in the negotiation guide. District detail sits in the Toul Kork profile and the BKK1 profile.

Who rents a large unit in Toul Kork?

De Castle Diamond’s neighbourhood is institutional rather than diplomatic: the Royal University of Phnom Penh and the International University are minutes away, Calmette Hospital and Aeon Mall 2 are close, and TK Avenue anchors the local retail. That produces a specific and quite durable tenant.

Income input	Position	Note
Tenant pool	Academic, medical, local professional	Steady, less cyclical
Rent band	$400-$1,000/month, modern 1-2BR	Larger units above the band
Unit sizes	Two and three bedrooms, generous	Suits families and sharers
Amenity	Parking, gym, lounge, indoor pool	Family-relevant
Vacancy backdrop	~15% citywide	Institutional demand is steadier
Modelled net	3%-5%	After voids, fees, service charge

The methodology this site applies is to underwrite the tenant the neighbourhood actually contains, and we tracked Toul Kork’s profile rather than the brand’s positioning. An institutional district behaves differently from an expatriate one: leases follow academic and hospital cycles rather than corporate postings, tenants stay longer, and demand is less exposed to the arrival curve of foreigners that drives BKK1. Large layouts fit that market well, because families and professional sharers need bedrooms rather than a fashionable address. The trade-off is a lower ceiling: a 200-plus sqm apartment in Toul Kork will not achieve a BKK1 rent per square metre no matter how it is finished, so the yield case rests on buying the space at the district’s price rather than at the brand’s. Do that, and the tenant profile does the rest of the work quietly for years.

Income modelling is in the Phnom Penh rental yield guide and net vs gross yield; the district’s own demand is in the Toul Kork profile. Letting from abroad is covered in the management guide.

Which building should a buyer choose?

The choice is really a choice of district, and it should be made in that order: pick the tenant, then pick the building the brand happens to have there.

Option	Suits	Why
De Castle Royal, BKK1	Expatriate letting, prestige, liquidity	Deepest tenant pool, highest entry
De Castle Diamond, Toul Kork	Family and institutional letting, space	Large units at a district discount
Other BKK1 stock	Buyers wanting choice at the top	Many comparable towers
Other Toul Kork stock	Value buyers	Wider selection at similar money
City average	~$1,800 per sqm	The anchor between the two
The brand itself	Neither	It is not a valuation input

Our underwriting reaches a conclusion that is deliberately unromantic: the brand should carry no weight in the decision. Two buildings by one developer in two districts are two separate investments, and every input that matters, price band, tenant, unit size, liquidity, exit pool, is set by the district rather than by the name over the door. A buyer who wants the deepest expatriate tenant pool in the country and can pay for it belongs in BKK1, at Royal or at one of the many comparable towers there. A buyer who wants generous space for a family or a sharing household, near universities and a major hospital, at roughly half the per-square-metre cost, belongs in Toul Kork, at Diamond or its neighbours. The only genuinely wrong move is the one this page exists to prevent: buying either building on the strength of a comparable drawn from the other.

The two districts are documented in the BKK1 profile and the Toul Kork profile, with the city-level shortlist in best condos to buy in Phnom Penh and the general framework in buy new vs resale.

What we could verify, and the correction

Claim	Classification	Evidence
De Castle Diamond: Street 315, Boeung Kak 2, Toul Kork	Verified	Agency and portal records
De Castle Royal: BKK1	Verified	Agency records
Korean developer	Verified	Project records
Diamond: 2 and 3-bedroom layouts, large	Verified	Listing records incl. ~229 sqm 3BR
Diamond amenities: parking, gym, lounge, indoor pool	Verified	Project documentation
A De Castle on Koh Pich	Not found	No developer, portal or island record
Quota headroom per building	Must obtain	Dated ledger extract
District-matched comparables	Must obtain	Sorted by sangkat before use

The Koh Pich row is the correction. This page previously reviewed a building on the island that no source records, and priced it. Everything now on the page describes the two buildings that do exist. The slug still contains “koh-pich” and is queued for renaming with the next approved redirect batch.

Advantages and disadvantages

For the purchase: two ordinary, sound strata buildings with a named developer; genuinely large layouts at Diamond in a district that prices space sensibly; an institutional neighbourhood with durable, low-churn tenants; foreign-eligible titles in both; and, at Royal, access to the country’s deepest expatriate rental market.

Against it: a brand name that spans a per-square-metre gap of nearly two to one, which corrupts comparables in both directions; large units that will not achieve premium-district rents per square metre; a remote buyer’s real risk of receiving documents for the wrong building; and a listing market that quotes the brand far more often than it quotes the sangkat.

Buyer scenarios and decision framework

A family or long-stay tenant landlord is well served by Diamond’s space at Toul Kork’s price. An expatriate-focused investor belongs at Royal or elsewhere in BKK1. A remote buyer should treat building identification as the first diligence step rather than a formality. And any buyer handed brand-level comparables should sort them by district before allowing a single one into the negotiation.

Closing verification checklist

Before an offer: establish which building, on which street, in which sangkat; obtain the dated quota extract for that building; require every document to name the building rather than the brand; sort all comparables by district and by unit size before using them; read the co-ownership regulations and the sinking-fund position for the correct tower; run the Land Office title and encumbrance search on the parcel; and time the transfer against the 2026-12-31 duty window, with the 20% capital gains regime from 2027 in the exit model.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is De Castle on Koh Pich? +

No. Earlier versions of this page said so and were wrong. De Castle Diamond stands on Street 315 in Sangkat Boeung Kak 2, Khan Toul Kork, and De Castle Royal stands in BKK1. No De Castle building appears in any record of Koh Pich's schemes.

How many De Castle buildings are there? +

The two that matter to a buyer are De Castle Diamond in Toul Kork and De Castle Royal in BKK1, from the same Korean developer. They share a name and a design language and little else that determines value.

What is De Castle Diamond like? +

A Toul Kork tower with two and three-bedroom layouts, parking, a fitness centre, a lounge and an indoor pool. Units run large by local standards: a 16th-floor three-bedroom of about 229 sqm gross appears in listing records, near TK Avenue, the universities and Calmette Hospital.

Can foreigners buy in either building? +

Yes, in both, above the ground floor and inside the cap of 70% of that building's total private-unit area. The cap is counted per co-ownership building, so the ledger for Diamond says nothing about Royal, or the reverse.

Which of the two is the better buy? +

They answer different questions. Royal sits in BKK1 at roughly $2,800 to $3,500 per sqm with the deepest expatriate tenant pool. Diamond sits in Toul Kork at roughly $1,400 to $1,900 with large units and an institutional neighbourhood. The tenant you want decides.

What is the practical risk of the shared name? +

Mispriced comparables. An agent quoting recent De Castle sales may be mixing two districts with a per-square-metre gap approaching two to one. Require every comparable to name the specific building and check it against the district band.