The capital that once chased Phuket is now looking at Koh Samui. In the first quarter of 2026, Colliers Thailand counted 154 residential projects on the market across Samui and Koh Phangan, around 2,860 units, for a combined sales value above 61.14 billion baht. The shift is clear: the postcard island is becoming one of the addresses where Thai investment real estate gets decided.
What the Numbers Say
Foreign demand drives the market. Holiday homes, long-term yield assets, long-lease (leasehold) structures: international buyers form the primary customer group, and the popularity of leasehold makes them a force that shapes where the market goes.
The 61.14 billion baht figure deserves a precise reading. It measures the value of supply currently for sale across Samui and Phangan combined, not a volume of completed transactions. And that supply moves fast. Even as new units keep coming, well-located projects, holiday homes and condominiums in particular, sell quickly. When a market absorbs growing supply at this pace, demand still runs ahead of what gets built. Leasehold sharpens the effect, because it widens the pool of qualified buyers and shortens selling times on the best locations. The same mechanism carried Phuket before its prices took off.
Developers understood this before the wider public. Groups from Bangkok and other regions are already building land banks on the island to prepare their next launches, which removes still more land from what stays available, a trend documented in The Nation Thailand's June 2026 market report.
Five Years Behind Phuket
Phattarachai Taweewong, Director of Research and Communications at Colliers Thailand, places Samui where Phuket stood about five years ago. The gap comes down to land: prices here remain well below Phuket's, which puts the island at the start of its growth cycle. For an investor, that is an entry window before values catch up to a mature market. Buyers who entered Phuket early watched their land appreciate as the island densified. Samui opens the same sequence, one notch lower in the cycle.
That window closes through geography. Based on THEVA's field surveys, the share of genuinely buildable land on Samui sits around 12%, against close to 70% on Phuket. Of that 12%, 6 to 7% is already built, leaving a premium strip of roughly 2%.
| Criterion | Koh Samui | Phuket |
|---|---|---|
| Buildable land | around 12% | around 70% |
| Land prices | well below Phuket, early rise | high, mature market |
| Cycle stage | early cycle | maturity |
Topography and zoning cap the land, so prices climb through land mechanics as much as through buying appetite. This is the structural gap buyers have finally priced in: a finite ground does not renew itself, and every parcel sold brings the market closer to its physical limit.
"On capped land, buying early means buying ahead of the next price wave."
Why Capital Is Moving Now
The rise does not come from nowhere. Several infrastructure and hospitality projects are landing at the same time, and investors are connecting the dots.
Start with the airport. Bangkok Airways began a major terminal upgrade in the second quarter of 2026 (seven to eleven boarding gates, completion targeted for 2030), aiming for a capacity of 6 million passengers a year against roughly 2.7 million handled in 2024. Traffic nearly doubles to reach that target. More seats means more room nights, so a widening base of rental income for owners.
Then the road. The new cross-island route brings most destinations within about thirty minutes of one another. On terrain where relief long isolated certain areas, that is a step change in access, and therefore in the value of locations once seen as remote.
High-end hospitality confirms the move. The arrival of names like Hilton, the Club Med signed for 2028 with Central Group Capital, and large developments such as The Experience settle a durable international clientele and pull the island's standards upward. Each branded opening validates the destination for buyers who want a full ecosystem, not an isolated view.
One file sits further out: the bridge meant to link Samui to the mainland. The project resurfaces regularly without a firm timeline. If it goes through, it shifts island access another notch. For now, it is a factor to watch, not a settled input.
The West Coast, the Tightest Segment
The land constraint does not fall evenly across the island. On the west coast, the usable shoreline is narrow, and the sunset-facing orientation adds a premium geography does not mass-produce. Two variables stack here that no developer can invent: scarce land and a west-facing aspect.
The Lipa Noi and Taling Ngam area, below the Ida B Domaine, concentrates that tension. Hilton's choice to place its new property here, on the southwestern tip in the Taling Ngam district, confirms the market read: operators who study long-term demand target this stretch of coast. Colliers names location quality as one of the decisive indicators of an asset's competitiveness over time, and this segment meets those criteria better than anywhere else on the island. This is where THEVA Horizon has chosen to build.
"A rare shoreline and a west-facing front: two variables no developer can manufacture."
Thailand's Safest Market
Colliers pairs its outlook with a clear warning. Market momentum will not be enough: verifying land titles and selecting locations with real demand will decide competitiveness over time.
This is where Samui pulls ahead. The tightening of controls on ownership structures, what the market already calls the "Samui Model," turns a constraint into a guarantee. The island is becoming the safest place in Thailand to place foreign capital. A buyer who secures a clean Chanote title and a properly registered lease today avoids any future legal risk. The strength of the legal structure becomes an asset in itself, and the least visible part of a purchase is also the first to check.
Final Thoughts
Samui brings together what investors rarely find in one place: a young cycle, capped land, an incoming wave of infrastructure, and a framework that secures the purchase. The destination has stopped being a bet, it is settling into place. And the tension concentrates where land is scarcest, on the west coast, where location sets the price. That is exactly the ground THEVA Horizon has chosen to build on.
