Property for sale in Phuket

Phuket is about 50 km from north to south, with the airport at the top, so the further south you buy, the longer every trip home starts. Prices, rents and the kind of tenant you attract change from bay to bay.

The north-west: Mai Khao, Nai Yang, Layan and Bang Tao. Closest to the airport and the most planned part of the island. Mai Khao and Nai Yang lie inside Sirinat National Park, with the island's longest beach and the runway at its southern end. Layan is a quiet, villa-led bay at the northern end of the Bang Tao coast. Bang Tao is anchored by Laguna Phuket, the 1,000-acre integrated resort built on a former tin mine, and by the shops and schools that keep families here all year. Inland, Cherngtalay holds the island's highest villa prices.

The west: Surin, Kamala and Millionaires Mile. Surin is a short, cleared beach with very little land left, between Bang Tao and Kamala, and Amanpuri on the Pansea headland to its north. Kamala is a former fishing village that became a settled expat bay with a busy long-let market and lower entry prices than Bang Tao. South of the village, the headland road to Patong is Millionaires Mile, the island's best-known sea-view villa address.

Patong. Patong is the commercial beach: Bangla Road, the most hotel rooms and the densest condo market on the island. Condos let easily to holidaymakers, where the building is licensed; owners who want to use the property themselves usually look elsewhere.

The south-west: Karon and Kata. Kata and Karon are two connected family bays south of Patong, calmer than it, with surf in the monsoon and the protected Nakkerd hills behind them.

The south: Rawai and Nai Harn. Rawai and Nai Harn are where long-stay expatriates have lived for decades: villas, low-rise condos and a settled community, furthest from the airport and about 15 km from the Phuket Town hospitals.

The east and centre: Phuket Town, Chalong and Koh Kaew. Phuket Town is the working capital, with the Sino-Portuguese Old Town, the main hospitals and malls, and the family belt of Chalong, Wichit and Koh Kaew where most residents live. It is generally the cheapest place on the island to rent.

If you are moving rather than investing, our page on living in Phuket covers monthly costs, schools, healthcare and driving.

No bay is best for everyone. This is how the Thailand desk matches a brief to an area, with the full area guides linked in the section above.

• A family with children at UWC: Bang Tao and Laguna. UWC Thailand is inland at Thalang, and Laguna has shops, clinics and cycle paths that make life possible without driving everywhere.
• A family with children at BISP: Phuket Town's Koh Kaew and Chalong side. British International School Phuket is on Thepkrasattri Road at Koh Kaew, on the east of the island, a long school run from the west-coast beaches.
• Letting by the month: Kamala and Bang Tao condos. These are the west-coast bays with steady long-stay demand from tenants who want a beach and a village.
• Letting by the night through a licensed operator: Patong, for volume, or a hotel-run programme on Bang Tao or Kamala.
• Scarcity and privacy: Surin and Layan, where almost nothing new can be built near the sand.
• A sea-view villa: Cherngtalay, Millionaires Mile and the hills above Nai Harn. Headland plots are scarce, which is why they carry the highest prices.
• Retiring: Rawai and Nai Harn, or Kamala. Established communities, a slower pace, and the Phuket Town hospitals within reach of the south.
• Short trips with the least travel: Mai Khao and Nai Yang, next to the airport, accepting the aircraft noise and a quieter evening.
• Families on holiday rather than in residence: Kata and Karon, with long beaches and more going on than the north.
• The lowest entry price: Kamala and Phuket Town condos. Our lowest current price is a Kamala apartment from £66,299 (฿2.95m).

When two areas fit, think about who buys from you later. A unit that suits several of these briefs at once, near the beach on the west coast, has more potential buyers than one that suits only a single kind of owner.

Less than many buyers assume, and the rules differ by plot. This matters before you fall for a sea view, because a building that breaks them can be hard to insure, finance or sell.

On the coast. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment's coastal rules for Phuket, as reported locally since its 2010 announcement, work in bands measured inland from the shore:

• 0–20 metres: no building
• 20–50 metres: a 6-metre height cap, with 75% of the plot kept green
• 50–200 metres: a 12-metre height cap

The catch is where the measurement starts. Authorities have used different reference lines on different stretches of coast, and Rawai's local administration has worked from its own line, so two neighbouring plots can face different limits. No change to these bands has been reported since. This is why Phuket's beachfront is low-rise and why the taller condominiums sit back from the sand in Patong and Karon.

In the hills. Until December 2024, land more than 80 metres above sea level was effectively closed to new building. A cabinet-approved re-zoning, published in the Royal Gazette on 13 December 2024 and in force from the next day, opened Zone 6 land between 80 and 140 metres to strictly limited building: reported limits are a single structure of up to 6 metres high, under 90 sq m of ground cover, with at least 70% of the plot left natural. The re-zoning does not apply to coastal areas, the protected Nakkerd hills above Kata, Karon and Chalong, or densely populated areas such as Phuket Town.

What to check. Ask your own lawyer to confirm, for the specific plot, which coastal reference line applies, the plot's elevation, and that the building permit matches what has been or will be built, including height and footprint. On any hillside villa, also ask who designed the retaining walls and drainage. The area guides note where these rules bite hardest, from Patong's beachfront to Rawai's disputed lines.

The choice is about land. A condominium unit can be registered in your name outright within the building's foreign quota, which is why most UK investors start with an apartment. A villa sits on land a foreigner cannot hold, so you own the house and lease the plot, with 30 years the most the Land Office will register and longer "30+30+30" promises that Thai courts have not upheld as written. Price a villa on its first registered term.

What we don't do. We don't arrange Thai nominee companies to hold land. It is how many Phuket villas were bought in the past, and it is the structure most exposed to challenge.

Quota checks, the money trail and the proposals that are not yet law are explained in our foreign ownership guide.

Location moves prices more than size does. C9 Hotelworks counted about 40,600 resort-grade units for sale in 343 developments in early 2025, 83% of them condominiums. Its May 2025 update put the median asking price at ฿144,000 per sq m (about £3,236) for a condo and ฿70,000 per sq m (about £1,573) for a villa or landed home, which is lower per square metre because the land and floor areas are larger. Brands carry a premium: branded villas had a median of ฿162,000 per sq m, against ฿73,000 for non-branded.

Resale is now a large part of the market. C9's August 2025 analysis of transaction data found resales overtook off-plan sales in 2023, with the median off-plan condo around ฿121,000 per sq m (about £2,719) against an average resale price of ฿68,000 (about £1,528). The same analysis put the median three-bedroom villa, the most traded type, at £280,900 (฿12.5m), with Choeng Thale at £404,500 (฿18m) and Rawai at £343,800 (฿15.3m). At the top, three-bedroom villas in Cherngtalay were listed at up to ฿137.9m, about £3.1m.

Buying costs are mostly set nationally: the Land Office transfer fee, the seller's business tax or stamp duty, withholding tax and, on a villa, lease registration. The 0.01% fee cut that runs to 30 June 2027 is for Thai individuals only. The full schedule, with a worked example in sterling, is in our costs and taxes guide.

Very. Knight Frank's figures for the first half of 2025 put island-wide hotel occupancy at 79.5%, with January at 91.8% and every month from January to April above 81%. June, deep in the monsoon, was the low at 66.9%. Average daily room rates rose 7.8% to ฿5,652, about £127.

The two halves of the year. From about November to April the Andaman is calm and European and UK visitors fill the west coast. The south-west monsoon arrives in about May and lasts to October: rain in heavy bursts rather than all day, red flags on the beaches, and nightly rates down while visitors from the region keep the island busy.

Who can let by the night. Stays under 30 days need a hotel licence, which in practice means a development with a licensed operator and a rental programme. Everyone else lets by the month, increasingly to long-stay tenants who fill the low season. The licensing rules and the reform bills are covered in our rental yields guide, along with how Thai and UK tax interact on the rent.

An illustration, not market data. Take a £250,000 (฿11.1m) condo let long-term at an assumed £1,250 a month: £15,000 a year gross. Service charges, management, insurance and a void month come off before tax, and the net figure is then taxed in Thailand and reported in the UK with credit for the Thai tax. We run that sum building by building, and we don't promise yields.

Infrastructure is catching up with visitor numbers, slowly. None of these should be priced into a purchase today.

• Airport, phase 2: an expansion to 18 million passengers a year is in design.
• Kathu–Patong tunnel: a ฿16.76bn (about £376.6m) road tunnel under the hill, with a cabinet decision expected around December 2026 and opening planned for 2031.
• Tram: the first phase of the light-rail line is not expected before 2030.
• Andaman airport: a second airport for the Andaman coast is at feasibility stage.

Our market outlook tracks each project as the dates firm up.

Virgin Atlantic's VS214 now flies non-stop from Heathrow three times a week, on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, on a seasonal winter schedule that began on 18 October 2026. It leaves at midday and lands in Phuket at 07:10 the next morning, about 12 hours 10 minutes in the air. VS215 comes back on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays, leaving at 09:20 and reaching Heathrow at 16:00. On other days you connect through Doha, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Istanbul or Bangkok.

From the airport, in normal traffic:

• Mai Khao: 15 to 20 minutes
• Bang Tao and Laguna: 25 to 35 minutes
• Kamala: 30 to 40 minutes
• Phuket Town: 35 to 45 minutes
• Patong: 45 to 60 minutes
• Kata and Karon: 50 to 65 minutes
• Rawai and Nai Harn: 60 to 75 minutes

Allow longer between about 4pm and 7pm, and over the hill into Patong. A UK visitor can stay 30 days visa-free for tourism; living here needs a visa, and owning property does not provide one. Our visa and residency guide compares the long-stay routes.

Four, all on or near the west coast. Prices are "from" and move as units sell; we send current price lists and availability on WhatsApp.

• [Sole Mio Residences](/property/sole-mio-residences), Bang Tao / Laguna: a beachside apartment scheme in two buildings, from £340,000 (฿15.1m), due for completion in Q4 2026. Freehold within the foreign quota, with a managed rental programme.
• [The Element by Anocha](/property/the-element-by-anocha), Kamala: apartments and pool residences a short walk from the bay, from £66,299 (฿2.95m), completing in 2027, and our lowest entry price on the island.
• [Verdi Villas Phuket](/property/verdi-villas-phuket), Si Sunthon, Thalang: two- and three-bedroom pool villas inland from Bang Tao and Layan, from £209,000 (฿9.3m), leasehold for foreign buyers.
• [MGallery Residences MontAzure](/property/mgallery-residences-montazure), Kamala: Accor MGallery-branded residences near the beach at Kamala, from £215,600 (฿9.59m), with the hotel operator on site.

Before we list a project, we check the developer's record, the land title and the building permits. The questions we ask are in our Thailand buying guide.

Plan on four or five days on the island.

1. Before you fly: a 30-minute call with the Thailand desk to settle budget, tenure and areas, and a shortlist built from current price lists.
2. Day one: land on the Heathrow non-stop or a connection, and rest.
3. Days two and three: site visits, show units, and completed buildings by the same developers, with the drives between bays timed as you would make them.
4. Day four: your own independent lawyer and, if you are going ahead, the bank, so the transfer paperwork is ready before money moves.
5. Day five: a second look at the shortlist, then home.

We plan the itinerary and viewings; you book flights and hotel. If you can't travel, we run the viewing by video and send the developer's documents for your lawyer. To begin, book a call with the Thailand desk.

Can a British citizen buy property in Phuket?

Yes. A British buyer can register a Phuket condo in their own name, provided the building's foreign share stays within 49% and the purchase money comes from overseas. A villa is bought as the house plus a lease of the land, registered for up to 30 years.

Can I build a beachfront or hillside villa in Phuket?

Only within tight limits. Nothing can be built in the first 20 metres from the shore, heights are capped at 6 and then 12 metres up to 200 metres inland, and hill land between 80 and 140 metres takes only a single small structure. Have your lawyer confirm the rules for the exact plot.

Is it safe to buy off-plan in Phuket?

It is as safe as the developer and the contract. Check the developer's completed buildings, the land title, the environmental approval and the building permit, have your own lawyer read the sale contract, and pay in stages tied to construction, never everything up front.

Can I get a mortgage for Phuket property?

Thai banks rarely lend to non-resident foreigners, so most UK buyers pay cash, use a developer's staged payment plan or release equity from a UK home. Our mortgages and finance guide compares the options.

Do I pay UK tax on Phuket rental income?

Yes, if you are UK resident. Thailand taxes the rent first and the UK credits that tax against your own bill, so you pay roughly the higher of the two, not both. A later sale falls within UK capital gains tax.

Which is the best area of Phuket for property investment?

For most UK investors, the west coast between Bang Tao and Kamala: year-round demand, international schools within reach and a wide resale market. Patong lets more nights but suits investors who won't use the property themselves.