Reason foreigners cannot own ground floor: Naïveté

Visitors evinced keen interest in new developments at the Cambodia Real Estate Show.

Foreigners in Cambodia are barred from owning the ground floor of any building in the Kingdom of Wonder.

I finally found out the origins of the prohibition early this month when I attended one of 16 presentations at the Cambodia Real Estate Show, a well organized two-day event that attracted numerous potential developers along with buyers of luxury apartments and buildings.  (Hey, you can take the broker out of real estate, but you can’t take real estate. . .)

It was not until 1989 and then in 2001 that government decrees defined the possession and subsequently, in 2001, full ownership rights of residential property.

Like most other countries in the region, Cambodia does not want foreigners to own a piece of the nation, no matter how small, as codified in Article 8 of the Land Law.

According to presenter Matthew Rendall — a lawyer who holds a Cambodian passport and is managing partner at SokSiphana & Associates in Phnom Penh — the stricture resulted from

Investment in construction surges against all odds

Source: Phnom Penh Post

The biggest disincentive for investing in land and new construction in Phnom Penh ought to be, in my view, how much of it is taking place. I have written several times in this space about the swelling bubble that I believe I am witnessing.

The bubble notwithstanding, other reasons would seem to militate against considering a building project in Cambodia, and I’ll get to those factors in a minute.

It is my belief that the dimensions of the growing bubble are clear: Construction and real estate investments achieved 13.75 per cent more growth in the third quarter over the same time last year. The government puts the combined worth at $1.752 billion, an increase in value of $1.54 billion over the previous year.

That recently persistent growth somehow has occurred despite

What happens on the Internet, stays on the Internet

After I publish a post, I entertain myself by checking to see how many views my blog is getting. Usually, I am disappointed by the number while striving to remain philosophical that I write mostly to please myself.

A nice feature of WordPress, the platform I began using in 2009, is the statistics I see and the surprises they offer.

For one thing, I am continually surprised by two sets of numbers: One is how individuals from the all over the world seem to find my blog and the second is how old are some of the posts they discover.

Nearly two years after having moved to Cambodia from Manhattan and retired from selling and writing about real estate originally in the Washington, D.C. area and then New York, I am amazed

Because of construction, there goes my neighborhood

This villa, a block from my apartment, exemplifies what is being lost in my neighborhood.

Demolition, renovation and new construction in my neighborhood of Boeung Keng Kang 1 (BKK1) is transforming an area that many expats favor into one that is becoming hard to recognize.

This former villa, which had become a restaurant, is across the street from the house in the top photo.  (Warning: Numerous images below.)

What is happening here at a dizzying pace merely reflects a situation in which property development in Phnom Penh has soared and, along with it, prices.

Investors in residential buildings in prime neighborhoods such as mine drove land prices up in the last half of 2014 alone by

My first year in Cambodia has passed at warp speed

What some folks think of as Angkor Wat is the temple in the background, but the name actually applies to a sprawling complex filled with architectural wonders that cover many kilometers.

December 3 was the anniversary of my move to Cambodia.  Although I felt pretty much prepared for the experience, I have learned a lot.

Everything about making Phnom Penh my home is new.  I have never before been retired, never lived as an expat, never expected to have English be so often understood here and never spent more than vacation time in a developing country.

The list of what I learned about Cambodia and me is long, but I’ll do my best to provide mere brushstrokes of my perspective in the hope that I won’t tax your patience.

One surprise has been how deeply moved I have been by the widespread poverty, how desperately I’d like to help a poor people and how

Construction din around our rental is driving me crazy

View from our living room of the construction hell below.

As I draft this post, I am being assaulted by the demolition sounds on the floor above our apartment and by the extraordinary amount of construction in the surrounding blocks.

We live in the desirable neighborhood of Bueng Keng Kang 1, where many expats prefer to live and dine, though there are more expensive parts of Phnom Penh that also are popular.  Even with rents rocketing up, the amount of new construction here astonishes me.

I count

Five signs you may be ready for home ownership

Plunging into the purchase of residential property can cause needless anxiety.

Deciding to purchase a new home can be a process that engenders anxiety, sleeplessness and domestic discord.

But it needn’t be so stressful if you follow the advice given by Robin Wright on the RealtyTimes.com blog.

She lists considerations that can help you determine whether you’re ready to take the plunge.  They are the following:

‘Pre-qualified’ has become an empty phrase

Pre-approval of a borrower seeking a mortgage is much different from pre-qualification.

You can thank the Dodd-Frank Consumer Protection Act for depriving the term “pre-qualified” of relevance to borrowers in search of financing their home purchase.

That’s not really a bad thing, but it does place a greater burden on borrowers to prove themselves worthy of a mortgage before they present an offer to sellers.

All pre-qualification means is

Sellers don’t have to let open houses daunt them

Some houses — you know, b-i-g houses — rarely are open. (Tim Pearce took this flickr photo at Alcatraz.)

Thanks to TV reality shows, some sellers may well be daunted by new takes on open houses.

That needn’t be the case.

The first thing that sellers must keep in mind is that they must not be present at an open house.

Not only does their presence tend to intimidate buyers into keeping closet doors shut, it also tends to cause mouths to shut as well.  Buyers at open houses don’t get to think out loud with a seller in their orbit, notes San Francisco broker Tara-Nicholle Nelson in one of her characteristically good posts on Trulia’s site.

Other of her tips include the following:

Late mortgage payments hit credit score hard

(Flickr photo by photosteve101)

When a homeowner is purchasing the next home and needs a mortgage, any payment slips during the previous 12 months is bound to cause pain.

As North Shore Advisory, a credit restoration company, notes in a recent  newsletter:

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