PHUKET CITY : In an indication that the Phuket real estate market is not quite as robust as some like to suggest, statistics released by the Phuket Provincial Land Office reveal that income on land and property sales transactions was down over 70% year-on-year over the first four months of 2009.

There were a total of 1,945 transactions involving land title deeds for the period from January to April.

The total value of land transactions for the period was Bt883.24 billion baht, with the vast majority (Bt881.52bn) for land with pre-existing structures.

Income from transactions from January to April 2008 totaled Bt333.5 million baht.

Income for the same period this year was just Bt97.8m, down almost 71%.

The largest reduction was in business tax collection, which is normally paid for by the seller at a cost of 3.3% of appraised value. This figure fell from Bt132.0m to Bt18.2m year-on-year.

There was a similar downward trend in income from transfer fees, normally paid for by the buyer at 2% of registered value. These plummeted from Bt104.3m to Bt13.6m year-on-year.

Withholding tax, paid for by the seller at 1% of appraised value, fell from Bt85.7m to Bt58.6m year-on-year.

Stamp duty, paid for by the seller at 0.5% of registered value, fell from Bt11.6m to Bt7.5m.

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While the rest of the world is grappling with housing market problems, Phuket, Thailand’s biggest island in the Andaman Sea, seems to be bucking the trend in a big way.

During the past four years, Thailand faced the challenge of two major events with a potential to drive the country into ruin. The 2004 tsunami that devastated the coastal areas of Thailand, including Phuket, and the military coup that ousted a democratically elected government just two years ago, could have led to an economic catastrophe. There was concern that the thriving tourist industry would grind to a halt, bringing down with it the flourishing foreign-owned housing market.

This worry turned out to be unfounded and it seems whatever effects the two events had on the country???s economy, they were short-lived.

A robust real estate market

The Phuket luxury market is not just keeping steady in bad times, it is actually growing by leaps and bounds, according to a May article in Asia Property Report. A booming tourism industry has spurred an interest in buying vacation homes in the country. More than 5 million tourists visited the popular Thai island last year. During the same period, the number of tourists who came to the country as a whole increased by an impressive 22.5 percent.

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