Theavy Chea

28/07/2026

A one-bedroom unit worth $150,000 on completion can often be reserved off-plan today for around $135,000. Most buyers treat that $15,000 discount as the return. Over a 36-month holding window, it rarely is.

The resale buyer collects roughly $24,000 to $27,000 in net rent across the same three years. The off-plan buyer put down 30% of capital and released the rest in tranches. The 2027 capital gains tax layer complicates the exit for both.

Four numbers, not one, decide the answer: income, capital deployment, tax structure, and liquidity.

Our new piece runs the full comparison side by side.

👉 https://www.myfirstcorner.com/post/off-plan-vs-resale-over-a-36-month-window?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=page&utm_campaign=offplan-vs-resale

03/07/2026

A one-bedroom unit advertised at an 8% gross yield can settle near 4% net once three honest line items enter the model. That gap, roughly half the headline number, is where most first-time buyers lose money they never watch leave their account.
The trick is knowing which five numbers decide the outcome and running them in the same order every time, before the property has a chance to charm you.
Our new piece walks through the 30-minute sequence: the net-yield gate, the three costs investors round away, and the stress tests that separate a real investment from a best case.

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A property advertised at eight percent gross yield can return half that once vacancy, management, and reserves enter the model. Most cash-flow deals fail on a handful of numbers, not on a forty-row spreadsheet. Here is the thirty-minute sequence a disciplined investor runs to reach a defensible go o...

22/06/2026

A lifestyle funded entirely by rent — say $60,000 a year — requires roughly $1.2 million of net-yielding property.
That single figure is where most rental plans quietly fall apart. Investors picture the income. Few work backward from the number that produces it.
In Phnom Penh, gross yields sit near 6.5% on average. By the time taxes, service charges, vacancy, and management are deducted, what actually reaches the bank lands closer to 5%. A rental portfolio that funds a lifestyle is not built on the rent you collect. It is built on the rent you keep.
Our new piece walks through the ten-year mechanism: net yield first, several modest units over one trophy floor, and the patience to reinvest margins. Not an appreciation story. An operating story.

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A lifestyle funded entirely by rent requires roughly 1.2 million dollars of net-yielding property, not the gross figure most investors plan around. This is how a Phnom Penh rental portfolio is built to pay for itself in ten years: net yield first, several modest units over one trophy floor, and stea...

09/06/2026

Megakim World Corp has broken ground on two condominium towers in central Phnom Penh, both carried on My First Corner's off-plan desk.
Time Square 9 in BKK1 and Time Square 11 in BKK3 sit about five minutes apart and share a developer. They do not share an investment case.
Time Square 9 is built for capital preservation: low-density, full-floor layouts, hard title, entry from $88K. BKK1 is the district where new supply is the rare event.
Time Square 11 is built for rental yield: 39 floors, compact layouts, strata title, entry from the mid-$40Ks, 35-month payment plan at 0% interest.
Same builder. Same brand. Two adjacent districts. Two different answers.
👉 Megakim World Corp has broken ground on two condominium towers in central Phnom Penh, both carried on My First Corner's off-plan desk.
Time Square 9 in BKK1 and Time Square 11 in BKK3 sit about five minutes apart and share a developer. They do not share an investment case.
Time Square 9 is built for capital preservation: low-density, full-floor layouts, hard title, entry from $88K. BKK1 is the district where new supply is the rare event.
Time Square 11 is built for rental yield: 39 floors, compact layouts, strata title, entry from the mid-$40Ks, 35-month payment plan at 0% interest.
Same builder. Same brand. Two adjacent districts. Two different answers.
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Megakim World Corp has broken ground on Time Square 9 in BKK1 and Time Square 11 in BKK3, two central Phnom Penh towers carried by My First Corner. They share a developer and sit five minutes apart, but they answer different questions. Time Square 9 is the BKK1 scarcity case built for capital preser...

06/06/2026

Romania at 9.0% inflation. Germany at 2.9%. Cambodia at 1.3%.
For investors weighing where to allocate capital across a five to ten year horizon, the gap between European inflation and Cambodian real estate in 2026 is more than statistical. It quietly reshapes the math behind every yield assumption.

Cambodia's 2026 picture: inflation near 2%, GDP growth near 5%, the youngest population in Southeast Asia, and a dollar-priced asset environment that removes a layer of currency risk most European emerging markets cannot offer.

Europe in 2026 is a continent managing prices.
Cambodia in 2026 is a country building them.
Full analysis on the blog 👉

Romania's inflation sits at 9.0 percent. Germany at 2.9 percent. Cambodia recorded 1.3 percent in January 2026. The gap is more than statistical. For investors weighing where to allocate capital across a ten-year horizon, the underlying conditions in Cambodia real estate look structurally different....

25/05/2026

The home you live in is not an asset by the financial definition.
It pays no rent, produces no yield, and asks for money every month instead of giving it back.

Robert Kiyosaki said this 30 years ago, in a book that has since sold 40 million copies. The math has been argued, dismissed, and re-litigated ever since. It has not changed.

In Cambodia, the dream home is presented as the financial finish line. Save, borrow, commit, and one day the keys are yours. That is a story most local investors grow up with. It is also a story that does not survive the numbers.

Our new piece walks through the math — and why separating the lifestyle commitment from the capital commitment is the question that builds wealth.

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Robert Kiyosaki said it 30 years ago. Robert Shiller measured it across a century of data. Ben Felix turned it into a formula. The home you live in is a lifestyle commitment that has been miscategorized as an investment for two generations, and the math behind that mistake is not as personal as it f...

15/05/2026

Most investors who fail in year three didn't pick the wrong asset.
They built the wrong structure on day one.
The first two years usually look fine. Yields arrive, paper gains accumulate, and the spreadsheet tells a confident story. Then the cycle turns, the refinancing window opens, and the portfolio meets the question it was built to avoid.
Three forces decide whether a portfolio survives the third year: how leverage is layered across acquisitions, how discipline holds when the easy deals are gone, and how honestly the original margin of safety was measured.
Our new piece walks through all three — and what Phnom Penh in 2026 is showing in real time about which portfolios are quietly working and which are visibly struggling.

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Most investment portfolios stop working in year three. By then, leverage has compounded across acquisitions, low rates have lured the investor into structures that only work at low rates, and discipline has quietly drifted. The investors who survive built the margin of safety in year one. They borro...

11/05/2026

Citadel Manor

a 37-floor hospitality-residential development in Toul Tompong.
Hard title at handover.
Furnished delivery. Hospitality-managed building.

Entry from $70,649 (1BR, 62.80 sqm) through $179,399 (2BR, 124.56 sqm).

Not a maximum-yield play. Built for long-term holders.
Full brief on the website

👉 https://www.myfirstcorner.com/cities/citadel-manor?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=page&utm_campaign=citadel-manor

11/05/2026

Three buyers can walk into the same showroom on the same afternoon, look at the same floor plan, and leave with three entirely different financial futures.
The asset is identical. The buyer is not.
Capital does not behave the same way in different hands. The same building can produce wealth, mediocrity, or quiet regret depending on who is holding the deed.
There are three kinds of buyer. Most people cannot tell which one they are.
Our new piece walks through the framework — and the single question you can ask before signing anything that filters most of the confusion out of the room.

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Capital does not behave the same way in different hands. The same building can produce wealth, mediocrity, or quiet regret depending on who is holding the deed. Most buyers cannot tell which of the three categories they belong to, and that confusion is more expensive than any market correction.

30/04/2026

Every off-plan unit sold in Phnom Penh begins as a promise.
A brochure, a render, a floor plate, a payment schedule.
Between the launch event and the moment you collect the keys, the project has to travel through seven stages. Most buyers only see two of them. The five in between are where deals quietly deteriorate.

Our new piece walks through what can go wrong at each stage — soft title, permit delays, design compression, undercapitalized developers, foundation issues, specification substitutions, handover snags — and which four stages cause most of the serious problems.

If you're considering an off-plan unit, or you know someone who is, this is the read.

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Most buyers evaluate an off-plan unit on two pieces of information: the render and the price. The building itself moves through seven construction stages before handover, and each carries its own failure mode. This is the stage map investors should read before the deposit, not after.