A Sihanoukville “guaranteed 8% return” that we turned into a lease
A coastal pre-sale dangled a guaranteed rental yield. We treated the guarantee as worthless and restructured the deal around what was actually defensible — at a lower price.
Red flags
- Guaranteed rental return underwritten only by the developer’s own balance sheet.
- Pre-sale, off-plan, in a market with visible stalled and oversupplied stock.
- Return “guarantee” baked into an inflated headline price.
What we checked
- Stress-tested the guarantee: who pays it, from what, and what happens if the developer stops.
- Compared the headline price to recent completed-unit pricing nearby.
- Modelled the deal with the guarantee valued at zero.
A guaranteed rental return is one of the most effective sales tools in Cambodian property, and one of the weakest promises. The guarantee is only ever as good as the company standing behind it — and in a pre-sale, off-plan coastal unit, that company is often the same one asking you to fund construction.
We valued the guarantee at zero and looked at the deal underneath it. Two things fell out: the headline price was inflated to “pay for” the promised yield, and the holding structure on offer was weaker than it needed to be. The renegotiation was simple once the buyer was willing to walk — drop the guarantee, drop the price to the comparable level, and move to a registered long lease with a defensible legal position.
The buyer proceeded, but on terms that survive the developer going quiet. That’s the difference between a yield you’re promised and a yield you can actually keep.
Review by Research Cambodia · 2026
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