De Castle Royal (left) and Gold Tower 42. Photograph: Hong Minea/Phnom Penh Post

Work on Phnom Penh’s landmark 32-storey apartment development project De Castle Royal has been “actively accelerated”, with the project now scheduled to complete as early as next March.

Manager of De Castle Royal’s Marketing Department Sokun Monica said that the construction has now completed on 30 storeys, with only two more floors left. “We speeded up our construction work to show our customers that our investment is relentlessly ongoing, unlike that of Gold Tower 42,” she said, adding that her company may start new high-rise projects once this project is completed and sold out.

The De Castle development project covers around 3,000 sq. m of land in Sangkat Boeung Keng Kang I, in Phnom Penh’s Khan Chamkarmon district. The development will consist of 392 units, together with supermarkets, swimming pools and gyms.

The construction started in 2008, when Cambodia’s property market was booming. “If Cambodia’s economy keeps on like this, I expect that my sales will increase. So far, my company has made three successful projects, and I think that this project would also have the same fate as previous projects,” Sokun said, adding that this project has been 60 per cent sold out.

She added that one unit costs between $125,000 and $900,000, or $1,800-2,000 per square metre, and most of the customers are Chinese who have businesses in Cambodia’s industrial sector, as well as a small number of Cambodians, who bought them as investments.

“It’s a great success for us that we’ve earned such strong support from our customers, and we will accelerate our construction work, so that our customers can move in as soon as possible,” she said, adding that her sales will increase following many favorable indicators – in the past most sales were only to locals; after the government decided to allow foreigners to own property, the numbers of foreigners looking to purchase is climbing.

V-Trush’s Deputy Director Chrek Soknim said that recently that while Cambodia’s condominium market seems to be making little progress, due to the large number of investments in such high-rise buildings, the demand is not satisfied, because the economy is recovering.

The size of the market, he said, will improve and even double over the next two or three years, adding that most of the customers are very interested in condos in the Boeung Keng Kang area, followed by 7 Makara, Toul Kork and Daun Penh.

De Castle Royal’s location, he added, will be favorable both at the present time and in the future, as it stands in the city’s centre, surrounded by an area that is home to a large number of foreigners.

Besides condos, he continued, office space is also in high demand. “If we look at Cambodia’s macro-economy”, he said, “we can see there is integration between the region’s macro-economies, and many firms are freely importing and exporting goods, especially in developing countries like Cambodia; foreign investors are very interested in such trends, so it will push the demand for office space higher.”