The Thai Condominium Association (TCA) is working on potentially improving costs for consumers. This will be done a by a proposal intending to quicken the mandatory process that currently all condo-developers need to go through in order to pass the Environmental Impact Assessment. A quicker turnover could eventually lower condo prices by 3-5%.
The proposal would still require large condos to go through the process and pass the assessment, but would exempt projects with a total construction area of under ten thousand square meters. These smaller projects would have to complete a checklist of regulations, but as most of these buildings are similar in construction the process would be much more streamlined.
Only about 20% of projects that go through the assessment get approved on the first submittal. The rest are required to go back and make adjustments before getting approved. If a large portion of the current projects would not need to go through the lengthy assessment, the number of projects queuing up for an EIA approval would drop significantly as would waiting time for those that would still need to pass the assessment.
Lowering the waiting time to approve projects would help many aspects of the market. For example, long delays can sometimes cause projects to be scrapped entirely, forcing developers to return money or revise projects. This can lead to lost business opportunities, hurts revenue targets and causes investors to lose faith in the project.