The second-generation property developer has carved a niche for his company by building affordable condominiums near to train stations for the country’s emerging middle class, from first jobbers to single urbanites and cosmopolitan couples.
Last year, Ananda accounted for two-thirds of Bangkok’s new property launches sited within 200 meters of train stations. Life wasn’t all smooth sailing for Chanond. His parents divorced before he turned 10.
He uses a Thai saying to explain their separation: “Two tigers cannot live in the same cage.” Raised in a broken family with four siblings, Chanond quickly developed a rule of life. “You need to be strong and look after yourself. This sense of survival and independence has always been with me.”
He attended a local school in Bangkok before going abroad to study in the United States and London. “I wasn’t sent abroad, I chose to (go),” he emphasizes. “There’s a critical difference.” A talent for strategic calculation emerged during his college years. The young Chanond worked hard at the beginning of the school term to achieve a grade-A average.
Then he was able to compromise, aiming to reach only grade B over the remaining time, giving him the chance to party with friends. He explains that this strategy optimized time by “balancing academic life with youth and enjoyment”.
Chanond returned home the year that Thailand plunged into depression, due to the Asian financial crisis in 1998.
Being the eldest son in the family, he was entrusted with restructuring his father’s realty company, which builds luxury residences for Thailand’s upper class.
The 25-year-old finance graduate, the eldest of five siblings, was put in charge of restructuring the business. He spent the next two years staunching the red ink as he retrenched staff and negotiated with creditors in a bid to keep the company afloat. With minimal support from his parents, Chanond started his own company from scratch in 1999.
In 1999, he left to start his own firm, which became known for building mass-market condominiums within spitting distance of almost every electric train station in Bangkok. The units sold like hot cakes. “It wasn’t handed to me on a silver plate,” he says.
“I took a lot of bank loans … It involves a lot of sweat and groundwork, risk-taking, persuasion to convince bankers to back you up and older people to work for you.” Chanond’s solution was simple: wake up early and work hard. “All I have is a massive amount of self-control and lots of energy,” he says.
From a relatively small startup of just 30 people, Ananda has mushroomed into a sizable developer with a workforce expected to be around 800 people by the end of this year. The company, Ananda Development, went public last December.
Mr Chanond Ruangkritya, now 39 and married with an 18-month-old son. Mr Chanond looks back at the first few years of his working life with relief and some satisfaction. Life then was a matter of "waking up and not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and just hacking away, day by day", he recalls. He was driven by a sense a duty.
"I got to where I am in life because of my parents," he says. "Whatever services I can provide, I think I owe it to them." Yet those difficult years also helped him acquire a reputation as a "young kid" who "took the plunge... (and) stuck to it". It sells condos at prices below 3 million baht on a basic principle: the closer to the train station, the more expensive it is.
The Ideo condos, first launched in 2007, are within 300 meters of the nearest train station. The less-expensive Elio options are within 600 meters. These are studio apartments with average size of just 30 square meters. Underneath the buildings are club houses, coffee shops and supermarkets that offer residents convenience at their fingertips. Chanond is more interested in making housing affordable than helping to create property bubbles.
“We are not in a race to build the most extravagant high-rise, gold-painted sanitary wear,” he says. “We try to get a basic bathroom — less expensive, most functional and durable. That’s the race we are in. How can you make bubbles by building more economical units for people?”
Achieving a balance between home and work is difficult, and the high-flying CEO admits he hasn’t spent enough time with his family. “It’s a sacrifice,” he says. He is married to former beauty queen Pailin Rungratanasunthorn with a toddler son.
"Today, senior bankers know what I did, and they always back me up in what I do. I'm very candid and honest in my approach," says the economics graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, who also has a master's degree in finance from the London School of Economics.
Property developer's concept of 'mass transit living' helps Bankok urbanites maximize their time. “The name of the game is optimizing your own time,” says Chanond, 39, from his new office in the Bangkok business district of Asok.
Traffic in the Thai capital has long been a powerful force in everyday decision making. A survey by Ananda highlighted an alarming fact: Bangkok residents waste 44 days a year stuck in traffic. Chanond’s concept of “mass transit living” begins from there. “The principle is to live, play and work around an efficient mass transit system,” he says. “You gain your life back.”
Born and raised in Bangkok, Chanond recalls growing up in the traffic-choked city. He would leave home by 6 am, drop his younger sisters off at their schools after spending one hour in traffic, followed by another 30-minute journey to his own school. “That’s it for the morning. You do the same in the afternoon,” he says. In the last 30 years, the situation hasn’t improved much with the development of highway networks. Only one-tenth of the land in Bangkok is allocated for roads, he says, which is less than developed countries.
The Thai government also provides incentives for first-time car buyers. “It’s all these policies that contradict each other, and Bangkok residents continue to suffer from traffic problems,” he says. It targets Bangkok's middle-class buyers by keeping home prices below 3 million baht (S$127,000), he says.
The condos are located within specific distances of Bangkok's skytrain and subway stations and marketed accordingly. Its Ideo condos, for example, are within 300m of a skytrain station, while its cheaper Elio condos are within 600m of one. Developers tend to fudge the distance between their projects and train stations, he says with a laugh.
"When we came into the market, we said it was 25m, 30m or 2m from the station. We use exact metres." Proximity is prized in Bangkok, whose notorious round-the-clock jams can turn a five-minute ride into a half-hour crawl. But land around transit hubs is expensive, so there are nips and tucks to keep prices below the 3-million-baht ceiling.
One way is to build them small. The tiniest unit measures just 21 sq m. "The city is your living room. You zip around on the train, you go to Paragon, to Central World," he says, referring to two popular malls. One gets the sense that Mr Chanond wants to populate Bangkok with his condominiums much like the 7-Eleven stores that dot every strategic street corner.
Thailand is planning a massive rail expansion that could more than quadruple the existing 80km of subway and skytrain lines in the capital over the next six years. Ananda has built 12 developments, is completing eight others and plans to launch five more this year. But "if they have 200 more stations, we need to build 200 more buildings", Mr Chanond says. It's like buying toothpaste. "If you need to brush your teeth, why don't you use Colgate? If you need to be close to a train station, why not buy an Ideo?"
Mr Chanond thinks Bangkok's home prices are still too high, which is probably why about half of its residents are forced to rent. On the drawing board of his mind is an alternative housing solution. Just suppose, he says, a company can offer you different types of housing to suit your needs as you age - for a monthly "fee".
The amount will vary according to the type of housing. But unlike rent, the money remains in your name. It is reinvested by the company and returned to you together with investment gains at a future date. Now suppose the scheme is tied to health insurance. And the rights to the scheme are tradable.
Mr Chanond chortles at the mental gymnastics required to digest this radical idea. "It's theoretical," he says. "But it's something… I think about all the time." If his ideas are anything to go by, this real estate tycoon may be offering more than brick and mortar in the future.
Top Japanese developer investing in three
Asean countries
Somluck Srimalee
The Nation
Tokyo August 30, 2013 1:00 am
Mitsui Fudosan, Ananda join forces for Bt6.5 bn condo on Rama IV
Mitsui Fudosan Residential Company is confident in the continued growth of the ASEAN economies and is expanding into Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia this year after first investing in Singapore 40 years ago.
"We are confident that ASEAN countries' economies will still grow, especially the Asean-5 countries - Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines - by the targeted 5 per cent next year. Although they are facing low growth in the second half of this year, it is a short-term situation," group chairman and chief executive officer Kiyotaka Fujibayashi said.
The group early this year invested more than Bt10 billion in residential and retail projects in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.
In Thailand, Mitsui Fudosan set up a joint-venture firm with Ananda Development, Ananda MF Asia, with registered capital of Bt900 million. The Japanese company holds a 49-per-cent stake in the JV, 49 per cent is held by Ananda Development, and the rest by minor shareholders.
Ananda MF Asia has set aside an investment budget of Bt1.8 billion, half from the company's capital and the rest borrowed from the major shareholders, to develop Ideo Q Rama 4, a condominium project worth Bt6.5 billion near the Sam Yan MRT station. The project will open to presales in the fourth quarter, and plans to be complete and transferred to customer in 2016 at a starting price of Bt2.89 million per unit. A project loan from Bangkok Bank has already been approved.
"We also plan to develop an average of two residential projects worth Bt10 billion a year by way of our joint-venture firm," Fujibayashi said.
Ananda MF Asia is also interested in developing office and retail projects in the future.
In Malaysia and Indonesia, the group is also investing through joint ventures with local partners to develop the both residential and retail projects, Fujibayashi said.
Mitsui Fudosan Residential is a leader in the Japanese property market. The group recorded total sales this fiscal year (April 2012-March 2013) worth Bt466 billion. It develops and transfers to customers 5,000-6,000 residential units a year.
Ananda Development president and CEO Chanond Ruangkritya said the JV firm would focus on large residential projects worth more than Bt5 billion, while Ananda Development itself would continue to develop condominium projects worth up to Bt3 billion.
"To expand our investment into larger projects, we needed a partner to reduce our business risk for the long term," he said.
Ananda Development plans to launch nine new condominium projects worth Bt10 billion in the current second half, two of which opened last week worth Bt3.2 billion.
It will deliver Bt10.2 billion worth of homes to its customers this half, including Bt1.02 billion worth in the current quarter. The remaining Bt9.2 billion worth will be booked as revenue in the fourth quarter. This will result in a net profit for the full year, he said.
Ananda Development recorded revenue of Bt1.9 billion and a net loss of Bt91.3 million in the first half.
Somluck Srimalee
The Nation
Tokyo August 30, 2013 1:00 am
Mitsui Fudosan, Ananda join forces for Bt6.5 bn condo on Rama IV
Mitsui Fudosan Residential Company is confident in the continued growth of the ASEAN economies and is expanding into Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia this year after first investing in Singapore 40 years ago.
"We are confident that ASEAN countries' economies will still grow, especially the Asean-5 countries - Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines - by the targeted 5 per cent next year. Although they are facing low growth in the second half of this year, it is a short-term situation," group chairman and chief executive officer Kiyotaka Fujibayashi said.
The group early this year invested more than Bt10 billion in residential and retail projects in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.
In Thailand, Mitsui Fudosan set up a joint-venture firm with Ananda Development, Ananda MF Asia, with registered capital of Bt900 million. The Japanese company holds a 49-per-cent stake in the JV, 49 per cent is held by Ananda Development, and the rest by minor shareholders.
Ananda MF Asia has set aside an investment budget of Bt1.8 billion, half from the company's capital and the rest borrowed from the major shareholders, to develop Ideo Q Rama 4, a condominium project worth Bt6.5 billion near the Sam Yan MRT station. The project will open to presales in the fourth quarter, and plans to be complete and transferred to customer in 2016 at a starting price of Bt2.89 million per unit. A project loan from Bangkok Bank has already been approved.
"We also plan to develop an average of two residential projects worth Bt10 billion a year by way of our joint-venture firm," Fujibayashi said.
Ananda MF Asia is also interested in developing office and retail projects in the future.
In Malaysia and Indonesia, the group is also investing through joint ventures with local partners to develop the both residential and retail projects, Fujibayashi said.
Mitsui Fudosan Residential is a leader in the Japanese property market. The group recorded total sales this fiscal year (April 2012-March 2013) worth Bt466 billion. It develops and transfers to customers 5,000-6,000 residential units a year.
Ananda Development president and CEO Chanond Ruangkritya said the JV firm would focus on large residential projects worth more than Bt5 billion, while Ananda Development itself would continue to develop condominium projects worth up to Bt3 billion.
"To expand our investment into larger projects, we needed a partner to reduce our business risk for the long term," he said.
Ananda Development plans to launch nine new condominium projects worth Bt10 billion in the current second half, two of which opened last week worth Bt3.2 billion.
It will deliver Bt10.2 billion worth of homes to its customers this half, including Bt1.02 billion worth in the current quarter. The remaining Bt9.2 billion worth will be booked as revenue in the fourth quarter. This will result in a net profit for the full year, he said.
Ananda Development recorded revenue of Bt1.9 billion and a net loss of Bt91.3 million in the first half.
政局紧张外资急撤 泰国股汇债全倒
Thai stocks rise after PM dissolves parliament
ANAN斥資14.2億買進一塊土地
2013-07-30 10:31:59
作者：udnbkk55
http://www.udnbkk.com/article/2013/0730/article_109078.html
【本報訊】阿南達開發（ANAN）於昨（29日）上報證交所，公司在同日斥資14億1,780萬銖買進一塊土地，款項來自於內部流動現金。占地面積近5.4萊，位置距離藍線MRT的拉瑪4路車站僅270米之遙。這塊土地原本由ANAN的合資企業，Ananda MF亞洲公司持有，該公司由ANAN和三井不動產集團聯合設立。
ANAN將利用這塊土地興建一個住宅項目，仍然使用Ideo公寓品牌，但具體的細節還未透露，價值高達65億銖。工期長達3年，從本月開始正式動工，計畫在2016年5月交付使用。預售將從今年第4季開始，預售入賬要等到2016年。
ANAN不斷擴展房地產開發力度，可謂雄心勃勃，以Ideo作為品牌的公寓數量一路攀升。截止到去年，公司在過去5年總共推出16個公寓項目，總共超過8,000個單位。今年首季盈利雖然僅為487.7萬銖，每股盈餘0.001銖。但扭轉去年同期虧損高達2億5,820.5萬銖的困境，當時每股賠0.13銖。
ANAN於2012年12月正式在泰股大盤掛牌交易，名列房地產類股名下。迄今為止的市價對淨值比為1.77倍，市值達89億9,910萬銖。公司始建於1999年，第一大股東為Mr. Chanond Ruangkritya，持股率高達53.74％。摩根士丹利（Morgan Stanley）為第2大股東，控股率為5.83％。剩餘股份分散在眾多小股東手中。
政局紧张外资急撤 泰国股汇债全倒
http://cforum.cari.com.my/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=3262476&fromuid=1950303
After rumours of Soh Chee Wen involved in 3 designated stock in SGX. 
