Riverside (Wat Ket)

Across the Ping River from the Old City, Wat Ket is Chiang Mai at its most evocative. Teak shophouses, antique galleries and the centuries-old Wat Ket Karam temple line lanes that run down to a riverbank dotted with the city's best-loved restaurants and live-music venues. Footbridges connect it to the Night Bazaar and the moated Old City, making the whole quarter genuinely walkable, a rarity in car-led Chiang Mai. That scarcity of character translates into the city's highest rents: one-bedroom condos let at THB 18,000-25,000 a month, and riverside units price from THB 80,000/sqm up past THB 110,000/sqm. Yields land in a healthy 5-7% band, balancing strong tourist and expat demand against the area's deliberately quiet, premium feel. With limited riverside stock and a citywide market growing only modestly, this is best treated as a lifestyle-led, steady-yield hold. Foreign buyers own condos freehold within the 49% building quota; land is leasehold-only for non-Thais.

Riverside (Wat Ket) in Chiang Mai, Chiang Mai Province, Thailand