Now, the tycoon who shook up Thailand's residential property market with his build-then-sell concept for houses and condominiums, has embarked on a new strategy: selling homes at discount prices.

LH's River Heaven condominium marked a departure from its main focus on detached houses.

"I told investors that the company was not going to build houses the old way anymore. We have now become a discount store for houses, by speeding up construction for maximum production. Our strategy can't fail because the concept of a discount store is developing massive volume for sale at the lowest price," said the president and CEO of property giant Land & Houses, at the Thailand Focus 2004 investor conference in September.

Mr Anant's discount home retail concept was inspired by L&H subsidiary Home Pro, a superstore for construction materials, tools and home decoration accessories, which was launched in September 1995.

"It's an easy concept. We buy materials in bulk to achieve cost savings which boosts our competitiveness. The more houses we build, the lower our construction material costs are. When we build a lot more than our rivals, we have cheaper per-unit overhead costs," he said.

The concept works, with L&H's overhead up to 50% lower than its competitors, Mr Anant said.

Working hand-in-glove with the build-then-sell strategy, a developer can estimate construction material needs for a whole year and then lock in specifications on huge orders and shop around for the lowest prices. The concept, however, would not work with pre-sold projects, which almost always see some alterations from the original blueprints made by the customers during construction, he said.

He also revealed that the most important element of his company's strategy was managing supply and controlling inventory.

"At the point when our margins start falling, we clear out our stock of unsold units in order to generate a quick return. Or when sales become sluggish, we will not develop any more properties of that type. We will halt construction and sell out all our leftover stock," he said.

"We will build a lot of houses and then let our customers set an appropriate price. It is a case of supply and demand. Although margins per unit may be lower, we compensate with larger volumes," he said.

Before launching a project, L&H plans to research current housing demand to find a prices that target customers will accept.

By doing its homework first, the company doesn't have to spend a lot on promotional campaigns to stimulate sales. Instead, low prices generate buyer interest on their own.

Mr Anant gave participants a glimpse of his next vision for the local real estate industry: real-time communication between home builders and customers.

"Our turnaround time is quite slow, about four to six months," he said, adding that real-time communication could shorten that to no more than two months. The magic wand for speeding up home delivery times is state-of-the-art communications technology, which could enable a "paperless" system.

While the property market has been cast in a negative light ever since the feverish pace of sales late last year stalled in the first few months of this year, Mr Anant had the opposite view.

"Many people, including those in the media, have been saying that the market was going bad because of fierce competition. Developers, especially listed firms, launched a flurry of discount campaigns as they rushed to close sales due to their commitments to investors. Don't forget that sales in the first half of 2004 almost doubled total sales in 2002," Mr Anant pointed out.

While the current market situation was not bad, sales lately have not been as good as many developers had previously expected.

He also considered the discount strategy unfair to earlier customers who did not bargain hard enough. That's why L&H gave up discount campaigns years ago.

"I will always remember Dr Olarn [Chaipravat]'s theory. Don't fight with irrational competitors. In the property game, there are developers who haven't a clue what their total cost is; they just develop projects to sell," he said.

Mr Anant compared residential home supply in 2004, when it stood at 41,000 units, with the country's gross domestic product growth at about 6.3%, to 1998, when the GDP figure was almost -10%. The numbers for the period from 1994 to 1996 _ when there were no tax incentives and the interest rate was around 14% _ were quite high, with up to 130,000 to 140,000 units per year. Against such a backdrop, he said, some 40,000 unsold units on the market is a mere drop in the bucket.

Additionally, the fall in new residential supply seen in the first quarter of 2004 was in reality a distortion of the actual situation, he said. The actual number should have included the months leading up to the end of 2003, when the tax breaks for homebuyers expired, sparking a stampede of registrations for new homes.

"Homebuyers do not plan a month in advance for buying a house; it's more like six months," he said.

He predicted competition in the residential market next year would likely cool down as banks tightened their scrutiny of pre-financing applications for property projects, a move that could limit the number of new developments hitting the market next year.