An old hospital was razed to make way for Phnom Penh's tallest building – a 42-story twin condominium tower. A garbage-strewn slum became prime real estate after police evicted its dwellers to a parched rice field outside the capital. Cambodia is experiencing a construction boom fueled by foreign investment, particularly by South Koreans, and buying and selling among the country's few nouveaux riche – while leaving the poor majority behind. Shopping malls and tall apartment buildings are sprouting up, transforming the capital's landscape that once bore the charm of colonial French-styled villas but resembled a ghost town at the fall of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime nearly 30 years ago. Political stability and robust economic growth of nearly 10 percent have lured investors to the real estate market that has seen prices surge over the last few years – though they are still lower than in neighboring Vietnam or Thailand. “Cambodia was sleeping for many years and now it's waking up,” said Claire Brown, managing director of Britain-based Claire Brown Realty who began buying and selling property in Phnom Penh two years ago. “Everybody wants to get a piece of the action,” she said by phone. “The time to get in is now because soon it's going to be too late.” Prime city land prices have tripled over the last two years to $3,000 per square meter. “In buying and selling land, they could get profit 100 or 200 percent a year,” said Dith Channa, the sale manager of CPL Cambodia Properties Ltd., a Phnom Penh
