Falling in love with the buzz and energy of Cambodia

As a young backpacker exploring his way around southeast Asia, Patrick Mooney fell in love with Cambodia. It’s a love affair that has stood the test of time’ and Mooney now divides his time between Phnom Penh and Vancouver from where he runs Atlas Invest, a property investment company specialising in Cambodian real estate.

It’s a big jump from Westport, Co Mayo, via the UK, the US and Australia to Cambodia, and Mooney admits that it is not the career he would have imagined for himself growing up. That said, he loves it.

Life in Vancouver is good with the ski slopes just half an hour from his front door, while in Cambodia he loves the buzz and energy of its busy economy and vibrant business culture.

“When I first went to Cambodia, I was blown away by the food, the culture, the people and the vitality, and I still feel that way,” Mooney says. “Cambodia is full of energy – what I imagine China in the late 1980s/early 1990s would have been like. They have a very strong entrepreneurial spirit and the government has made big moves over the past decade to encourage FDI through initiatives such as condo ownership for foreigners and huge infrastructure projects. They have opened a fast highway connecting Phnom Penh with the big coastal city of Sihanoukville and built new international airports.

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“When I went there first the dirt roads had potholes so big you’d disappear inside them on your little motorbike and never be seen again. Things have changed dramatically in a very short time.

“That said, I also love my lifestyle in Vancouver – apart from the cost of living which is astronomical, making home ownership a real problem. But otherwise it’s good, and I still get the care packages from home with the Barry’s Tea and Dairy Milk.”

Young, and itching to see the world, Mooney originally left Ireland for the UK in 2012 to study acting. The course lasted three years but he quickly realised that the stage was not his calling.

“For starters I wasn’t anywhere near as talented as the rest of the group, and my level of enthusiasm and love for the craft was lower,” he says. “When the course finished, I never pursued acting, never even had an audition, and left the UK for New York soon after.”

Mooney spent a year in New York living life to the full before moving to Australia, where he got a job in sales with a digital marketing company in Melbourne. When the company opened a new office in Vancouver Mooney relocated, and was subsequently headhunted to join food supplements company AlgaeCal as director of customer success.

“I was very lucky to have the company founder as my mentor,” he says. “I didn’t realise how green I was, but she really put the time into helping me to develop. I stayed with AlgaeCall until 2021, when I decided to go full-time into property.

“I had been running my personal property portfolio in Cambodia concurrently for a while and had gathered a lot of knowledge and made strong connections. Over the years I had also been helping friends informally to negotiate the property investment market there, and I began to realise that I had the basis for something more substantial.”

Mooney is deeply attached to the beauty and culture of Cambodia on a personal level, but he has also been attracted to invest there by its open attitude to foreign investors.

“It is very easy to do business and they will welcome you with open arms,” he says. “That said, there are nuances to the business culture. For example, always respect seniority, don’t hold eye contact and never cause a counterpart to lose face.

“I appreciate that the prospect of sending your hard-earned cash to this far-flung country can definitely seem very daunting, but the entry barriers are low, and it is actually very safe for investors with really great opportunities,” Mooney adds. “I have invested my own money there and you don’t need huge sums to start – a unit is likely to cost between $70,000 and $100,000.”

Mooney now has a team of four local employees based in Cambodia, and he usually spends three months at a time there evaluating potential opportunities and matching them to likely investors.

“Our investors are Irish, English and Canadian, and we match them depending on their budget and investment criteria,” he says. “We will also work with investors who have purchased properties, most of whom have come to me through referrals, to find them suitable tenants.

“We’re dealing primarily with residential properties – high-end condominiums mostly as there is no restriction on foreign ownership whereas there is with other types of properties. The tenants for these properties are mostly locals and mainly young professionals from the newly-emerging Cambodian middle class.”

Ultimately, Mooney would like to live in Cambodia full-time but that would mean negotiating a so-called “golden” visa with a view to citizenship. For now he’s content to split his time and still has family ties in Vancouver as his older brother is also based there.

“Irish people are like magnets to one another wherever they are in the world,” he says. “We just have a very good way about us, and you’d certainly miss the craic, the sense of humour and the ability to speak to a stranger on the street without them looking at you as if you’d two heads.”