Darrel

For those that think the real estate market is over-priced, they may be right but they could also be dead-wrong too.

They could be, but it is still the only obvious reason why properties take so long to sell, as I mentioned. If you know another reason I would be glad to hear it.

I sold a condo recently, 5% below the asking price, and the buyer was ecstatic at getting a great deal, a high-floor unit with a great view. He was confident that the Pattaya condo market was on the upswing and he got in on the ground floor.

You dont say how your asking price compared to that of other similar units, and that's the crux of it. Maybe you are much more reasonable. As I mentioned, I have also seen properties sell recently, but mostly the ones that were priced significantly cheaper than the average.

Or maybe it's just that there's one born every minute and you found him. That's what all the other vendors are waiting for too. It is a long wait for most of them.

So, what's the significance of Gingerbread, then ?

Just a newer version of Android. (2.3)

Odd that the Poseidon should close just as the road works nearby are drawing to an end. Hard to imagine any business being able to weather that mess for so many years. I did overhear the manager saying that it was closed "for renovation".

Lovers of the Poseidon brunch buffet will be pleased to know that it lives on at the Casa Pascal on 2nd Rd, opposite the Royal Garden. The price is the same (165B) and the quality is still high. They have a fidelity card that gives 10% off after a while. I think this is the best value breakfast in Pattaya. I dont like the clientele much (they fancy themselves too much for my taste) but I dont have to eat them or look at them!

There is also a new afternoon coffee, sandwiches and cake buffet at 135B which I have not tried.

I assume these days the build quality may be a bit higher..........not sure though.

It isnt. New builds I have seen come with lots of pretty veneer (or pretty laminate flooring to be more precise), but incredibly thin. Lots of melamine also. Cheap rubbish, over and over again.

I was annoyed when I went out to Soi Buakow this evening and found that not only was my favourite (cheap Thai) restaurant closed, but my second and third most favourite restaurants were closed also. And the noodle soup street vendors were few and very far between. I had a lot of trouble finding something decent to eat and what I did find wasnt brilliant.

No water anywhere at all though. Not yet.

This pales into insignificance when compared with being blasted in the face whilst driving a motorbike, of course, and you have my total sympathy.

Maybe the best analogy is to buying a T-shirt from one of the stalls here.

A good analogy.

This is a carpet-bagger economy and the property market is no different to a tourist market stall; masses of shoddy stock, not many buyers or sales, totally negotiable prices, no consumer protection, lots of wide-boys, spivs, pick-pockets and beggars. Caveat emptor.

Generally, almost everyone who tells you buying a condo with a company scheme is perfectly OK are --

real estate agents looking for commission

lawyers looking for business

owners of such companies, especially when trying to sell

Yes, yes and yes. Residential property ownership via companies is simple trickery, designed to bypass the law. As this is an "emerging" economy people still get away with a lot things that are against the law. This will probably change one day but no one knows when. That's about all that can be said about it.

"I have looked on several real estate websites only to find out there not updated."

Indeed. Many of the so-called agents are fly-by-night incompetents anyway, but their grasp of the most basic back-office skills is virtually zero. Websites and window displays that are years out of date, totally inexistent IT databases, inability to reply to phone calls or emails. I've seen it all here. Quite stunningly bad, in general.

I am convinced that 2 Tier pricing as a policy does not exist.

I am not suggesting that 2 price lists do not exist.

Sorry, you are splitting hairs that are too small for my eyes to see.

Two price lists = two tier pricing. One price list = single tier pricing. End of story.

It may all be 100% negotiable with condos (and I think it is) but either way, just like the national parks, the prices are often listed differently for farang and non-farang, which means they are two tier. It doesnt cost the government any more to let a farang into a park either, they just charge him more.

It's just that on the English price list I have it mentions Foreign / Company Ownership prices (where of course the company will be owned by a Farang) which would lead me to beleive there is a Thai ownership price that is not mentioned and on a Thai website I have found the selling price to be starting at 2,690,000 but the cheapest price on the English pricelist is 3,551,000.

For the developer there is no difference between Thai name and company name: both are not farang name and so fall in the 51%. The company of course cant be owned (more than 49%) by a farang, it can only be controlled by a farang. Big difference.

So I see no reason why there should be a third price. It may be that the Thai website you saw had old prices, before launch or something like that. Or it may just have been wrong.

Wouldnt be the first such site I've seen here.

Or they may just be assuming that no Thai would ever buy one. That woudnt be a first either.

I am convinced that 2 Tier pricing as a policy does not exist.

You are wrong. It most certainly does exist and is clearly visible on many new build price lists. There are quite simply two columns of prices: one for Thai/company name and one for farang name. Not all buildings do this though.

As to whether the difference extends to resales, and how flexible the list price of new builds or the asking price of resales is, that depends on the bulding and the circumstances of the vendor and cannot be quantified until someone actually pays for a unit.

As far as I'm concerned there are very few fixed prices in Thailand and just because some xeroxed price list says "x million Baht" does not mean very much at all in the end, so it is all down to negotiation. However, buildings that are very popular with farangs are not going to be so easy to negotiate with when it comes to buying a farang-name unit at Thai-name price.

Please post the price list in Thai for the 66 Condo.

Sorry, I dont have it. I wasn't interested enough in the building to keep it.

But when I was in there last week I was specifically told that there was no price differential. I have to assume they were telling the truth as otherwise the entire business becomes totally suspect. Which it may well be, of course.

I have seen the price list for several VT buildings and there is no supplement on that. Of course, there may well be unmentioned discounts available for Thai or company name.

But I am not sure about "large percentage of people." I think there is a small percentage of real estate investors (farangs) who own many units in many condo developments that have no real motive to sell or rent at a realistic price.

I can only base my comments on what I see. I have lost track of the number of units I have looked at only to learn (often from the vendor himself) that he also has the place next door, and another on a higher floor, two in the neigbouring building and three more down the beach somewhere. I'm not even counting the ones that reckon to own 20, 50, 150 units (this is not a joke: they are legion). Often they come out with these other units as a sort of afterthought, as you or I might say "oh, I found a 10 Baht coin down the back of the chair the other day". Cause for reflection. These people are also the ones that put property on and off the market, more or less at a whim and on a daily/weekly basis. I have often heard the phrase "off the market for x months because the owner has found a tenant, back on when he leaves".

Units being sold by people who only own that one unit are in a tiny minority. In fact I would put it at 10 or 20% only of the ones I have seen. They tend however to be much more serious vendors.

I fully agree with your comments about Thai owners, and of course it is more or less the same attitude that one gets from the farang owners of multiple units. They dont need to sell (at the moment), they would just like to sell if they can get a very high price. What will happen when/if they need to sell is another matter. And that's when the real meaning of the word bubble may become apparent. The bubble is clearly there, in my opinion.

The OP may not be aware that this will work fine only as long as he leaves the desktop machine turned on. It wont work if the desktop is turned off. So the desktop should be set to power down the monitor after x minutes but not to go into standby or hibernation modes at all.

I also find that the main problem with streaming from abroad is that the entire connection can just grind to a halt for a few seconds from time to time. This only seems to affect the overseas part of the loop and is, according to tracert, to do with the pipe leaving Thailand. Changing ISPs might help this: at the moment I have no choice as my connection is shared. I get exactly the same problem with ftp transfers and webpages. Local contention is a different matter and whilst real enough it only seems to reduce the overall available download speed in a uniform fashion. iPlayer copes well with this.

I compare this with the connection I had in Europe which provided a rock-solid 6Mbs all day every day with hardly a drop out at all.

My personal preference is just to download complete media files for later playback, and of course iPlayer etc. support this perfectly well. Not for live news though, obviously.

Still not keen on having circuits and IDE/SATA sockets exposed to the elements/biscuit crumbs/coffee like that. They werent designed for it like USB was.

I used to have about 20 USB caddies for drives, some of which contained OS images. They were all the same brand/type and so I only needed to leave one power supply and one USB lead connected to the PC, and just swapped the caddies around as needed. I do the same now, with fewer drives.

Another advantage of (aluminium) caddies is that they dont get too hot to touch, and should provide a bit of protection for the drive if it is dropped.

The premium for foreigner owned condos is real and rather justified in condo buildings with heavy foreign demand.

In Pattaya, at least, not all new builds have a premium for farang units. VT don't, for example, nor does the place doing the 66 condo to name just two. Those that do have a premium often put it at 10% or less. So 50% seems extreme.

I have not worked out whether the missing premium here is just an unmentioned discount on the list price that is available for non-farang units, or whether there are plenty of Thais (or Thai-farang couples) buying at full price, or whether it is just that many non-farang units end up getting sold in company name anyway. Or a combination of all three.

For resale, the spread between farang name and company/Thai name on the asking price often seems to be around 10-20% though it is very variable. The selling price spread may well be higher.

Laugh away. In Pattaya I have seen several balconies that are larger than the gardens in many town houses. In fact many town houses have no outside area at all, apart from that dedicated to parking. They certainly have no view worth looking at, and of the two types of housing I know which I would prefer.

Just because most BKK condos have no such advantage doesnt mean that condos everywhere also dont.

Yes, you can use a docking station such as the one you describe. However as hard drives are a bit prone to damage on the circuits visible on the rear, I would be more inclined to buy a couple of USB SATA caddies as these willl protect the drives from damage when you are not using them. They are very cheap.

The dock that you describe would be more useful for someone who repairs PCs or who needs to regularly copy data to/from naked drives prior to fitting them in some other device.

Another possibility, if you really dont want to use the drives often, would be this.

I stand by every word I wrote, both here and in the other thread.

Others and I have tried to help you with this issue but you just wont listen.

Free advice from a qualified and highly-paid professional (recently retired): if you stop fiddling around with things that you do not understand you will have far fewer problems (probably none).

Take the Dell refund.

"60sqm high-rise condos around 100,000 baht/sqm"

Wow. And here I am thinking that 40kBaht/m² in Pattaya is a bit high.

>>I don't except too much for 800 baht <<

For B800 in Thailand i would expect a lot .

Me too.

..... they would need to ask for considerably higher than they paid because transaction costs (taxes and agents fees) are very high.....

I disagree. Taxes are around 6% (depending on how long the owner has owned the unit etc.) which is often split 50/50. Agents fees are negotiable (which means they start absurdly high and its up to you to argue them down). So if I was selling I would only expect it to cost me around 5-6% to do so. This is not high by European standards.

...the quality of construction here seems to be shockingly poor. Walls are paper thin, materials are cheap and nasty, designs are plain boring, furnishing where provided always looks cheap and ugly ................ the spivs that seem to dominate the business here.

Agreed, agreed, agreed, agreed. I would add to that the lunatic fringe of condo owners/developers who think that renovating a place and putting in disco lights and brothel paraphernalia is adding value. They are just plain nuts.

I have seen expensive renovated condos here to which I would be ashamed to take anyone with any sort of good taste.

There clearly must be something very odd about any property market where places stay on sale for years on end. This just isnt normal.

I think that the entire condo market in Pattaya is warped by the large percentage of people who own many units, and who have no real motive for selling them because they cost relatively little to own (no property taxes) and they dont need the money and couldnt get any real return anywhere else anyway. So if you dont need the cash or the income, you may as well just keep the condo on the market at a high price and hope that a farang pigeon will land on your balcony one day, and perhaps get some rental income in the meantime as well. And that is exactly what the owners here are doing.

And in the end you only need to compare the cost of a house with the cost of a condo. It is all very out of kilter. Most condo prices need to drop perhaps 30-40% to be at any sort of sensible level. And the proof is that many units sold are only sold at a big discount on average asking prices. All the ones I have seen recently have been in this group.

I am prepared to pay perhaps 20-30% below average asking prices for a reasonable unit that I could live in indefinitely, on the assumption that if other all units drop to a reasonable price in a "crash" I wont actually lose very much.

I've always considered chopsuey to be bean sprouts, as that's what I've been used to getting in the UK. Am I wrong?

Chop Suey is a bit like fried rice. There is no real recipe and 100 cooks will make it 110 different ways. It's basically left-overs and oddments anyway. Nothing wrong with that though!