chrisandsu

29 minutes ago, 1FinickyOne said:

agreed, we have 3.2 rai but 1 rai is a big pond w/tilapia... and still it is a lot of work... but it is really nice too... we have a gardner/caretaker...

Now that’s the way to go ! Get a Gardner . Depending on the shape of the land and the grade 1 rai could be enough  . 

1 hour ago, 1FinickyOne said:

yes, I have been floored by the comparisons in price to what rural land might cost in the USA... though I have not been back in a long time... we looked at land that was 2-3MM baht per rai, with electric to the property.. nice land, but still, expensive... not 3rd world anymore...

 

and yes, absolutely, I have friends who "bought" or thought they bought non-chanote land only to discover they bought nothing... 

in comparison I bought 5 acres (around 13 rai) an hour from Seattle in Washington state for $50000 . That was 5 years ago and now it’s worth 4 times that but even then it only works out a little over $12000 per rai which is a little over 330k per rai (in quick maths) and this has marketable timber on it right off the bat . 

1 hour ago, IvorBiggun2 said:

 

Top marks for that post Chrisandsu.

 

Tell you what is happening around where I live. People are not buying the land if it's just to build a house on. What they actually do is find someone who has Sor Por Kor land and ask them if they can build a house on their land. Obviously a sum of monies is involved and in exchange a letter will be produced signed by the person named on the title that they have gave permission for the build.

I personally only know of one case, so far, where this has happened. But my missus says it's common practice. My belief is that this is totally illegal and buyer beware. In this case it a farang and I'm somewhat hesitant to inform him. Not my plomplem.

My SIL has property in Pak chong , right next to it is a place called wang nam khio (spelling could be off) well that area is beautiful but it’s all national park area but the locals are still trying to sell it . The deals are great until you find out you own nothing but a piece of paper . Due diligence is certainly needed . 

11 minutes ago, 1FinickyOne said:

I had it calculated at .44 of an acre... 

 

But, yes, I think it would be really tight on 1 rai, maybe a little tight on 2 rai... 

 

Yes, land tends to be the best investment for Thai people as it is a steady line upwards in value... we started buying farmland near our somewhat remote village for 40,000 a rai 15 yrs ago and the same parcel is now nearly 200k a rai.. and in the meantime, the family has been farming it and making a living... 

yes it’s  0.4 of an acre which is just over 1/3rd and under half . $100k to $150 k for semi rural land (city is way more expensive) is really expensive and more then where most of us come from for similar land . Im only speaking about Chanote land as the rest of the titles are just a risk not worth taking . 

Depending on where? Land is hard to get , 1 rai plots are even harder in desirable places and the cost is really high . 3-5 million + per rai is not unusual . By the time you build all that you mentioned you  are paying western prices for a place you don’t even own . Remember a rai Is about a 1/3rd of an acre so for the price it’s not much land . 

34 minutes ago, impulse said:

 

Just 'cause you get more square meters, doesn't mean you get better square meters.  And big, fancy pants stuff costs more to fix...

 

Yep . I have often wondered why expats in Thailand (especially retired)get horny when they talk about quality materials that they are using and anything but those materials are cheap and nasty . Let’s be fair here when you are a certain age you are not outliving that house .  

1 hour ago, impulse said:

 

And a related question: Does paying a lot for a condo shield you from shoddy workmanship?  Or are you just buying even more expensive problems?

 

Putting lipstick on a pig and all that …

On 6/25/2021 at 7:12 AM, digbeth said:

This is in Pathum Thani, technically not a condo, but many of cheap charlies live in similar styled place in Pattaya 

Does buying your wife a house exempt you from being a cheap Charlie ? 

Let

On 4/14/2021 at 11:50 PM, Excel said:

So if you buy it in their name fine but just let them deal with the vendors. If they see a foreign face their eyelids are like a one armed bandit machine, think they got 5 cherries in a row.

sellers will also know if a prospective buyers wife is an ex bg with a strong essarn accent . Get someone that sounds professional and local to do the negotiations . $110 k for less the a 1/3 rd of an acre of marginal land is outrageous . 

22 hours ago, h3ith said:

The house as such is not important.

Ideally, in a divorce, she would get both the house and the land, but I can walk away with my 50% of my net worth, i.e. financial assets (rather than only 25%). She would certainly want to sell the house and land because her family lives in Issan, far away from the coast. So she can convert the house to cash, and I'd have the other half of my assets. I suppose she would accept this solution.

I'm more thinking in the direction of: her future lawyer may tell her that according to Thai law she can get much more than 50% of my assets, and her family urges her that she must grasp everything she can.

 

Out of curiosity why would you tell her about your other ‘assets’ ? You should never show all your cards to anyone . Just get a mortgage in her name and pay it . 

46 minutes ago, Leaver said:

 

Many of the Thai landlords here have multiple properties.  I am sure they now have several of their properties vacant, not earning. 

 

If they are going to be stubborn about it, they could see their whole property portfolio vacant here, not that they would care, but it's poor business practice.

 

Imagine if Thailand implemented property taxes ? I’m sure then they will be motivated to get them rented .

On 5/21/2021 at 2:26 AM, brewsterbudgen said:

We are looking for a 3-bedroom house in Ban Chang (as near as possible to REPS or Garden International school).  Have rental prices changed much since this thread was started?  Ideally, we're looking at paying around 20k.

I highly doubt it . Just look at a house and offer what you can afford . They can only say no .

33 minutes ago, LennyW said:

I went to see that development . Very nice houses for the price . 

17 minutes ago, jackdd said:

Maximum legally enforceable lease (usufruct) duration is 30 years. So there is a good chance that after 30 years you will have to pay a bonus or will have to leave the land.

Next time try to find a more honest lawyer.

 

And also if the lease agreement is between you and the other half and you get married it’s not worth the paper it’s written on . 

4 hours ago, xtrnuno41 said:

It is about market, how much you want something, or how rare.

Here we have houses now selling in big prices. There is a shortage of houses in the country.

some one here sold their house, broker said 253 k euro. The woman liked the number 259, asking price.

The first one who came offered 265 k euro with demand to take it of market then. Done.

Neighbor next door sold it for 275 k euro. And those were houses doing some years ago about 170 k euro.

I bought the house in 1997 and then it was 89 k euro. I think i could sell it 250 k euro easily, probably will have a line up, as they are selling very fast, incredible. And then the new people even renovate the whole house again, no matter how it looks inside.

Also personal situations effects selling, like losing a job, a divorce or what ever.

Same where I live . Everyone’s fleeing the cities since covid started . It’s not unusual for houses to go for $150k over asking . I could sell my houses now for $750k I bought it for 280k 12 years ago problem is if I sell it I will overpay to stay in the same area so makes very little difference to me , unless of course we move to Thailand full time once my kids finish school here.

4 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Thanks, I would love to see what others here think about your prediction.

Personally I know too little about these things. I better listen.

It’s all crystal ball guess work . The Thais I know are not out of work or struggling . Only the tourist sector and there is more then enough low paying jobs going around for them not to be out of work . 

1 hour ago, Yellowtail said:

 

And it they say yes you'll know you should have gone 50%.

 

I never understood what is insulting about making a low cash offer, if nothing else it opens negotiations. When I'm buying something,  and someone asks me what my target cost is, I tell them zero. I don't expect to hit it, but  the closer I get to the target the better. 

I have had people low ball me in the past . I don’t even reply to them . Most people won’t throw out a low ball offer face to face it’s normally through a text or email . 

On 5/11/2021 at 12:39 AM, RobMuir said:

The English variant is the most prevalent worldwide, most cases in the USA, northern India etc etc.

 

The UK should have closed it's borders when they discovered it in November last year or at least in January when Boris Johnson announced to the world it was new highly contagious strain.

 

It would have made a massive difference to Thailand and many other countries currently.

???? didn’t trump get called a racist when he called it the whuhan (sic) disease ? 

Yeah I’d recommend palms and as other posters mentioned it’s very negotiable at the moment . 

If it’s foreign owned you are far more likely to get a discount as it’s been cash bought . Very few farangs can get a mortgage (unless of course their wife with an actual job can ) if it’s Thai owned and had a mortgage on it find out what’s owed on the mortgage and offer that . Houses are easy to buy in Thailand and a damn site harder to sell !  

On 6/1/2021 at 12:26 AM, BusyB said:

 

It occurred to me that this post looks a bit holier than thou. I wanted to make plain that I have also paid tuition fees in my life. 

 

 

 

We all have ! The once stupid become wise old men . 

11 hours ago, kingofthemountain said:

they are not replaced in the same numbers like they were in the past

there are a lot of reasons for it, Thailand is less attractive now for them

the high prices, the high baht, the low service and low level in english

the high pollution, the high visas requirments and so on

the new generations of retired men from the west have better options

 

If i take the example of the French people (I know well, being french myself) there was a big community of them in Pattaya in the past with their restaurants, their bars and their associations and clubs.

They are not in Pattaya anymore, most of them have returned in France or in europeans countries around (Spain, Portugal or even north africa)

where they can access to free health careand being not far from the family.

 

In the last 10 years. the french money (Euro) has lost 30% of his value against the baht, and in the same time the prices have incresed of 30% in Thailand.

 

Imagine a guy on a fixed pension (That was the case for most of them, due to the visas requirment for the age) losing 60% of his buying power in 10 years?! 

 

Plus a lot of them were on the income method for the visa, and they were just above the financial requirment. With the change in the x change rate, they are not anymore able to justify a 65 000 bahts\month 

 

With a pension of 1500 euros\month (The medium pension in France)

it was 67500 bahts\month with 1 euro= 45 baht, it was just but ok

with 1 euro = 38 bahts its 57 000 bahts, and it's not enough

(I take 1 euro = 45 bahts as an example, but keep in mind most of these guys were here when you had 1 euro = 50 bahts or even more)

Makes perfect sense . I remember going back 15 years ago we used to see a lot more Germans/Swedish/ French . Those numbers have certainly dropped off since then (pre covid) have to also say your English is excellent for a non native . 

3 hours ago, kuma said:

Good of you to use the polite term blinkered. I have lived and worked here almost 20 years now and in the professions, for international private sector companies, the compensation packages can be very lucrative for locals, especially those that had land/homes to begin with, and for sure those that made wise choices in terms of capital deployment into more land or rental units have done very well....I know of so many just within my careeer circles. But the demographic of posters here is heavily skewed to part time visitors and/or retirees that tend to stay firmly in the areas heavily populated w foreigners (ie tourist zones mostly) and as such they have little interaction / realization with / of the local middle class. Not an indictment, just an observation. Out here in the south east beyond Chonburi there is a lot of wealth and a lot wealty bkk people buying land and bringing more prosperity.

I can see why though . Most of Pattayas Thai residents  are from  the issarn corridor , it has and probably always will be cut off from metropolitan Bangkok areas where a lot of the money is (rayong as well) it’s like a country within a country . 

13 minutes ago, newnative said:

     You're the second poster to think that I am 'in the business'.  I am not.  I don't have a job in real estate.  I am not a developer nor an agent.   I no longer even own a rental condo.  My partner and I have bought rundown condos, fixed them up, and sold them.  That's it.

     I live in Pattaya year-round and I do take an interest in what is going on with the city--not just with condo or housing developments but also with new hotels, new retail, new tourist attractions, etc.   Currently discovering The Darkside after hardly ever venturing there.

     I think you take an interest, as well.  I try to be a 'glass half full' guy so it's encouraging when I see some glimmers of hope here and there in this difficult time--a new highrise hotel still going up,  a small boutique hotel doing some fixing up during this down time.  A restaurant managing to stay open and doing some business. 

    While lights on in a condo project at night is not really an accurate indication of the percentage of units sold, like hotels, it does give some indication that units are occupied.  Although I observed activity at Centric while I was visiting, my partner and I have also noticed a fair number of lights on at night.  The same for the Lumpini Wongamat project we can see from our balcony.  Ditto for Markland and others.  Occupation is light but the projects aren't empty.  Nice to see some lights on, some people still here.

    I think you are right regarding next year.  With condo projects, the monthly maintenance fee being steadily paid by the owners year after year is the key factor in a project staying, as you say, 'afloat'.  A project can do ok even with a certain percentage of the owners being delinquent but there is a tipping point.

     As an owner, I might be more confident in an older project with more individual owners and more owner/occupants than if I was in one of the new projects with so many of the units having been bought to rent out and now sitting mostly empty.  But, they are new projects, should still have a healthy sinking fund, and being new, possibly less going wrong in the short-term to fix.  Having not just given us the virus, the Chinese have also gifted us their curse, 'May you live in interesting times'.   We are. 

    

I don’t think people get that there is a lot of very rich Thais . They have become land rich (land price in a reasonable area is obscene ) in the last 30 years . My BIL owns around 8 condos in various parts of the country that he bought for cash and can’t be bothered with the hassle of renting them out!  and only sees and stays in them if he’s in that area of the country and can even remembers where they are ! Thailand has a lot of very rich people and a growing upper middle class. I think we get blinkered sometimes in Believing that all Thais come from the poorer tourist sectors .  

20 hours ago, connda said:

You ignore the fact that the majority of the sex industry caters to Thai males.  ????
The embarrassed Thai socialites fail to talk about their own husband's and male partner's affection for mia nois, giks, and "rented wives."  
Nope - "Bad Sexpats!!! Look over there at the dirty, evil farangs."
Just misdirection to take the world's eye's off of their own societal shortcomings.  The business aimed directly at foreigners is simply the apparent tip-of-the-iceberg of what lies below the sordidness of average Thai sexuality.



 

Very true . Only difference is we get the trash that the Thais don’t want .