newnative

I think we try to be fair with our pricing, while making a profit. We'd rather have something sell than have it sit for years. The condo we sold last week was at a nice project with an average square meter price of 116,456 baht, according to Hipflat. The condo we sold went for 113,924 baht a sqm. We possibly got slightly less because it was not in foreign quota and foreign quota was full. I agree with you that some of the pricing is ridiculous. Hipflat has a 62sqm condo at a new central Pattaya condo project for 13.5MB, almost 219,000 a sqm. Sorry, no condo in Pattaya is worth 219,000 baht a sqm, in my opinion. Walk right next door to a slightly older project by the same developer and you can get 62 sqm for about half that. Same location, location, location.

In a nutshell, if a condo owner is delinquent in paying maintenance fees, the condo project can take the owner to court to force payment. Still delinquent, the court can order the sale of the condo to pay for delinquent fees. Nothing is demolished. Condo projects have the responsibility of collecting fees and dealing with delinquent owners. Some do a better job of it than others. This seems to be a big concern for you. If so, I suggest checking the delinquency rate at any condo project you might be interested in. You can also check the current condo fee, financials, and the sinking fund--the money held in reserve to help cover non-routine expenses.

Nonsense. My partner and I have sold two properties this year, a house on the Darkside and a seaview Pattaya condo, both at a nice profit. The condo, by the way, was on Beach Road. There are plenty of buyers for quality properties. As Ezzra has said, seaview condos go for a premium. We've sold about 20 of them, all at a profit.

As Big Star has said, who cares. The question you should be asking is what is the project's delinquency rate for condo fees. Many condos that may seem abandoned are actually owned by absentee owners. Lumpini Park Beach in Jomtien has tons of absentee Bangkok owners. 1800 units, with a high percentage sold, and when my partner and I lived there we often had the pool to ourselves, with sometimes one or two others, during the week. If a condo has been abandoned and has delinquent maintenance fees, the project should follow the legal process for these abandoned units, as, apparently your project did.

Thank goodness I didn't follow that rule.

Sad.

gimme gimme gimme some

Agree. This year my partner and I have sold two properties, one a house next to Lake Mabprachan and, last week, a seaview condo on Beach Road in north Pattaya. Both were sold at a profit and might serve as examples of what can work in regard to buying property in Pattaya. The house sold very quickly; the condo took over a year to find the right buyer. Sometimes patience is needed. You can make money in real estate here but it does take some work. The formula isn't rocket science--buy low, sell higher. While the formula is simple, the difficult part is choosing what to try to buy low in the first place and what to avoid. If you look at our two property sales, both were in excellent locations. Lake Mabprachan has become a super-desirable area on the Darkside. Good, gated projects right next to the lake are very limited. The house we bought was in one of these few good projects. The house itself had been vacant for many years and was in poor shape. One of the first houses in the project, it looked so bad we think it was bringing down the values of the other homes. But, it had one of the best and biggest lots in the project and we liked the house layout and placement on the lot. The potential was there. We got it at a good price but it was a financial gamble because we didn't know what we would find when we 'looked under hood'. There were extensive porch and roof repairs, doors and windows, electrical, bath work, and a new kitchen was needed, among other things. We doubled the size of the pool--the big lot helped with that. The one-car carport was small and difficult to negotiate so we re-purposed it for ping pong and built a new 2-car garage--again, the lot had the space to do that. New drapes, wallpaper, lighting, furniture, and a lot of custom work inside. Sold in a couple of months and there were at least two showings each week. Interestingly, we had Chinese buyers--some viewing through video calls, other foreign buyers, and a number of Thai buyers--a fairly wide mix. The buyer was Thai. The condo took longer because it went on the market with covid raging and some buyers--including us--were shifting to houses. Also not helpful--it was not in foreign quota. We broke our rule about always buying in foreign quota because the project was in a prime location and we got the condo--with a very nice seaview--at a good price. Foreign quota was full but we thought it was a good investment so we bought anyway. Early on with the sale we got a low-ball offer--we would have broken even--but we rejected it as we weren't in a hurry to sell as we were still renovating the house. Like Mabprachan, the north Pattaya Beach location has become very desirable. But, the number of seaview condo projects are few. (We always buy seaview.) And, nice projects even fewer. Compare that to the number of projects in Jomtien, Pratamnak, and Cosy Beach. We renovated the condo and made it one of the nicest ones in the project and it eventually found a buyer. One last example, our project before these two. This was a large 3 bedroom/3 bath beachfront condo in Wong Amat. The condo was owned by a Bangkok company that was no longer using it much. It was quite rundown and we got it at a good price. Renovated everything. Large, nice 3 bedroom/3 bath beachfront condos are few and far between in Pattaya and we easily found a buyer. It's often said on TV/AN that there are thousands and thousands of unsold condos in Pattaya. That doesn't faze us. There may be thousands of condos up for sale but not, for example, thousands of nice, beachfront 3 bedroom/3 bath condos in Wong Amat. If we've managed to buy well in the first place, we're usually only competing with a handful of condos, not thousands. And, we just need one buyer each time, not thousands. With some experience now, as property shoppers we put three things, among others, foremost--price, location, and supply/demand.