newnative

It's not necessarily a 'huge downside' having a neighboring house close by. My single-story house and my neighbor's 2-story house only have about 5 meters separating them, with a tall privacy fence in the middle. Even though the houses are close, I'm not really bothered by the closeness due to how my house was designed and oriented. That is key. My house is a wide U-shape with the major rooms oriented in the opposite direction from my neighbor, with 5 large sets of sliding doors facing the pool area in the middle of the wide 'U'. There are some tall, narrow windows facing his house for sunlight but no big windows. Looking out in that direction from the narrow windows, you see only plantings and the privacy wall. Although the neighbor's house is 2-stories and close, my partner and I are not aware of it much because all of our outdoor activities are either on the other side with our pool/patio area, or at a backyard lawn area, also looking in a different direction. We can't even see his house when we are out in the large pool/patio area--the bulk of our house blocks his house and gives us complete privacy. If you really like this land plot, it could be worth meeting with an architect to see what sort of build options you might have. There may be a way to site your house on the land plot to minimize the impact of the house next door.

Same here. Made a profit on every property sold; mostly seaview condos but also 1 house on Pattaya's Darkside. Nothing wrong with renting if that suits but buying can have some advantages. Partner and I like owning our own space to do with what we want to, while saving on rent--with a likely profit as an extra benefit when we sell.

2am is plenty late enough.

I'm curious where this condo is that it's a 'total loss'.

Agree. I don't think noise is much of an issue for most. My partner and I have lived at 15 different condo complexes in Thailand. One in Rayong, 2 in Bangkok, and the rest in Pattaya. Some were big projects of over 1000 units, some were smaller projects of 200 units or less. Most were highrises, one was only 6 stories. Some were long corridor buildings with 30 or more units on a floor, some were compact footprint projects with less than a dozen units on a floor. Some were older projects, some were brand new. We never had a significant problem with noise at any of them. At the long corridor View Talay projects we owned at we did occasionally hear a door slam and sometimes people talking as they walked by. Not a big deal. Had it been, we would have installed one of those Scorpion doors that you mentioned. A friend of ours has Scorpion doors on his condos and they are like vaults. Great product. One of the nice things about Pattaya is there are so many options with housing; and a lot of it is so affordable, whether you are renting or buying. There's a big variety of condos in all types and sizes, with a half dozen beaches to choose from for your location. We've lived in big studios at Jomtien Beach, 1 and 2-bedrooms at Pattaya Beach, and a 3-bedroom beachfront condo at Wong Amat Beach, among a number of others. Each project and area was interesting and different. You can choose to be in busy Pattaya Beach or a quieter area if that suits you better. Whether highrise, lowrise, townhouse, or single-family, every area offers a variety of price points. The Darkside is a whole other area and offers many different housing projects, also at all price points, both in rentals and housing for sale. If you want the privacy of a single-family home, there's lots of choice, both in rentals and houses for sale. If potential noise is a concern, go the rental route first.

Yes, fraud, with the school meal program. Not murder. They chose to count it as 77 cases. It could just as easily have been seen as 1 case of fraud in the misuse of school funds in regard to the meal program. As I said, he should receive jail time for his fraud but 192 years is far too harsh.

Lame.

Seems to be getting a little testy on the embarrassing story that won't go away. Good.

Ridiculous sentence. Nobody died. Kids got a skimpy school meal. Should he be punished? Certainly, and with some jail time. But, 192 years for skimming some money? Makes no sense to me when other far more serious crimes are given much lighter sentences. 25 people dead in that club fire and the owners walking around free.

There were (are?) actually plans for 3 underpasses; my partner and I saw a table layout at City Hall some years ago that showed the 3 underpasses. One underpass was to go under North Pattaya Road and a longer one was to go under Pattaya Tai and Thepprasit. Unfortunately, only one has been built so far, the Klang one you mentioned. If I am remembering correctly, these underpass projects were under the purview of one of the highway departments, rather than Pattaya City, although City Hall would likely be quite involved. Pity they didn't seize the day and work on them during the quieter covid years. The North Pattaya/Sukumvit intersection is going to be an even bigger problem once tourism really gets going again. Things seem fairly busy now with probably around 8 million visitors to Thailand this year. What's it going to be like with 5 times that amount if we get back to 40 million in a few years?

Darn it all. I thought they might have been building an overpass for thru traffic to avoid some of the intersections, like they have done in Si Racha.

Finally a marketing campaign that makes sense.

Desperate? Nope. T21 has the most interesting and nicest, not to mention cleanest, bathrooms of any mall I've ever been to, each one keeping to the theme of the floor you are on. As someone interested in design, I am always admiring the very close attention to detail that the T21 designers put into every aspect of the mall, with no area overlooked. When you head for the 'Hollywood' bathrooms you literally 'walk the red carpet', in this case red tile on the floor. Love it. I almost always find something new I hadn't noticed with every visit--which makes shopping and eating out there fun.

'effectively solve'. Yeah, right. And, now on to cancer . . .

Also not coming: the Easter Bunny, Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and Godot.

I was thinking the exact same thing. What???

Actually, there are more than just a 'few'. Most of the highrise, quality oceanfront condo projects are holding their value well. Just one example. About 4 years ago my partner and I came that close to buying a 62 sqm 2 bedroom/2 bath condo at The Palm. These units look north and we liked the cooler northern exposure but the condo still had a nice seaview looking over lowrise Garden Cliff condo and some cottages. We decided the condo was too small and we passed on buying it; we actually ended up buying at Garden Cliff condo next door, instead. The Palm condo was around floor 12 or 13 and the price was less than 7MB, a good buy. Hipflat now has these same units ranging from 8MB up to around 10MB. How about Cetus in Jomtien? We also almost bought there several times; we liked the front 2BR/2BA corner units, one on each side of the building. They were around 9 to 12MB. Now they're high 9s to 13MB or more. Anything half-price at the above-mentioned condos? Or, Reflection, Aeras, Riviera Jomtien, Monaco, Copacabana, Grand, Sands, Baan Haad U Thong, Amari, Andromeda, Unixx, Northshore, Zire, The Cove, Saranchol, Northpoint, Baan Rimpha, Wong Amat Tower, Silver Beach, Sky Beach, Ananya, Baan Plai Haad, or Riviera Wong Amat, to name more than a few? Whether it's Jomtien in the south, Wong Amat in the north, or points in-between, every now and then you'll see a bargain but I've yet to see--even during covid--any listings for condos that posters are always claiming are being 'given away', or, perhaps the even more popular 'can't be given away'--certainly not seaview units in quality projects. I did like your 'prime location' comment. Yes, look for a good location--and seaview if price stability or appreciation is a consideration.

I would look elsewhere if that's the case. There are a lot of condo choices in Wong Amat.

Good advice from Peterw42. Try to find out the percentage sold of the project. If this project came on the market 4 years ago, construction probably started one or two years before then. That was a boom time and units in the project should have sold well before, during, and after construction if it's a quality project in a good location. If it's still majority-owned by the developer after that much time, I'd probably walk away--and certainly if it is not a seaview unit. Wong Amat is a desirable area, and growing more desirable, in my opinion. As mentioned already, check the financials and the minutes of the last AGM--super important. The biggest red flag to me is the lack of security. Is that truly the case? What sort of other staff are on site if there is no security? How does the building look after 4 years? Is it being maintained? Pool sparkling clean? All the other facilities in good shape? Take your time, make a number of visits at various times, and try to talk to some of the residents. Good luck.

More city parking garages need to be built and parking needs to be eliminated on the major roads, instantly creating more lanes of traffic with no construction needed, starting with Beach Road and North Pattaya Road. If that's too radical for now, a beginning could be made by at least eliminating the parking near major road turns. For example, two lanes of traffic turn right onto Pattaya Tai from Sukumvit with the right turn signal there, only to find one lane of traffic and a parking lane. So, the two turning lanes have to merge into one, resulting in delays and fewer cars getting through the signal. A mess. With fewer cars getting through the signal, the turning lanes on Sukumvit back up, which results in drivers getting frustrated so they queue to turn in the thru lane on Sukumvit, creating a third turning lane and dangerously blocking the thru lane. So, now you have three lanes of traffic turning right and trying to merge into one lane--an even bigger mess. If the parking by the turn, which only handles a few cars anyway, was eliminated up to the Big C entrance--and enforced--many more cars could get through the turn cycle more smoothly and they would have a fairly long distance to merge into the one traffic lane after the Big C entrance. This isn't rocket science. There are examples like this all over the city; little changes that could easily be made that would help a lot.

One down, too many to go.

T21 was very busy yesterday when I was there with my partner and some of his Thai relatives. (Yes, they come from Bangkok and want to go to our T21.) Traffic was bad in the areas we were at. So, bad now, what's it going to be like when tourism gets really going again, with many more tourists and tour buses than we have now.

Maybe re-read my posts a little more carefully. I did not 'assume' that you meant 'S E Asia'. I, of course, knew you were commenting on China, with your main point being that with Chinese tourists, of the money they spend in Thailand, in your words, 'very little hits Thailand'. Your second point was western tourists, with their higher average spend, were contributing the most to Thailand tourism but that was not being recognized. Remember your comment, 'maybe soldiers can't add up'. I disagreed with both of your assumptions and decided to present the facts. In order to dispute your assumptions, it was important to get a picture of tourism spending in Thailand in 2019, to see what the three main groups were contributing, these being western tourists, around 9.2 million, Non-Chinese Asian tourists, around 14 million, and Chinese tourists at 10.9 million. In my posts I compared all three. Although your first post left the impression that western tourists were contributing the most ('maybe soldiers can't add up'), in reality, that was not the case in 2019. Asian tourists, both Chinese and non-Chinese, contributed far more. And, actually, non-Chinese Asian tourists, at 14 million, were likely the biggest contributors to tourism revenue with their higher tourist numbers. In a nutshell, we have, in 2019, 9.2 million western tourists spending your average of 76,500 baht for about 703 billion baht vs. about 25 million Asian tourists spending your average 52,500 baht for over 1.3 trillion baht. Both groups are, of course, very important but I think it's clear which was more important in 2019. And, likely going forward as tourism re-opens. I also showed with Statista data that it's not true to claim, as you do, that with 543 billion baht in Chinese spending in Thailand in 2019, 'very little hits Thailand', in your own words. That's simply not true. And, you, on the other hand, have not provided a shred of hard data in any of your posts to support your claim. Which leads me to live dangerously and assume you don't have any.

I read your post 'properly'. Yes, you focused narrowly on the Chinese; I did not. I said, wait a minute, there were 14 million other Asian visitors in 2019; let's not forget them, as posters often do. I also discussed the western tourists and compared the spending of all three, which you need to do if you're talking about tourism revenue, as the 3 groups made up the vast majority of the tourists in 2019. But, back to the Chinese. 10.9 million Chinese visitors in 2019 multiplied by the figure you gave for average Chinese spending of 52,500 baht equals about 572 billion baht. According to you, 'very little hits Thailand.' 572 billion baht isn't 'very little' in my book. Believe what you will but any statistics to back up your claim that, of that figure, 'very little hits Thailand'? Statista gives us a slightly different figure on Chinese tourist spending in Thailand in 2019: 543.71 billion Thai baht. So, whether it's 572 billion baht or 543 billion baht, neither amount is, once again, 'very little'. By the way, most posters on the Forum who buy in to the zero dollar nonsense always post that the Chinese tourists only stay in Chinese-owned hotels in Thailand. But, now you're saying the hoteliers in Thailand are getting 'screwed down' by the Chinese. So, are the Chinese hotel owners in Thailand being 'screwed down' by their fellow Chinese tour operators? Or, are the hotels actually owned by Thais, who are being 'screwed down'? One of those deep mysteries, I guess, Either way, I'm thinking all the Thai workers being employed at the hotels could care less who the owner is. Ditto for all the other Thai workers in the tourism industry. They're all happy to have a job, regardless of who owns the hotel or the tourist attraction. (And, really no different than the French tourism workers at Paris Disneyland, owned by an American company.) One final thought, can't those hotel owners, whomever they are, say no to the Chinese if they feel they are being 'screwed down'? Seems it's up to them. And, hey, with no Chinese tourists at the moment, it's an easy no.

Thailand is not included in the 'above list'. Thailand abstained, along with 30-some other countries.