H508

Thanks for all the feedback. I wouldn't have assumed it would go to jungle, haha. We'll do a one year contract with the previous owner for next year and see how it goes. Regarding building on it later, the land is chanote and I could throw a rock and hit the moo baan, so I don't see the problem with building. It already has electricity and water. Maybe I'll need a permit and get local building approval, but don't see that as an issue.

Wife just bought a 7 rai plot of land in Muang Buriram. Currently, it's all rice field that sits right outside of a small moo and 15 minutes to the center of the city. In 15 years when I (we) retire from the USA, we'll move there and build our main house and have a little hobby garden & pond with this 7 rai parcel. The question comes up in what do we do with this land for the time-being? It's about an hour away from her family's village so it's too far them to use. Do we: - Allow the neighbors to farm the land? Both the previous owner and the independent sales agent (and probably next door neighbors) said they'd work something out with us (pay us some money for use of the land, or what my wife seems to prefer is just X bags of rice that we can give to her parents for their personal use each harvest) - Allow it become completely fallow? I think the answer may reside in the middle somewhere - allow it to farmed for rice for 5-7 years, then 5 or so years let it be fallow/grow cover crop, then a few years before we move we can figure out the final plan for the land. Any thoughts from those (possibly) older and (definitely) wiser than I?

I looked at the article but it didn't give any more info. I'm going to be purchasing land mid January; I wonder how much I'm saving when I split the tax 50/50 with the seller... Edit: found another article with all the details. For me: Measures to reduce the registration fee for housing rights and juristic acts in 2023 by reducing the registration fee for transferring real estate from 2 percent to 1 percent and reducing the registration fee for real estate mortgages from 1 percent to 0.01 percent for trading at Residential, including single houses, twin houses, row houses, commercial buildings, and condominiums (both first-hand and second-hand houses), only with the purchase price and the appraisal price not exceeding 3 million baht and the mortgage amount not exceeding 3 million baht per contract.

I like how the video closed that democracy is back in the nation with Rama X lol.

That stings. Reason/justification given and what was the ultimate fallout with the girlfriend on this topic?

Absolutely causes more harm than good. For the majority of Thai people that are poor, instead of saving money and providing a better life for their kids, they're having to spend that money on parents instead, so they're never moving forward. Granted this is more in general and not specific to the article which deals more with lawsuits.

Ultimately, I didn't buy it. The "road" was just a 4m wide concrete slab where two cars couldn't even pass each other and I don't see them ever widening it or paving the roads by the water channel the opposite direction. Unfortunate, so back to prowling facebook land sales groups. I do still like the area of Yang Talat, though; that highway stretch between Khon Kaen and Kalasin seems ideal. Too bad any other post in the last 6 months has the land between 700k-1m baht, lol.

Thanks, Hummin, I appreciate your post. What red flags - possible paved road access, lower ground, lack of seeing in person, lack of direct family in the same moo baan? Others? All fair and I'm interested in this exact feedback. I will say, we've been looking daily for over 3 months for land to purchase. Part of that is due to finding it difficult to find land in her parents home town earlier this year (and it's not exactly a hot market), and when we did, the price was insane (500k/rai for land that wasn't special in any way). So, we've been accelerating our purchase plans and have really spent a lot of time looking multiple times per day. So, it's not a rush exactly, but prices are definitely on the rise and the treasury dept have already put in place that land appraisal prices everywhere are going up 1/1/2023 which will only make the sales market go up that much more. Sure, it's possible to find someone that has to sell, but having it meet our req's AND us getting to that seller first can be challenging. We don't want to buy land just for the sake of buying, but if we come across an attractive plot, it seems to make economic sense to buy now. It can be sold years later if something changes in the future. But, I'd rather find a plot I'm happy with now for $340k than wait till something even better comes along at 350k/400k/500k in the future or really hoping for luck to find something even cheaper and better. My wife's family isn't big so we'll never have a super close connection to a particular area and the town her dad's extended family lives in isn't somewhere either my wife nor I want to retire to - it's not close enough to any major city and it's not great farmland either due to lack of a good water supply. This land in Yang Talat being 25 minutes away from her brother (and the connection it brings to his wife's family) does help in this regard so that he can keep tabs on it as I continue to live in the US for a number of years. Regarding living in the area first - that is great advice and noted. Before I plop a 3-5mil house on it, we'll certainly figure that out, but feel we have enough experience with the general area to understand it should work out for us. I'll have more pictures/info later this week to make a more informed decision that I'll share with the group as well!

So far for questions, I have: 1) Dirt road situation over canal for those 50meters and what's going on with the road going northeast to highway having 3 paved sections, but not everything yet 2) Verified electricity poles are already there, but ask about cable/internet 3) Obviously more pictures of the land with particular attention to how much lower the land is from street and general grading of the entire plot. 4) Checking on clear chanote. 5) Also very important for the thai wife to understand a lack of people dying on land (????????????). No doubt I will have to pay the local astrologer or monk off. I wish the neighbors were a little closer, but ideally would like to talk to them about any possible issues they know about, as well.

Agreed, Finicky. It was a requirement of mine as well to be on a highway, or right off one. This seem pretty close to that to lesson my concerns but agree they're still there: 1) In the last picture, you can see where it is concrete for the entire span in front of the land, and then to the left over the canal, it's also already concrete; it's just the 50m before, over the canal, and after that are dirt (so not ideal - will have to understand better how this works from the owner). Also, the dirt road following the canal (on the other side, unfortunately) has also already been earmarked to be paved. 2) Going northeast, they've started to pave sections beginning this year. So, the 3 parts in green are all newly paved, so I believe they'll continue paving the whole stretch. Apparently from the real estate person, there was a 'collection' from the town poobah to help prioritize (lol/sigh), but the plan is already settled to do it all (of course, always take with a grain of salt). Also, we'll get more detail on the land height, but I think it's probably 1-1.5m below the road. So, lower than I would like and might ultimately make me drop the deal once I understand that a little better. Happy to pay for some dirt to build up the land for a dwelling, but I also don't want to be a castle with a moat. I don't plan to build on this for many years, so giving dirt time to settle won't be a problem.

Thanks! I appreciate any and all thoughts as this is the first piece of land I'm buying in Thailand. We went to Thailand for the month of January, so probably not in the cards to visit again until next year. However, when my wife's brother (and his wife) will visit this week; we'll be on a video call and talk to both the owner and the real estate person at that time (we already talked for ~30 minutes with the real estate viper). From the pictures we do have, it does look like pretty land, but it seems to be about 1-1.5m below the road, so it's going to take some dirt to raise it up for a dwelling. With 9 rai, I'm sure we'll have a company dig out an area for a pond and grade to help with some of that (family friend should be able to do this so we won't get completely hosed as they gave us a good rate for building up her parents land last year). We'll also ask about the small piece of dirt road over the channel that connects to each side of the paved road. Not sure how trustful someone's word can be about the situation, but I'd imagine huge tire ruts would be telling of the history. By "checking you really have access to the land" - you mean roadway or a clear chanote (Nor Sor 4) without any loans against it? We've asked that the owner bring the chanote in hand when the brother visits and we'll also call up the land office prior to proceeding further with the sale if the visual inspection checks out. The front page of the chanote we've seen the copy of does denote the correct dimensions/title and it is Nor Sor 4 (red garuda stamp).

With the never-ending (5 month) saga of trying to find land to purchase in Thailand, we finally found one that probably checks enough boxes and wanted to see what the extremely knowledgeable and sophisticated patrons of thaivisa aseannow think. The boots-on-the-ground opinion, as it were. As most are probably aware, land prices are going through the roof and there seem to be a lot of speculative sale offers testing the market with stupidly high prices (rice land outside of a major city ring road going for 800k-1mil baht a rai...). The things we want are: 4-7 rai of farmland that will be suitable to build a house, not be in a moo/subdivision so we have some space (This land is actually just under 9 rai so more than we want, but not unreasonable) within 30 min of a major town (This land is 20 minutes to Kalasin, 25 minutes to Mueang Maha Sarakham, 45 min to Roi Et, 50 min to Khon Kaen) within 10 minutes to a small town for errands (only a few minutes outside of the "downtown" Yang Talat) Within an hour of an airport (55min to Roi Et airport, 1hr5min to Khon Kaen airport - people keep telling us that they're planning on building an airport somewhere around Yang Talat to service Kalasin/Mueang Maha Sarakham; that seems like a bad idea, but this is LOS, so who knows) Not too far (or close) to her family - Her brother's family lives in Chiang Yuen (closer to Khon Kaen) which is about 25min away. Her aunt and mom live about 1hr25 min south of here. Preferably on a paved highway or with really easy access if just off a highway. Has chanote, electricity, water (check) Under 350,000 baht per rai. Any more than that and the land better be AMAZING. (This land is 340,000 per rai, so right at 3.0 million baht with the seller paying all taxes) Location is here in Yang Talat on the main highway 12 that goes E/W between Khon Kaen and Kalasin or N/S to Mueang Maha Sarakham: City-view of Yang Talat here: Close-up: Currently is rice land where they get 2 crops a year. We won't grow rice, but it's nice that the land/water is good so when we do plant vegetables/fruit trees for ourselves, we should be set. Since we're currently in the US, we're having her brother check it out for us this week for actual pictures of the land - The real estate pictures don't have many good shots of the actual land but they promise it's very nice... It is off the highway and currently does have some dirt roads, but I think in the future these will be paved as the town continues to grow. Currently, there is just a small piece of dirt road that goes over the canal before it connects to a paved road in front of the land. And then going the other ways, they're already slowly paving some sections so would have to expect in the near future they finish the other stretches, and possibly even pave the 2 roads on each side of the canal back to the main roads north and south of my current position: Any thoughts? Everyone tells us that 340,000 is still pretty high, but everything else we're seeing in the past month or two between Chiang Yuen and Yang Talat is 800k-1m per rai so I'm not how much of this is just conventional wisdom from land going for 100k or less X years ago. I don't think any of us believe that prices for land will ever go down, so this seems palatable enough given most "reasonable" land we see around 250-350k per rai.

Phayyak is almost exactly in the middle of Buriram City and Maha Sarakham city (both a little over an hour away). Point still stands it's in the middle of nowhere, with nothing around, and it's purely lowered rice land that will take a lot of money to backfill for a house (or expensive in my eyes for farm land that only produces 1 rice crop a year (vs the higher water areas that get 2 crops). Real point of the story is that the same exact land can be sold for 300k/rai or 600k/rai based on a revenue table of when they purchased it vs the actual going rate of the land based on a real appraisal or prevalent market conditions. So, to determine 'fair price' or if something is a good deal can be extremely hard to determine. In the US, so much is based on comparable property that has sold in the area. That doesn't seem to exist in my (extremely) limited experience of trying to buy land in Thailand and the same land, sold by the same owner varies massively.

Land in Isaan... so frustrating. Even buying land in the middle of nowhere, there is no rhyme or reason to it. My last trip there in January we were looking to buy some land by the wife's parents home in a small village (Village is 20 minutes north of a really small town that has 1 Tesco; and then that small town is 1.25 hours north of Buriram City). It's all pretty much sunk farmland, so across the street, a distant relative bought 3 rai for 300k per rai and that seemed like a somewhat high, but still reasonably fair price from the person selling it. The person that bought it said there was another 6 rai plot of land just on the other side of the road owned by the same person that would probably split it up however we wanted. Other background info is that the person that owns these two plots does this as her business (basically buying up local land in the wide area when poor/desperate people need to sell it, so she has many many plots of land for sale all over the area). "Great!" I thought, "I'll maybe buy between 3-6 rai @ 300k baht/rai and the family can farm it or use it to pasture their 6 buffalo for the time-being and then maybe in 15 years we'll build a house for ourselves there when I retire from the US to Thailand." We had the person that bought the earlier plot introduce my wife and wife's aunt (naturally not including the rich falang in any discussion) to the person that owned the land. The person gave my wife a price of 600k baht/rai. The wife messages me and gives me that price and I ask how they sold 300k/rai literally across the street and what made this same exact land two times that price? She came back and said that the 300k/rai land the person only bought 1 year ago for 250k/rai and sold it for 300k/rai. The land we wanted she's had for 9 years that she bought for 200k/rai and said she deserves 15% increase in land price each year (so, over those 9 years at +15% increase, gives the price of 600k/rai.) Hard to argue with such...sound logic. There is literally no one in her village that could ever afford to buy that land (it's not like it's on a main road a few km from Tesco or other commercial plots or anything) and somehow will continue to get 15% more expensive every year... I told the wife that maybe she just didn't want to sell it and that was her face-saving way of giving an absurd price, but everyone said no, she thought it was worth 600k. Thankfully, even my not... business-saavy wife agreed that price was insane and literally no one would/could ever buy it. Then, in the same area, my wife's cousin said that her grandma needs to sell land not far from where we want. So, I have the wife talk to the cousin's grandma. The grandma tells her she'd love to sell the land for 250k/rai but her step-grandson told her that if grandma sells the land to anyone instead of giving it to him, he'll kill her. So, grandma won't sell (and we wouldn't buy anyway with some drugged out person thinking he somehow deserves that land). So, we've put buying land on hold, lol. Edit: just for more details, it's chanote land (I wouldn't buy anything else and can't see why anyone else would either). It does have a paved road that connects to the highway, but no sewer or water (easy to hook up electric as the power lines go along the road). Distance from Buriram City (so out in the country), and then close up area of where the land is (showing that nothing else is around it for 20 minutes in either direction).