pongosnodgrass

Generally, Thais feel that the value is in the land and not the house. When the house is old, move on, buy another house, leave this one (the land) to your children. Evidenced by the fact of all those houses sitting around empty in fairly nice moobans, unwanted and unloved and un-for-sale.

We recently almost bought a 30-yr old house that had been unused for half that time and in such bad nick that it would cost almost a million baht to repair it - a new one could cost around 1.2 million to get a company to build according to standard plans. However, I live in a 2 yr old rented house built by such a company and bits are falling off already. I'd rather trust the one that's been standing for 30 years and repair it but I think most Thais would go for the brand spanking new one.

Something old and secondhand also may house ghosts! So they know that selling it on to another Thai is hard unless you're in a really great mooban in a good location. It's so difficult to get good repair work done that it's sometimes better to rip it down and start again. Maybe that's the crux of it - it's all well and good maintaining things but the standard of workmanship is generally quite poor. So, repair is worth it maybe, but not maintainence with a view to resell. Function triumphs over form (evidence - blue plumbing pipes and electrical cables not chased into the wall).

You could save yourself a lot of time and hassle by applying for a Cambodian evisa. It's $5 more but it depends whether you think a morning(and the return visit) at the Cambodian embassy or the VOE is worth that! Anyway, we found it was a really worthwhile way of doing it. We just came back and had no problems with it at Siem Reap. You need to have a photo in digital format to upload and a credit card.

I wonder when Thailand might have such a thing...

http://evisa.mfaic.gov.kh/index.php?version=eng