As debt levels rise, more Thais struggle to keep up

[NCC1701A]

6 minutes ago, lanista said:

The only financial plan Thai girls have is to marry old foreign men.  Get him to pay all the family debts and look after the Thai men's children.

Thais build up debt and farangs pay for it.

when I get bored I will put on a sad face and tell a bar girl I just arrived in Thailand and wanted to buy a house but just found out I can't own land. Amazing what happens after that.  

[1337markus]

"Business is bad and it's very tough when you have debt," Pimpa told Reuters, who used part of the loan to finance her business. She is not alone.

 

Just another business person lamenting how bad business is. Yet TAT tells us tourist numbers are soaring up 11%  <deleted>!

Edited August 31, 2018 by metisdead
Profane acronym removed.

[MrLuckyThailand]

17 minutes ago, lanista said:

The only financial plan Thai girls have is to marry old foreign men.  Get him to pay all the family debts and look after the Thai men's children.

Thais build up debt and farangs pay for it.

I persume that you are not married to a Thai woman. ?

[Horace]

Not to be too cynical, but will this lead to an uptake in staffing for the  night time "entertainment" industry

[Horace]

4 hours ago, Cadbury said:

Debt and corruption and self-interest is part of the national process of the country going down the gurgler.

It is only presently held afloat by foreign investment and technology and that will decline progressively the longer the junta remains in power. 

An honourable saviour of some sort is desperately needed. Heaven knows, their are plenty of dishonourable pretenders about.

 

 

 

I think the plan is to expropriate foreign investments.  That will allow the elite to maintain their high-so life styles.  If a foreign investor complains, scream and rant about how foreigners are trying to take over Thailand.  This strategy has worked for decades and I am sure it will be employed again.

[FarangutanMao]

3 hours ago, miamiman123 said:

Thai debt levels are nearly the same as Greece. 

Not quite as per percentage of gdp

https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/households-debt-to-gdp

or

https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm

 

[FarangutanMao]

It's still cheaper to marry a Thai, pay off her debt, pay for her Thai boy friends children,

than to marry a western woman and her debts. pick your poison if you must.

Thai women eat less and probably use less ac and your choice of transport gets better mileage.

 

[Redline]

Accountability-not folks

[billd766]

2 hours ago, lanista said:

The only financial plan Thai girls have is to marry old foreign men.  Get him to pay all the family debts and look after the Thai men's children.

Thais build up debt and farangs pay for it.

 

Sorry to burst your bar stool bubble, but not all Thai ladies and old foreign men are the same.

[boonrawdcnx]

How on earth would anybody get a home loan of 4 million baht with a monthly income of 30.000 baht selling cosmetics?

And then it goes on saying she pays more than half her income paying off her debt?

At the current lending rates between 6.2 and 7.5 % her monthly payments at the lowest 6.2 % rate would be 24.499 baht a month for 30 years I would say that is a bit more than half her income !

Add utility bills / maintenance to that and her entire monthly income is gone.

Not sure how this people calculate their ability to repay - but this loan was doomed from the beginning and the people approving the loan should have realized that.

It looks like the banks are at it again cheating on loan applications lending money to people who are obviously not able to repay - just like before the last financial crises - otherwise this would not be possible.


Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect

[simoh1490]

4 hours ago, miamiman123 said:

Thai debt levels are nearly the same as Greece. 

Rubbish, Thai government debt is extremely low, less than 40% of GDP.

[simoh1490]

1 hour ago, FarangutanMao said:

Not quite as per percentage of gdp

https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/households-debt-to-gdp

or

https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm

 

He's confused between Government and consumer debt and even so he's still incorrect!

[KMartinHandyman]

How on earth would anybody get a home loan of 4 million baht with a monthly income of 30.000 baht selling cosmetics?

And then it goes on saying she pays more than half her income paying off her debt?

At the current lending rates between 6.2 and 7.5 % her monthly payments at the lowest 6.2 % rate would be 24.499 baht a month for 30 years I would say that is a bit more than half her income !

Add utility bills / maintenance to that and her entire monthly income is gone.

Not sure how this people calculate their ability to repay - but this loan was doomed from the beginning and the people approving the loan should have realized that.

It looks like the banks are at it again cheating on loan applications lending money to people who are obviously not able to repay - just like before the last financial crises - otherwise this would not be possible.


Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect

Bank and money shop loans are given with guarantors, usually parents signing over their land. It’s bad form to decline to be the backstop for a Thai who asks you to co-sign for them, especially family.

[zzidenn]

7 hours ago, faraday said:

You surely mean 'People Everywhere' & not only Thailand?

 

 

Yes absolutely agree, wether you are rich or not. When cheap installments got available in Germany, especially the lower classes started buying things they can‘t afford, like huge tv‘s and whatever comes to mind. I  do as my dad told me, if I don’t have the money on my account I won‘t buy it. 

Peer pressure and social pressure is very high here and many fall for it, especially in bangkok where everybody wants to live the hiso dream.

[CLW]

Mmm, who says that JMT will keep closing delinquent accounts and keeping up making money? What if they cannot? Then they will have bad debt on their books...
 
That borrower who hasn't paid her 15 k mortgage in 3 months: Lady, you have got your priorities wrong! As a business owner, I recall eating Rahmen noodle soup for weeks when times were tough.
 
Sell the car, get a motorcycle. Eat street food, buy bananas. Go get the AIS "Marathon" plan for your cell phone. Ditch the Iphone. Cancel Netflix, rely on Youtube. Get an antenna and strike a deal with a neighbor for sharing the wifi... Act!
 
I know a struggling builder. His 17 y.o. daughter was visiting Udon Thani and had to return to Bangkok. What did he do?
 
A: he took the big truck and drove her. Wasting, I reckon, 8 grand.
 
There was an excellent VIP service. She could sleep, be more comfortable. Give her 200 THB and a bus ticket and 800 THB would have seen her home. While he would be knackered. ** I see relatives with Ipad, new 50 k washing machines (why not get some SAMSUNG for like 10 k?). Then they bought a new Mazda for the daughter. 3 years later, it has lost 500 k in value. (In Bangkok, the daughter could use public transport but hey...)
 
A friend has been "hiding" the truck a finance company wants to reposess. This may affect his job as collections mount and desperation sets in. His commute has been 50 km return. Hey, get a room by the factory. Ride a motorcycle. Eat street food. You don't want that big Isuzu D-Max... There is life without a vehicle. Families make do with 1 or 2 motorcycles... Not paying the mortgage for months shows terrible judgment, JMHO.

All in the name of face saving. TiT

[alant]

4 hours ago, theoldgit said:

I'm not sure what you mean by that observation, I also have an Amex credit card issued by Amex of Thailand, a number of other posters have also indicated they also have one over the years, so I suppose that makes it a Thai credit card.

I was simply seeking information theoldgit, I probably didn't help understanding by some poor punctuation. I did not know Amex did a credit card in Thai Baht.

[Lacessit]

The best advice my father ever gave me was to only buy something when you have the cash to pay for it. Go into debt only when it is an appreciating asset.

[Airalee]

2 hours ago, boonrawdcnx said:

How on earth would anybody get a home loan of 4 million baht with a monthly income of 30.000 baht selling cosmetics?

And then it goes on saying she pays more than half her income paying off her debt?

At the current lending rates between 6.2 and 7.5 % her monthly payments at the lowest 6.2 % rate would be 24.499 baht a month for 30 years I would say that is a bit more than half her income ! 

My guess is that she went for one of those teaser rate or negatively amortizing loans and her statement that the loan takes up more than half her income suggests to me that the interest rate hasn’t reset upwards...yet.  

 

Last December, I saw ads for condos at the Onnut BTS station for condos where the payment started at only ฿3997 for a ฿1,600,000 condo.  Thinking this might only be with a large down payment, I went digging around some bank websites and saw that Krungthai bank was offering a loan where for the first 9 months, the payment was only ฿1000 per ฿1,000,000 borrowed.  That loan is no longer available from what I can see.  If the banks were doing what the US banks were doing and qualifying people based only on the teaser rate payment instead of the fully amortizing payment, I suspect that there will be a lot of people in a world of financial hurt over the next couple years.

 

I wish I could see something like the infamous (among housing bubble bloggers) Credit Suisse ARM reset chart (for US mortgages) for Thailand.  It was great for timing put options on banks.

 

 

Edited August 31, 2018 by Airalee

[BritManToo]

7 hours ago, Airalee said:

At 3% interest, the payment will be ฿16,864, so probably in line with what she says she pays monthly.

Thai banks charge 6% on home loans.

[Airalee]

3 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

Thai banks charge 6% on home loans.

Adjustable rate mortgages are offered too, with ridiculously low teaser rates.

[Airalee]

6 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

Thai banks charge 6% on home loans.

Here you go...

 

https://www.ktb.co.th/en/personal/loan/housing-loan/133

[BritManToo]

5 minutes ago, Airalee said:

Adjustable rate mortgages are offered too, with ridiculously low teaser rates.

It seems unlikely after 4 years, I would suggest the reporter got it wrong, or the lady was lying about her home loan.

(many banks have offered 1% for the first year over the past 10 years)

She also claimed her income was 30k/month, which would only entitle her to a maximum 2MBht home loan. (and that loan would have repayments of around 15k/month)

Edited August 31, 2018 by BritManToo

[Airalee]

1 minute ago, BritManToo said:

It seems unlikely after 4 years, I would suggest the reporter got it wrong, or the lady was lying about her home loan.

I’m not sure what options were available when she became a homedebtor or whether the bank qualified people at the “introductory” rate or at the highest possible rate for the given loan.  ARMs in the US sometimes went for as long as 7 years before the rate went up.

[simoh1490]

6 minutes ago, Airalee said:

Adjustable rate mortgages are offered too, with ridiculously low teaser rates.

There's a MLR in Thailand, Minimum Lending Rate and it's not very low or even low, 6.03% currently.

[Cake Monster]

People all over the Globe borrow money for all kinds of reasons.

However, to borrow 40,000 Baht just to throw a party for your Daughters engagement, thats just insane, and these kind of things are rampant in Thai Society.

8 hours ago, theoldgit said:

Rather like when Thais were encouraged to purchase new cars they neither needed or could afford, many of which were subsequently repossessed.

And this is after they have not only bought the car, but have spent money they dont have on " filming " the entire glass of the car, a full set of Alloy wheels and a full set of low profile boots for the thing, and then they spend on the sound system, an some go faster stripes or such.

All on the money they borrowed.

[Airalee]

39 minutes ago, simoh1490 said:

There's a MLR in Thailand, Minimum Lending Rate and it's not very low or even low, 6.03% currently.

 

 

45 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

It seems unlikely after 4 years, I would suggest the reporter got it wrong, or the lady was lying about her home loan.

(many banks have offered 1% for the first year over the past 10 years)

She also claimed her income was 30k/month, which would only entitle her to a maximum 2MBht home loan. (and that loan would have repayments of around 15k/month)

3 years for this introductory rate...as I said...plenty of toxic loan options.

 

https://www.cimbthai.com/en/personal/news-and-promotions/promotions/promotion/promo-0111.html

 

and maybe her income was higher back in 2014when she indentured herself.

Edited August 31, 2018 by Airalee

[Horace]

3 hours ago, boonrawdcnx said:

t looks like the banks are at it again cheating on loan applications lending money to people who are obviously not able to repay - just like before the last financial crises - otherwise this would not be possible.

 

This sounds so familiar.  Where and when did I hear this before.  Oh, I remember now, I was in the boardroom of a then major Thai bank in early 1997.?

[Nowisee]

It could be hard times ahead for a lot.  
For some I have sympathy, for others not so much.

The problem about reporting on this is that it's so easy to cover up and conceal the truth. 

 

[lungbing]

I was sitting in Central in Khon Kaen this week reading about the Bank of Thailand talking up the economy.  Then I looked around at the empty spaces where shops and food stalls used to be.  Something is going on and it isn't good.  It's even worse in Baan and Beyond and even Tukkom.

[Jeremy50]

11 hours ago, BuckleUp said:

She'll make it up in no time at soi 3 and send the $ back to dad.

No need to show your ignorance as well your unsettling comments about a 17year old. Soi 3 has no brothels on it, they were all closed down 4 years ago, just private houses now.