What you describe fits me pretty closely--I, too, like a blank canvas to work with. As I said in my earlier post, I'm also in agreement that with the new houses, you are getting the bare, bare minimum in many cases. My spouse's family live in Nonthaburi and we will probably relocate there down the road--that's where we have been house-hunting. Sing out if you come across any developments with single-story homes with pools. All we are seeing is 2-story boxes on small land plots, although one project did have a house model that came with a small sort of plunge pool. We are super-spoiled with the selection of single-story pool villas in Pattaya. You are so right, also, that what you are buying is largely just the concrete. The new trend I'm seeing is flat-roof homes with the roof made of very inexpensive metal sheets, hidden behind a short wall, usually wth decorative molding of some sort. Looks impressive--especially when they throw in some arches, tall windows, and so on--but basically these homes are just 2-story boxes, very easy and very inexpensive to build. We used this type of roof for our 3-car garage so I know it's inexpensive. On our outing yesterday, we toured one flat-roof bare box. Three bedrooms upstairs, one small bedroom downstairs. Small living room/dining room/kitchen area. 12MB. Unfinished inside except for the bath vanities. Probably cost no more than 6MB, including the land. No pool. Over-priced. I know because my spouse and I just built a 5-bedroom/6-bath house, with 3 x 9 pool, all one-story, for under 11MB, which includes the land in a housing project, all loose furniture, custom Thai and Euro kitchens, custom armoires, vanities, and desks in all the bedrooms, drapes, insect screens, appliances, glass shower doors in all the baths, wallpaper, aircons, ceiling fans, landscaping, electric gate, really the works. Too true about the cars! At our center city Bangkok condo, we see lots of expensive cars in the parking garage--lots more BMWs and the like than Toyotas. I think its because of how Thais perceive they are treated in what they drive. Yesterday when we drove up to one of the fancy developments, my spouse joked that, with the car we were driving, a BYD, we wouldn't get too much respect with the sales people. As to your question, Google tells me that Thailand has very high household debt compared to other Asian countries, so that might be part of the answer. Greater Bangkok does have a population of around 18 million. Some of the pricey projects aren't too large so, with that many people, developers only need to find a relatively small number of buyers from that 18 million.
