How to maintain residences in Thailand and abroad?

[olfu]

Before you commit to any life style consider trying different variants.

I retired in Florida, US with no debts so my incomes go direct deposits and so is credit cards payments. Its very convenient being in any country and pay for everything by credit card.

Yes, I travel mostly 6 month a year and prefer changing countries often.

Travel light, its cheaper to buy something than carry and airlines charge you extra. I should add being single cheaper too so I guess I am poor chap.

[donx]

Interesting topic. Although I spend almost all of my time in the US, my wife owns a townhouse in Krabi that her cousin who lives next door maintains for us. We thought about renting it out since we rarely use it, but we decided that we prefer just letting family and friends use it. We paid cash for it so we don't need it to produce an income. Our plan is to live there about 6 months each year when I retire. We plan on living somewhere in the US the other 6 months.

 

We will probably sell our house in the US after all our children finish school and find a smaller cheaper place for us to live. Based on many of the posts on here it sounds like getting a condo makes a lot of sense. However, my wife loves gardening and I expect her to want some place with land so we may have to see what our children plan on doing before we commit to a retirement home in the US.

[wasabi]

On 1/11/2021 at 10:33 AM, SCOTT FITZGERSLD said:

well, first you have to save the money to buy one property.

than, when the money is saved, you need to look for an appropriate property

and sign the purchasing  aggreements.

than, you need to save the moeny to buy the second property.

by the time you will do it, you will propably too old and tired of flying between the two

countries, and you will stay and get stucked in one of them for the rest of your life, and

that will solve your problem.

 

I have enough money to purchase real estate in locations and sizes I like in both countries with sufficient funds remaining for my wife and I to live in perpetuity. It is not a matter of saving up money or aspiring to do this it is a matter of making a decision I won't regret.

  

13 hours ago, donx said:

Interesting topic. Although I spend almost all of my time in the US, my wife owns a townhouse in Krabi that her cousin who lives next door maintains for us. We thought about renting it out since we rarely use it, but we decided that we prefer just letting family and friends use it. We paid cash for it so we don't need it to produce an income. Our plan is to live there about 6 months each year when I retire. We plan on living somewhere in the US the other 6 months.

 

We will probably sell our house in the US after all our children finish school and find a smaller cheaper place for us to live. Based on many of the posts on here it sounds like getting a condo makes a lot of sense. However, my wife loves gardening and I expect her to want some place with land so we may have to see what our children plan on doing before we commit to a retirement home in the US.

 

After considering all the replies and what I've been thinking personally I am leaning towards buying a condo in Bangkok and a house in the United States.

 

I would consider renting out the Thai condo while I am away with Airbnb (I already have someone who can manage it) on a monthly basis to comply with Thai hoteling laws, but the money earned from that would not be spectacular. Likely enough to offset the condo fee and ongoing maintenance expenses. Instead it might be more worthwhile to have someone periodically clean it and allow friends and relatives to stay while we are away. As they say everything has a cost even earning money.

 

I would like to buy a USA house in a location that is desirable year round so I am not bound by seasonality when I come and go between countries. I am a Florida resident and like the tax laws there but I haven't seen many locations I would like to own in Florida. I've been also thinking about Las Vegas, NV for tax reasons but unless one bought near The Strip which comes with high expenses it probably would be hard to rent. So even though taxation would come into the picture Maui, Hawaii or a central coast city in California are on my radar. It would be okay to pay property and income tax on any income the home generated but I would not want to get swept into paying income tax on everything else in my life. I would want to maintain my Florida residency which might be a challenge.  However that goes beyond the scope of this post.

[SCOTT FITZGERSLD]

21 hours ago, wasabi said:

I would consider renting out the Thai condo while I am away with Airbnb (I already have someone who can manage it) on a monthly basis to comply with Thai hoteling laws

 well, consider this: the condo will propably stand empty for the next year or two.

than, if you are really lucky, you can rent it for 2-3 months in a year.

the person you have to look after will propably mass things in an unimaginable way.

and the thai hoteling laws - forget about it, you will never even know what they are.

[chrisandsu]

I think it depends on your age . I bought a house near the sea in Thailand that I intended to use as a holiday home for the winters . It was a bad decision in hindsight. Not only did the long flights get super tedious (25 hours from the west coast ) I’d arrive in Thailand to a house that was falling apart ! I couldn’t even unlock the doors as the locks had seized up because of the salt air , the furniture was falling to pieces dead snakes , ghekos and god knows what littered the floor . I would spend about a month of my 2 month vacation fixing the house to a livable situation . The condos are so poorly built with bad furniture I would 100% say rent in Thailand . Let the maintenance be someone else’s headache ! I just stay with the in-laws now when I visit . 

[madmen]

17 minutes ago, chrisandsu said:

I think it depends on your age . I bought a house near the sea in Thailand that I intended to use as a holiday home for the winters . It was a bad decision in hindsight. Not only did the long flights get super tedious (25 hours from the west coast ) I’d arrive in Thailand to a house that was falling apart ! I couldn’t even unlock the doors as the locks had seized up because of the salt air , the furniture was falling to pieces dead snakes , ghekos and god knows what littered the floor . I would spend about a month of my 2 month vacation fixing the house to a livable situation . The condos are so poorly built with bad furniture I would 100% say rent in Thailand . Let the maintenance be someone else’s headache ! I just stay with the in-laws now when I visit . 

Buying a rundown old house as a holiday home without regular maintenence was a terrible idea and very poorly thought through on your behalf. 

 

Morale of the story buy a condo that needs no maintenance. 

 

"The condos are so poorly built with bad furniture I would 100% say rent in Thailand" 

 

That makes no sense. I'm in the 15 th year of my Bangkok condo with zero structural issues but then you go onto say they have bad furniture so you should rent them. Huh? 

[chrisandsu]

6 minutes ago, madmen said:

Buying a rundown old house as a holiday home without regular maintenence was a terrible idea and very poorly thought through on your behalf. 

 

Morale of the story buy a condo that needs no maintenance. 

 

"The condos are so poorly built with bad furniture I would 100% say rent in Thailand" 

 

That makes no sense. I'm in the 15 th year of my Bangkok condo with zero structural issues but then you go onto say they have bad furniture so you should rent them. Huh? 

Where did I say it was a run down house ? It was newly built and because I’d leave it for 8 months of the year it would deteriorate . I did also say it was a bad idea much like you buying your crappy built condo that you can’t sell . The heat absolutely destroys the furniture and fittings if it’s left for long enough especially in a coffin sitting 10 floors up Learn to read before you get ahead of yourself . 

[Yellowtail]

Unless you buy a home in another state, you do not need to worry about maintaining your FL residence, just keep filing your taxes using a FL address. If you buy a home in another state just rent it out you're fine, but if you live in it six months out the year it might be an issue. If you buy in CA they are relentless. I have not lived there for over twenty years and they have attached my wages for taxes three times because have have a few accounts and a DL there. You might consider TN or TX.

 

Personally, If I were to buy a condo in Bangkok to live in six months a year, I would not rent it out for the other six months. It would kind of defeat the purpose of buying. Every time you came back you would still be moving into a rental, just a rental that you owned. Were it me, I would either leave it empty while I was gone, or just rent when I were here. In any event, I'm not sure if you can legally operate income property here without a company and or a work permit. If your wife were Thai it would not be an issue.