My wife & I have been looking for some land near Bangkok and recently found one rai of land less than 1/2 a Km from one of the new Subway stations for 200,000b. This price is about 1/100 of the going rate for this area. Now we know that there has to be a catch! Aside from checking with the local Teedin office, is there anyway to find out what the problem is?

My wife is having a Thai Realtor friend look into it, but I'd like to see if there are any other avenues to investigate. If it's a genuine deal, I know we need to act fast, but I suspect that fast action will result in a quick loss of money .

I know nothing--except if you feel uncertain in anyway--DON"T DO IT!!!

My wife & I have been looking for some land near Bangkok and recently found one rai of land less than 1/2 a Km from one of the new Subway stations for 200,000b. This price is about 1/100 of the going rate for this area. Now we know that there has to be a catch! Aside from checking with the local Teedin office, is there anyway to find out what the problem is?

My wife is having a Thai Realtor friend look into it, but I'd like to see if there are any other avenues to investigate. If it's a genuine deal, I know we need to act fast, but I suspect that fast action will result in a quick loss of money .

Of course your wife has a Thai Realter friend

Checkout independant advice, Sunbelt etc will put you straight.

Our legal staff will be happy to help.

Land title search and check of liens is 6,500 Baht plus Vat.

www.sunbeltasia.com

[email protected]

If it seems too good to be real, I guarantee all is not what it appears. Believe me, you are never going to find anyone selling real estate for "1/100 of the going rate". Especially not in this current bubble market.

Thanks for the quick replies all. The more I looked into this one the more unlikely it looked. A while ago we called up the realtor who had showed us the property. Despite all of her assertations that the price was correct last week, this week she admitted that she had mistakenly quoted us the per wah price instead of the per rai price! So this is a typical somewhat overpriced property, not a grossely underpriced bargain.

Oh well, this is Thailand.

NEVER MIND ... this was just a "small" mistake, don't worry about it!!!

... just try to learn something more about the business ways of Thai people ... and don't forget about the language problems

... Thai business dealings can be really weird sometimes, they may not intend to cheat you, they just don't think things through here ... clarity is not exactly a Thai virtue

The units of land measurement in Thailand are the Wah, Ngan, and Rai.

Conversion factors between Thai measurements and Metric measurements are:

1 Wah = 2 meters

1 square Wah = 4 square meters

100 square Wah = 400 square meters = 1 Ngan

4 Ngan = 1 Rai = 1,600 square meters

In other words, 400 sq. wah = one rai.

So, if you say their price for one wah (but mistakenly believed to be for one rai) was about 1/100 of the market rate for one rai, then instead of being a massive bargain, their quote was four times the market rate.

That seems far more likely than the other way around, for sure!

Sorry

The below (and above) post is correct

1 Rai is 400 Square Wah

I stand corrected, can't read my own post

Errhhh - I think the post says:

100 square Wah = 400 square meters =

1 Rai = 1,600 square meters

1 Rai = 100 square wah

100 sq Wah do not a Rai make.

So the Ngan = 100 wah, I was wondering why the units jumped from 1 to 400. No one seems to use the ngan though, they all just jump from wah to rai.

Errhhh - I think the post says:

100 square Wah = 400 square meters =

1 Rai = 1,600 square meters

1 Rai = 100 square wah

100 sq Wah do not a Rai make.

That's right.

400 square wah a rai do make.

And whilst they may use "square" correctly speaking it is talang wah, talang rai, talang met etc.

"talang" is the exact translation of "square".

I think a "rai" is already a measure of area, so no "talang" or "square" required. Same thing with ngan. Only "met" and "wah" need to be squared, as they are linear measures.