Do Condos Seem Over Priced In Bkk To Anyone Else?

[Irene]

pkrv,

Thanks for your kind words. You are correct that we did not bring in foreign currency for our condo purchases. We started poorly by our own savings plus one bank loan initially. Now we do not have bank loans but rely more on rental income, savings and diversions of our stock portfolio in Thailand to acquire a new condo. We have an edge over others in being quick in offering cash to a seller thereby getting a few bargains.

Our US stocks are separately maintained in US. As a matter of fact, we have lost our advantage in not bringing the US fund back to Thailand earliers after the financial crisis in 1997 because our US investment was made pre-1997 when the exchange rate was at Baht 25. If we brought back when it was at Baht 40 a few years ago, we would have made a hefty exchange gain (Baht15/dollar). If we bring in now, the gain would be Baht 8/dollar. But we do not believe in "what if" laments and prefer to look forward. As they say in golf, there is no "if" and "but". We try to learn from our mistakes which were many and we are still making mistakes. We have succeeded in avoiding the habit of crying over the spilt milk. We prefer to enjoy testing our intelligence on our investments and learn from others' experiences. This forum is a great help if you know how to refine the comments. The fight for the gain is within us and not with anybody.

I wrote to this thread because of someone's comments that long term investment is not worth it in this third-world country. But my experience is otherwise. I do not know what the future will be but I know that presently US dollars is on the downward trend and it is inevitable that the Baht should be strengthened. We decide not to bring in the dollars even though it would be a wise move. But we thought of risk spreading and therefore opted for the first world and third world in our portfolio.

[pkrv]

Hi Irene - IMO you are most definitly on the right track and to use a 'PALM' ism have a 'very healthy attitude to life'. You do obviously care about FX because you are US invested, but to be honest I have little interest in that market.

It is interesting to compare you with LivinLOS who is also contributing to the 'retire at 45' thread. We all move thorough life with very different positions but all have an interest in Bangkok. IMO it is a great city and will only get better. As others have said this is not a trial run at life, guess what you are going to kick the bucket!

I may not get the best financial return on the face of the planet but quite frankly will get a good/great return and enjoy the culture/city/country region and life 'to boot', I don't think it is possible to ask for more.

[Irene]

Hi pkrv,

Thanks for the encouragement. Just one correction, I invested through the US Exchanges but mostly in Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) and American Deposit Receipts (ADR) which are fundamentally backed up by stocks of companies outside the States, such as EWJ, EWZ, EWS, EWM (Japan, Brazil, Singapore and Malaysia), PetroChina. They gave me profits of different ranges and I liquidated 80 percent of them before the subprimes crisis. With that principle, I started to increase my port in MSCI Emerging Market leaving in total one-third of my port in stocks which is now at a paper loss of 8% and two-third in cash. I started to dabble in US financials for speculative purpose like Citibank and I got burnt with 12% loss. I agree with you for non-America residents, invested in US companies, which are relying on the domestic market, is bad strategy because of the dollar weakness. I have a few in Johnson & Johnson and General Electric because of their international exposure thereby compensating the dollar weakness.