Thai Hostages Still Missing a Year After Hamas Attack

[NancyL]

Hubby and I are recent retirees, now in hotel looking to rent year-round long-term residence. Yes, we'll check out all the normal routes (ads in CM Mail, City Living, internet sites, etc), but thought some of you may know of something that we aren't likely to find advertised. Here are our specifications:

Location: inside old city or outside old city within 1.5 km of the moat

1 or 2 bedroom; studio OK if sleeping area could be screened from living area

Size: 65 – 90 sq. meters

Kitchen: two burners, exhaust hood, sink, refrigerator, countertop for small appliances and cabinets

Good security

Fast internet connection

TV with some English-language channels

Less than 5 – 10 minute walk to health club, Thai food market, laundry service

Air Conditioned

Balcony or porch

Don't care about: night life, parking, swimming pool

Price: About 15,000 baht per month; would go higher if TV, Internet, health club, etc. included in price

Prefer renting condo or apartment; would consider renting a house

We're a retired couple, new to Chiang Mai planning to live here year-round. Willing to sign one year lease.

Currently in long-stay hotel; willing to move-in now or by Jan 1.

Contact via PM please. Don't have a phone yet.

[elektrified]

You won't find much help here. Best to get out and look on your own.

[NancyL]

We've received about a dozen PMs, spent the day looking at units and have several other appointments scheduled. We haven't settled on a place yet, so please PM us if you know of something.

Someone pointed out that we probably won't get a two-ring gas burner in a kitchen here; they don't want you using propane in a condo. I don't care a cooktop is gas or electric, just so I can have two pans cooking at the same time and a way to exhaust the fumes.

When I see all the wonderful fresh ingredients in the markets I can hardly wait to get my own little small kitchen to start cooking!

[harrry]

If it is more than 5 minutes walk to the health club maybe you can save the membership by walking further

Good luck with the house hunt I start looking in a few days.

[Drew Aitch]

Looking To Rent Condo Or Apartment - Contact via PM please.

Might be an idea for folks to post here if they know of any studios, 1 & 2 bedroom vacant properties, as it's always nice to see what's available and where, especially with all the new developments which keep springing up

Aitch

[NancyL]

Aitch, yes, I agree that it would be a good idea for people to post rental opportunities, but I just didn't know what the forum rules were regarding this.

Harry, you sound like my hubby. His idea of "working out" is to walk everywhere, arriving all red and sweaty. I like to keep my sweaty time to a controlled timeframe, rather than "working out" all day. Besides walking doesn't do much for your upper body conditioning. Both my parents suffered broken shoulders in falls in later years, unlike many elderly who break their hip in a fall. So, I want to strengthen my shoulders as much as possible while I'm younger. A good weight program, especially if I can find a good trainer, is something I won't find in just walking everywhere!

[NancyL]

Many thanks to everyone. We've decided to rent a condo near the KSK mall. Thanks to posting here, several rental agents contacted us.

I think it really helped that we'd "speced" out what we wanted. After spending some time with rental agents who took us to places distant from the city and/or not in our price range, we became very strict about asking agents to show us places that met our specs. We did receive some PMs from Thai Visa members with "suggestions" that, frankly, weren't very helpful. Several pointed out that you can rent places for much less than 15,000 baht, but when we looked at some places renting for 10,000 baht/month, we were really glad we had a larger budget. Someone else suggested we ask agents to show us more expensive places, like 30,000 baht/month and then try to negotiate them down to our budget. We did that for a couple of units and only created frustration for ourselves because the units were much grander than we could afford and for the agents who wasted their time and really worked hard with some owners to shave off a few thousand baht, only to have the unit still beyond our budget.

In the end, our two best leads came from contacts we've made at the Chiang Mai Expats club. There really are "unadvertised" and "word of mouth" rental opportunities here and there's nothing like a little personal contact to learn about them. Also we found there are many, many studio units available -- great if you're by yourself and/or have the same sleeping schedule as your partner.