The Thai Process Of Selling A House.

[Richb2004v2]

I will be selling my house here in Thailand in the next year to eighteen months and wonder what is involved in the process? I am sure the process is completely different to any European method of sale. I wonder if there is normally any advertising and how I decided on a price. My wife tells me that there are no valuers here and that you just decide on a price ourselves. Has anyone been through this before and how did it go? Our is a five year old concrete house on an estate.

Also, how difficult is it to get the proceedings from the sale out of Thailand and back to the Uk?

Thanks.

[happylarry]

When you say ""the Thai way"".

You scrawl a telephone number on a piece of cardboard and stick this up on the front gate, then if someone calls you tell them whatever price you have decided upon and if they dont like it then you wait until someone does. No negotiating. If this goes on for a year then you put the price up again.

Of course houses dont get sold very much over here as the Thai way is to stay in a house for life and then hand it down to their children and so on.

I dont know where Ban Chang is, but it doesnt sound like the type of place to have a western style estate agent, but if it is on an estate is there not a sales office there?

As for money....if you are incredibly lucky and you do manage to get your money back then it will be ok to transfer back out of Thailand so long as you have bank copies of the original transfer into the country of the money, stating that the money was for buying that house.

Otherwise it will be very difficult.

Sorry for all that despondant news.

HL

[quiksilva]

Go about selling your house just as you would anywhere.

Its very difficult to sell anything without any form of marketing, you need to let prospective buyers know that your house is for sale.

1. Get a sales board on the property

2. List the house on as many online Thai property portals that you can .. try places like classifieds here at TV, Bangkok Post, prakard.com plus any others that you find. (The best tip I can give here is to put yourself in the shoes of a buyer looking for a place online. Get on google and conduct a search for houses for sale in the vicinity of your location. Do this a few times with different keywords and list with the sites that have the highest rankings on the first page as a priority)

3. Inquire about real estate agents who operate in your area and list with them, even local ones and yes even freelance agents.

As for deciding on a price, you almost always set the price yourself even in the UK, often times agents familiar with your market can give you an opinion of what they can sell it for, which can tend to be on the conservative side but sometimes that's what it takes to sell.

As an exercise to make sure its not too conservative find out how much other properties of a similar standard specification and location are asking for and selling at and set your price to compete with them.

At the end of the day you already know what you are prepared to accept just make sure that this expectation is aligned with the market.

[dickie58]

When you say ""the Thai way"".

You scrawl a telephone number on a piece of cardboard and stick this up on the front gate, then if someone calls you tell them whatever price you have decided upon and if they dont like it then you wait until someone does. No negotiating. If this goes on for a year then you put the price up again.

Of course houses dont get sold very much over here as the Thai way is to stay in a house for life and then hand it down to their children and so on.

I dont know where Ban Chang is, but it doesnt sound like the type of place to have a western style estate agent, but if it is on an estate is there not a sales office there?

As for money....if you are incredibly lucky and you do manage to get your money back then it will be ok to transfer back out of Thailand so long as you have bank copies of the original transfer into the country of the money, stating that the money was for buying that house.

Otherwise it will be very difficult.

Sorry for all that despondant news.

HL

I think there are 2 expat real esatate agents in Ban Chang, give them your house to market?

Good luck, not easy selling at the moment, as i'm in that situation in Ptty

[Richb2004v2]

There's some worrying advice.

Actually I have discovered that there are two estate agents very close by and a lot of expats in the area.

Getting the money out of Thailand does concern me though, supposing we do sell it. I'm sure there must be a way though. We want to leave Thailand in two years so I'm wondering how soon to start the process of trying to sell. I guess thats a bit like asking how longs a piece of string.