My wife and I will soon be looking to buy a house in Thailand and we were wondering the best and most reliable way of finding a property. I have looked at real estate agents on the internet but a lot of their property is very much out of date. I also have no idea about their fees or services. A friend recently told me that the banks have a lot of properties for sale at much lower prices than estate agents. Can anybody give me some more information ??

Firstly, don't put it in the travel forum mate, unless you are looking for rental housing

Seriously, there is a whole property forum on here filled with qualified and unqualified experts that are sure to lead you down the wrong path. JK.

Go take a look in there, the regulars are pretty helpful and lots of good info on the subject.

Moving it there to save him the trouble

What is your budget, What is your preferred area, and when do you want it???

Answer all of the above and i am sure you will get a whole heap of offers from members.

At the moment I just want to know if the banks really do have houses for sale and how to go about using their services. Do I presume that the properties would be repossessions ?

The banks do have repos for sale, most of the banks issue a quarterly catalouge with the properties they have on offer.

The process of buying from the banks is not simple though, they usually set dates for auctions, but, the auctions are four part - that means you have to attend four separate auctions around the country and keep bidding?? can be a bit tiresome but can also be very worthwhile.

All the banks have details on their websites, but strangely enough every time it goes on to the "repo" or "auction" properties the English tab does not work!!

Chances are, if you are not really experienced with this sort of dealings - then you could end up buying a bag of ferrets!!

Take care!

LW

And usually you have to lodge a "bid bond" of around 200,000 baht before you are accepted as a bidder.

This looks quite good.

http://www3.thailisting.com/default.aspx?l=en

I am not sure about how up to date it keeps itself but it has lots of good search features (such as bank properties for example) and it has properties in every area of Thailand as far as I can tell.

There is also a lot of thai script but that shouldn't be a problem for your wife or even you if you read thai reasonably.

Thanks very much Lenny and gorber for your info. We will go to our bank when we go back in March to get their list and meanwhile I have plenty of research to do. Sounds like dealing with the bank could be a lot of hassle but there is no harm in finding out first.

Prakard dot com