The wife and I want to build a second house on our piece of land in Mae rim, north of Chiang Mai. The first house on the property is nearing completion. We bought the land when the house was about half finished and took the plunge because the land itself is worth what we paid. Having said that, dealing with this builder has been frustrating, disappointing, and in my case infuriating. I don't speak much Thai so the communication burden falls on my wife and quite understandably she doesn't want to go through this again with a new builder. I know next to nothing about construction except I know how to complain when something is obviously wrong.

So, we want to to find a builder who is used to dealing with foreigners, speaks English, does reasonably good quality work, is reasonably priced, and above all gets the job done without us having to chastise, beg and wheedle them to do their job. The builder's workers should be men or women who actually build for a living, not day laborers who do it as a side job between rice crops.

A friend suggested that we talk to developers and we've been to two so far. Somwang Mountain View has a couple of phases in Mae Rim and one in San Kanphaeng. The manager's English is very good and their build quality looks fine. The other is Jasmine Homes. The former quoted 1.2m baht for 100 sq. meters excluding kitchen fixtures and the latter 1.1m baht for 100 sq. meters plus 7% VAT (also without kitchen fixtures). So far we are leaning toward Jasmine because they have built a wider variety of styles yet won't attempt something beyond their competence. I know because my wife showed them a photo of a rather extremely sloped roof of a resort and they said it'd be better to go talk to that builder. Fair enough. I can talk my wife into going with an easier roof style so that's not a problem.

So, can you share your experience with either of these companies or others?

We met Steve at Jasmine Homes yesterday and were very impressed. He showed us several beautiful houses he has built and then showed us another one in progress on his computer with some very nifty software that let's you walk through walls, adjust the angle of the sun, etc. He's a trained engineer so he delights in answering all technical questions and yet still has a great eye for how things look. And his prices are very reasonable.

But hey, I'm just an anonymous poster on an Internet forum. go have a chat with him yourself if you need a house. We're glad we did.

My wife and I ended up renting (with an oral option to buy) a ten-year-old house. Why? The build quality is very good, it's in a good neighborhood in the part of town we like, and it's very, very good value for the money. For under 3m baht it offers a very charming house at the end of a soi backed by trees and a river and has 175 talong wah. Land in this area is selling, albeit slowly, for 15,000 baht per square wah so it's like getting a house almost for free. It took months of obsessive looking and a serendipitous encounter with the owner, but that's how it happens. Keep at it till you get lucky.

A note on Jasmine Homes - They had a house near Mae Kuang Dam listed at 5.9m baht. One day we ran into the owner, who showed us the house. It's a gorgeous house but she quoted us 4.9m and said it was very negotiable. Hm, I guess that's why an acquaintance of mine calls him Mr. 20%. Mind you this same fellow had a house built by Steve while he was out of the country and has absolutely no complaints about the quality. But other houses on his site are listed at the same price as competing realtors and once or twice even less, so we had to evaluate each house individually.

If, like me, you're not knowledgeable about building or handy with a hammer, and you lack Thai language skills and your Thai wife/partner doesn't want to deal with a Thai builder day after day during construction, and you want something nice and tasteful and you have at least 4m baht, Jasmine is well worth considering.