And so the exodus of quality expats begins. This time it's personal

[HarryLL76]

I have a few questions about renting in Chiang Mai. I am a retiree and I plan to move to and live in Chiang Mai. Because I will need to rent for one or more years, Can you guys help me with the general rules for leasing? For example, do I pay several months in advance or do I just provide a security deposit?

Second, I plan to book a Service Apartment for a month. I assume that I can find a rental unit within that month. Because I would not have had an opportunity to open a bank account, what is the best way to get the funds to Chiang Mai that I would need to complete the lease agreement?

Thanks in advance for your help

Harry Tyner

[drtreelove]

Money you can withdraw from an ATM on your overseas account, up to the daily limit of your ATM card issuing bank, in increments of 20,000 or 25,000 baht maximum at a Thai ATM. But it is easy to open a bank account, get the routing numbers from your new bank and arrange a wire transfer.

There are many apartments and homes available for rent. The standard arrangement is a one year lease where you need 3 times the monthly rental to get started. First month rent and equivalent of 2 months rent as a deposit. Some owners want more,some will take less.

If you go through a real estate agent the agents commission (customarily equal to one month rent) is paid by the property owner/manager, not by you. It is sometimes possible to negotiate a rent reduction by offering to pay 6 months or more in advance.

If the owner will go for it, use the attached rental form as featured in the book 'Thai Law For Foreigners', it is bilingual and much more detailed and clear than the standard bookshop form that is usually used. My advise is if you are expecting to pay 10,000 baht or more per month, use an agent like Sunbelt, a sponsor of this forum. If you are going for a less expensive place, under 10,000, not many agents will have these, but they are available by word of mouth or driving around and looking for signs in the area where you would like to live. You will probably get a few PMs with offers.

Get a signed contract, and get receipts for your rent each month. The friendly tune is often changed when you want to move out, and then you see the true colors and it can be hard to get your deposit back. Legal recourse is possible, but not always practical. We currently have a month to month rental with no deposit down. We got burned by a previous landlord and had to walk away from a 10,000 baht portion of our deposit that he refused to return, even though we left the place with material improvements and much better than we received it. don

rental_contract.pdf

[jayjay0]

Have you any idea of where you want to be located. Also how much are you willing to spend.

Utilities can be expensive if you have to connect yourself great. Not sure of the cost about 2 baht a unit I believe. If you are in a place where you have to go through management it can be up to 8 baht a minute. I currently pay 5.

[Greenside]

Have you any idea of where you want to be located. Also how much are you willing to spend.

Utilities can be expensive if you have to connect yourself great. Not sure of the cost about 2 baht a unit I believe. If you are in a place where you have to go through management it can be up to 8 baht a minute. I currently pay 5.

Not sure what you're buying by the minute there - telephone? Using one in any apartment or hotel has been prohibitively expensive since Edison's day so it shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone who has travelled anywhere these days

Utilities: Most apartments for rent (especially short term) charge 7 baht a unit for electricity and about 25 a unit for water. It's way above the standard domestic rate of course but management view it as a profit centre. Actual costs per month depend largely on air con use - my experience is up to 2000 in the height of the hot season and about 800 the rest of the year but there are too many factors to be accurate on this - the age and design of the building being an important one.

Hope you enjoy living in CM.

[Genericnic]

Money you can withdraw from an ATM on your overseas account, up to the daily limit of your ATM card issuing bank, in increments of 20,000 or 25,000 baht maximum at a Thai ATM. But it is easy to open a bank account, get the routing numbers from your new bank and arrange a wire transfer.

There are many apartments and homes available for rent. The standard arrangement is a one year lease where you need 3 times the monthly rental to get started. First month rent and equivalent of 2 months rent as a deposit. Some owners want more,some will take less.

If you go through a real estate agent the agents commission (customarily equal to one month rent) is paid by the property owner/manager, not by you. It is sometimes possible to negotiate a rent reduction by offering to pay 6 months or more in advance.

If the owner will go for it, use the attached rental form as featured in the book 'Thai Law For Foreigners', it is bilingual and much more detailed and clear than the standard bookshop form that is usually used. My advise is if you are expecting to pay 10,000 baht or more per month, use an agent like Sunbelt, a sponsor of this forum. If you are going for a less expensive place, under 10,000, not many agents will have these, but they are available by word of mouth or driving around and looking for signs in the area where you would like to live. You will probably get a few PMs with offers.

Get a signed contract, and get receipts for your rent each month. The friendly tune is often changed when you want to move out, and then you see the true colors and it can be hard to get your deposit back. Legal recourse is possible, but not always practical. We currently have a month to month rental with no deposit down. We got burned by a previous landlord and had to walk away from a 10,000 baht portion of our deposit that he refused to return, even though we left the place with material improvements and much better than we received it. don

Thanks for the attachment, drtreelove. I too will be living in CM and it will be a lot of help.

David

[NancyL]

Harry, your plan is good -- stay in a service apartment for a month, look around and decide where to rent. You can always stay another month at the service apartment if you haven't made up your mind.

As mentioned, it's easy to open a bank account on a retirement visa and you can have money wired once the account is open. Many retirees use Bangkok Bank because they have branches in New York and London and you can arrange direct deposits of pension checks thru those branches if they're in your home country. Also, check with your home country financial institution to see what needs to be done on their end before you leave. We discovered our U.S. credit union wouldn't permit us to give them phone instructions about wire transfers until we filed a notarized form with them authorizing phone-initiated wire transfers. We should have arranged for that before we left the U.S.

We didn't use an agent for rental, although we did look at some units with agents. In general they didn't seem to "get it" about our requirements and showed us whatever they had for listings. We had much better luck in getting quickly involved in some expat social activities (ladies luncheons, computer club, etc) and telling everyone we met we were looking for a long-term rental. Within a few weeks we moved into a condo rental in a centrally-located building, paying the owner's rate for electricity and water, not the inflated rate charged by some buildings. This rental opportunity wasn't advertised or listed with an agent. There are many like that.

[sarahsbloke]

There are many nice 1 room condos in CM for around 5000-6000 bht a month

Expect to pay about 1000bht in utils, more ir you want air-con 24/7

I have a friend with a 2 bedroom apartment, living room, kitchen for 10,000bht

Most places want minimum of 2 months stay, some places only 1 month, security deposit usually 1 months rent sometimes 2 months.

Come to CM, book into a hotel for a night or two, look around for an apartment.

If you aren't confident about looking around ask one of us to help you when you get here.

[gotlost]

On monies. A bank account is easy to set up once you are hear. To transfer money from your account if your in the US to an account in Thailand most banks in the US require you to fill out paperwork in your home bank personally. To get your account going in Chiang Mai I suggest that you bring Traveler checks in large domination, 1,000 dollar denomination. These will be accredited to your account instantly. If you bring a bank draft it will take 21 to 30 days to clear. You may bring personnel checks and transfer funds to your Thai account for about 340 baht per check, again this will take 21 to 30 days for clearance. ATM use on your home bank is another means but each time you well pay 150 baht fee on this end.

[gotlost]

Here is an on going thread for bank transfers. http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/395415-receiving-wire-transfer-to-thai-bank-account/page__pid__3859102#entry3859102

[HarryLL76]

Thanks to all of you for the input.

Harry