Cost Of Living In Your Own Condominium

[palex]

How much is the condo maintenance fee in Thailand? For example, in Toronto (Canada) an average (pricewise) condo will cost you about $550/month to live in and this would include water, electricity (including aircondition) and heat. In other words you have to pay $550 every month to live in a condominium that you have already own.

With property taxes which are about $250 a month you have to pay $800 just to live in an average 2 bedroom $200,000 condo in Toronto, Canada.

Now, in Thailand, if I buy an average 2 bedroom condo for 4,000,000 Baht how much would I have to pay monthly to live in it? I'm interested only in the money that I have to pay for the right to keep this condo (e.g. if I'm away from the country I still have to pay for the condo - maintenance, property tax, etc??).

Edited August 23, 2005 by palex

[expatgaz]

Difficult to say mate.However lets try.

Say you've got a 2 bed 150 square metre place, you wil pay monthly water and electric bills which would be approx 500 baht water and abt 1,500 baht electric.There is also yearly maintanance which would probably be approx 20,000 per year so thats a rough comparison, it means $50 per month and $500 per year.No way near the Canada price.

[Thaipwriter]

How much is the condo maintenance fee in Thailand? For example, in Toronto (Canada) an average (pricewise) condo will cost you about $550/month to live in and this would include water, electricity (including aircondition) and heat. In other words you have to pay $550 every month to live in a condominium that you have already own.

With property taxes which are about $250 a month you have to pay $800 just to live in an average 2 bedroom $200,000 condo in Toronto, Canada.

Now, in Thailand, if I buy an average 2 bedroom condo for 4,000,000 Baht how much would I have to pay monthly to live in it? I'm interested only in the money that I have to pay for the right to keep this condo (e.g. if I'm away from the country I still have to pay for the condo - maintenance, property tax, etc??).

4 Million will bet you a very nice condo indeed. way nicer than average.

sounds a bit like govermental rape you are suffering in canada!

as for costs and taxes, forget about it, its pennies! air con is your biggest bill, maybe 3000-4000 a month maximum. water is typically 10 baht per cubic metre. so think about 250 baht a month. service charge can be something in the region of 30 50 month baht per sq meter, again this is so small an amount to the figures you are talking about in Canada. property tax? whats that????

if you rent your place out your liable to pay 12.5% of rent to gov....if your daft enough to tell them that is

make the move!

[palex]

Folks,

let's put it this way - if you don't live in your own condo (and don't lease it to any one) how much would it cost you to have it? Let's say you are not in Thailand for one year, how much would your condo cost you over this year? In Canada it is about $800 every month and from your replies I've got that it is about $100 in Thailand. Is this correct?

... in Canada. property tax? whats that????

Property tax is the rip-off that government does to us - land/home/condo owners in Canada have to pay to the government for the right to be an owner of your own property. As I said, for an inexpensive average condo this currently comes to $250/month. Are you sure that there are no property tax for land/condos in Thailand?

Also, do you have personal-per-apartment electric/water meters in condos or all expenses are evenly shared (well, proportionally to the size of apartments) among all owners?

Edited August 23, 2005 by palex

[johnnyk]

Not trying to start a war here but somebody has to pay for garbage pick-up, street and sidewalk maintenance, lights, sewers, parks and recreation, schools, fire and police protection.

Without property taxes you get to live in a spiffy condo in the middle of a dangerous dirty shithole with its attendant quality of life.

I don't like property taxes any more than anyone else but I don't want to live in the equivalent of Lagos or Nairobi either.

[lopburi3]

Post 5 brings up one facet of a big difference in the Condo of elsewhere and that here. You do not pay much here but you do not receive much in return either. The really important implication of this is value over time - that condo building is not going to survive in pristine shape on what you are paying and it is going to be a rather steep slide into disrepair for most. There are also all kinds of games played with condo management that you have to be alert for here. It is still very much buyer beware.

[Khutan]

<snip>There are also all kinds of games played with condo management that you have to be alert for here.<snip>

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Can you possibly tell us a few of the more obvious.

[lopburi3]

Can you possibly tell us a few of the more obvious.

Friends and family - keep control of building that way (majority of condos owned by builder either for family use or rent). Swimming pool becomes 7/11. Parking lot rented out. Etc.

Non payment of utilities (not normal at high price units but often done at low cost places) so owners have no power/water/garbage etc.

Most condos, during good times, are sold out well before finished to speculators who are not going to pay any fees. That could be forever if they can't sell.

I am not in or interested in the condo market so am sure others can point out the details better. But even in the most honest operation the maintenance is not likely to meet requirements as that is not a priority here in any business. Be careful.

[steveromagnino]

In general, the money for a condo goes into some sort of sinking fund, (referred to in the country I grew up as the "body corp") which then is supposed to handle lift maintenance, painting the building, 10 year overhaul of plumbing etc etc.

In a nicely run building (e.g. one managed by say LPN, Sansiri, etc) this is charged monthly, usually somewhere in the realm of 30 baht per sq m; and it all works out.

In a badly run building (of which there are countless):

- manageement doesn't charge enough so there isn't enough money to do maintenance

- management pays excessive amounts for work and then runs out of money

- management skims money off or flat our right steals it

- vacant tenants don't pay the body corp leaving the remaining tenants to cover more than their fair share, or go without lifts etc

- excessive charges for water, power, telephone

This results in the building getting worse, which means that people don't want to live there, which makes a worse type of tenant, which means. .... and so on.

In general, the buildings lived in by Thais are looked after at the level AFAIK that the Thais living there expect. Buildings full of foreigners are the ones that can either be really good or really below expectation; most due to the 4threason for badly run buildings.

There are plenty of buildings that are well run to choose from, but of course, these tend to be the ones with few units for sale; and buying new it is difficult to know how things are going to turn out. The nice gym and so on are all possibly not self sustaining, and are the first things to go into disrepair. Based on what I've seen of the developments selling well in the mid-market level such as the Ananta project on Ratchada or the Kris further up, they've given up and instead have the gym as a tenant with apartment owners just receiving a slightly better rate and a first year free as a member. Mind you these are 50k a m properties.

I recommend buying 2nd hand or buying new from an established developer with a trackrecord of looking after the properties such as Sansiri AFAIK who do a good job, if the maintenance bit is a big deal.

From what I have seen, with a half decent manager, the costs for a 2 bedroom for a westerner (and resultant usage of aircon, hot water, kitchen) would be something like this:

- fee when the property was first bought going to sinking fun of about 3% assuming 100 sq m (1000 sq ft) = 120,000b

- body corp fee of about 30 baht per sq m; assuming 100sq m = 3000b per month (garbage, cleaning public areas, scum off the pool, etc)

- water (in almost all building separately metered) = maybe 1000b

- power (in almost all buildings separately metered; you should definitely check the rate per unit, as some buildings add a heavy margin on this = guess 3000b

- telephone (in most buildings you can put in a direct line) = 500b fixed

So there you have it..... about 7500b a month for the fixed bits... not so bad.

Taxes are paid when you purchase the unit I think, but there isn't the equivalent you are talking about in Canada. Mind you, you don't have to pay that in NZ either, so this is not a direct apples with apples comparison that you get what you pay for. Canada likes taxing people, some other places don't. But nevertheless, you should choose the building carefully, or you may get less than what you pay for (which is already not going to be much).

[johnnyk]

What stevero says about the sinking fund is samesame canada where we call it the contingency fund.

When buying a condo in canada its important to request the minutes of the strata council (the governing body of the building which is registered as a corporation).

The minutes of the monthly meetings over a period of time can reveal any recurring problems and how they are dealt with as well as the health of the contingency fund.

Somehow I have a hard time imagining getting hold of such documents in LoS.

There are also maintenance scams such as contracting work to the owner's briother-in-law company at excessive rates ("Oh, that is because he use garbage bags made from diamond dust, velly good bag!") and so on.

The long-term upkeep is the bugaboo for me re buying a Thai condo. When the building goes to ratshit in 10 years it is unsellable except to a falang.

Thais only want new stuff so the biggest potential resale market is pretty well written off.

IMO, better to rent then if the building starts to crap out you can move and you don't have any $ tied up.

Not to mention that Toxin can change the rules in 15 minutes if he so decides.

[malcolminthemiddle]

I pay 30 Baht per m2 monthly service charge on my condo on Asoke.

Includes permanently manned management office on site, 24 hour security, use of and cleaning and maintenance of all common areas including parking, pool, sauna, steam room and gym.

Service is exellent, keep tripping over all the cleaners.

Building is 6 years old and in top condition, see no reason for that to change.

Edited August 24, 2005 by malcolminthemiddle

[Gary A]

I have a nice unit in a very nice complex. The condo association actually gave money back at the yearly meeting. Security is great and the grounds including the huge pool are well taken care of. The fee includes trash pickup. The electric bill is straight from the government so no add ons. With a washing machine the water bill runs about 200 baht a month. The maintenance fee is 10 baht a square meter so mine is 600 baht a month. There is no property tax, at least I have never paid a tax.

[palex]

Not trying to start a war here but somebody has to pay for garbage pick-up, street and sidewalk maintenance, lights, sewers, parks and recreation, schools, fire and police protection.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Have all this for just $800 a month?? Thanks, I'll pass and rather move to Thailand

steveromagnino, special thanks to you for the detailed answer from which I've concluded that cost of living in Thai's condo is about 3 times less than in Canada.

I don't like condos and prefer to live in a house (which I currently do in Canada) however a condo seems the only choice for me in Thailand due to land regulations. It would be actually a new topic but it is also interesting to know how many forum members are living in own houses bought through a zero profit company??

[steveromagnino]

My pleasure

You would have to expect it to be cheaper, since the cost of labour (and building maintenance is a labour intensive business, from security to cleaning to painting) is much cheaper.

Picking the building is the key thing for a condo; however bear in mind buying a house in a housing estate is much the same; if there are not rules, you end up with the same problems as a condo - no rubbish collection, dirty streets, nappies lying in the gutter, prostitutes and roustabouts on every corne....hold up...maybe payment should be optional based on some of the other posters interests.

Shop houses can also be problematic, with shared walls and so on....

Completely standalone house gets around all of this, but good luck for getting a centrally located one in BKK for a decent price; so you are then left living in the middle of nowwhere or living with pounding noise from 5am - 2am everyday IMHO...

Condo solves many of the problems, and the money saved can easily be invested in shares or similar; or doing what that guy Harmonica says, and shorting oil

Of course, ignore all this if out of BKK, since then the options open right up

[craigt3365]

Can't wait to move! My NYC condo is for sale. I pay $1,100 per month for both maintenance and real estate taxes. That includes water, sewer, garbage, but not elec or gas. That runs another $50-150 per month. And of course the $50 for cable! And of course this is on top of any mortgage you have.

My building is very well run. But, as usually happens, they impose "assessments" from time to time. Like when something unexpected happens. That can run from a nominal fee to hundreds more a month...and can last for years. Happening in the building next to me right now! I think they are being assessed $200 more a month to repair the balconies. Suppose to last for 2 years.

[Nordlys]

Not trying to start a war here but somebody has to pay for garbage pick-up, street and sidewalk maintenance, lights, sewers, parks and recreation, schools, fire and police protection.

I pay B30/sm that covers all of the above (common area expenses), which amounts to close to B50,000 a year for my 130sm unit condo (but common area fee increased to B33 for the last 3 years). Occasionally we pay B500 once or twice a year to termite exterminator (who comes to spray the common area every month) to come spray in our unit. We also pay small amount to gardener every once in a while to look after our plants in the built-in garden in one of the 3 balconies we have.

Without property taxes you get to live in a spiffy condo in the middle of a dangerous dirty shithole with its attendant quality of life.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No property tax on residential property in Thailand unless you rent it out for profit.