Udon Best Value? Buy Land/Build Home, Buy Home Via Bank, Or Rent?

[saanya]

This question deals with the question of monetary VALUE mostly but takes into account Circumstance.

I'm 42, my wife is 30, and I live in Udon with my Thai wife and two children (one from her previous marriage, the other from us just born recently). We also house her Mother who does a great deal around the house and is good natured by default.

I usually bring in about 100,000-200,000 THB per month in income through my online business overseas which I've had for some time. My wife is a chef by trade and is way into cuisine as an art, -she's made good money before when she owned her own restaurant but didn't like dealing with all the corruption that goes along with running a successful business here. Most we'd do is a cafe/coffee shop, and steer clear of the restaurant biz as it can wear one down even when done well.

My wife owns a house and 1/4 Rai land in Nong Khai. The non-working members of the family stay there. It's too small for me to want to stay there in NK and being here is just far enough away to allow us to run the house well. It's a strategy that's working out well.

We rent a fairly well set up house in a desirable area of Udon, for a pretty good price, with an excellent landlord who happens to be one of the wealthiest in Udon. Getting this place was a turn of luck in itself. He's never raised our rent, and the other families in the housing village are all quite well behaved.

This hasn't always been the case in other parts of Thailand, -we've lived in fairly bad, annoying and even dangerous places, all of which seemed nice at first but after the first few nights proved otherwise.

I give this background to now ask the real question, is it better to:

1. buy land (anywhere between 100,000-350,000 baht per Rai) and build our own house (2000sq ft - 3000 sq. ft);

2. buy an existing home for sale in a given area via a bank through my wife (without leverage of her other house, both of our idea) and pay mortgage

3. rent the place we have for 15K baht per month and just relax and deal with whatever comes that may

I have lived here long enough to have a vision of my own outcomes here as well as those of my wife and our children, so I mostly ask those who have direct experience in actually going through the BS of buying land here, prepping it for construction, building a house themselves along with Thai "tradesmen" (LOL), and getting to actually enjoy it.

I happen to have a great deal of experience in construction management. I also can speak, read, and write Thai.

What would you do? What have you done?

Renting:

I have met a few happy family men who actually rent. They make a lot of money too, but are pretty sly when it comes to evading all the pitfalls of:

• Khee Mao Neighbors
  
• Sneaky Lenders/ Banks
  
• Crummy Schools
  
• Bad Location/Locals
  
• Corruption, Intrigue, Mayhem
  
• Losing Cash, Getting Ripped Off
  

But over 5 years renting starts to look like a waste of cash. But 15K a month isn't a lot of cash now is it? I'm not a pensioner and won't be, my country flushed all that down the tubes already. So there is a time line where renting would be impossible.

Buying Land/ Building A House:

My wife doesn't like some of the huge houses we have lived in, she's pretty down to earth, and yes, it took quite a few years before I got around to finding her. She likes a cozy place, and has locked out all of the external forces (family or otherwise) that would ruin our living space. She's into flowers and poetry, and I would say she's quite a bit more intelligent than just about anyone I have met here in 5 years.

So a basic house, 4 bedrooms, not even two stories is acceptable. We fit in such a space now just fine, and if anything, it's me who wants to live on at least a rai or two of land if not more.

But we are very wary of buying land, we've seen the floods first hand, -we've seen all the idiots who live on the outskirts of town, yet there remain some good opportunities. It would mean cleaning land, battling cobras, scorpions, and some corruption, but we'd have our piece and could do what we want. The bigger it is, the farther away from potentially annoying neighbors we'd be. But we'd also be more isolated and thereby less secure. We'd be searching for areas where other new homes were recently done, hoping to establish commerce of our own in the new area.

Buying an existing house:

Is this the easiest and most lucrative options? Buy a house for 3 million via some bank mortgage? Pay if off as quickly as possible and flip it if needed, stay if we are happy?

-saanya