I currently live in Hangdong and am looking to buy a house in the Hangdong area. I know there are lots of villages/ developments, for example Baan wangtan near big C is popular with expats, and a new village next to it (muu baan brataanaa), there are a lot of new villages/developments springing up, and I wonder how I can find the names /where these villages are?

You should be able to find a list/map of new housing developments in one of the Chiang Mai property magazines on sale in most 7-11s. That's where I looked.

HT property real estate are really nice people.

There are also dozens of others you can find too.

If you are going to do one of the housing developments make sure that they aren't brand new. There have been a few cases where they stopped developing the community and just built the houses. The roads degraded over a few years and they let the area fall to pieces.

Make sure the community monthly fees are what you can afford and when you actually start paying for them. My sister bought a piece of land about 1/2 a rai and won't be building a house until next summer. She still will need to pay 2k baht a month for the community fees though. For her it isn't a lot but to me 30k baht for services that you don't use seems steep.

Finally, make sure that the entrance is near access to both directions of traffic. There are a few out there that you have to drive one way, U-turn and drive the other way about 1km total.

Good luck. HangDong is lovely but traffic to the city is a nightmare if you have to do 9-5 or drop kids off at school.