How to Choose Property Location and Real Estate Broker in Thailand

Let’s first select a location and an estate broker. Once you realise which city and district you want to buy your home in, half your job is done.

Some buyers who thoroughly enjoyed their holiday in Thailand may consider Phuket, Samui, or Krabi. This is the wrong approach. It’s like telling your realtor either London, Paris, or New York. These islands offer different price points and access.

Once you decide on the location of your new home, focus on an asset class. Condos have a basic rule where only 49 per cent of the net saleable area can be sold to foreigners.

So, simply put, if a condo had 10 units of 100 sqm each, legally, only four units can be sold to foreigners, a total of 400 sqm. When you buy a condo unit, the agent has a duty to check if a foreign quota is available for your unit.

By law, the juristic person is not allowed to charge a surplus for the foreign quota, but the seller has the right to charge a premium or discount for a foreign quota only at launch or initial sale.

In projects built by Raimonland, popular with foreigners, you may find launch prices up to 30 percent higher for foreigners. Developers don’t like to explain this because they don’t want foreigners to fully understand the surcharge that they are paying.

The next stage is selecting a realtor. I personally think you should choose based on knowledge of the market, relationship with landlords, diligence and hard work, ability to be honest and explain the pros and cons of a particular location, and the ability to explain the upsides and downsides of the unit, in case, for any reason, you may need to sell the unit after a few years (exit strategy).

The Thai real estate market can be highly illiquid, and the velocity of sale can be extremely limiting, so when you want to divest out of an asset, this process can take three months to three years, as opposed to markets in Singapore or Dubai, which may take days to sell.

A little bit of a warning, though, do not transfer money from a bank account overseas directly to a developer in Thailand. This creates a not-so-transparent process of repatriating funds back to your home country when you sell.

When you sell, and funds are lying in your domestic bank account, without proof of foreign inward remittance on purchase using a Foreign Exchange Transaction Certificate (FETC), you may find you have trouble repatriating the funds back home because the bank cannot identify how you brought in the funds a long time ago.

As a rule, transfer funds from your overseas account to your Thai account and issue a Bank Draft and FETC together during purchase.

Finally, I would like to offer some personal advice to readers about my own mistakes when buying a condo.

Access. Try to make sure access to your condo is easy, day and night, and on working days and public holidays, or particular celebrations and events.

For example, if you live near a temple or church, you may find access actually closed for two or three days per year during particular holidays or festivals. Also, traffic may affect access.

Let me give an example. If you buy a home in Rama 9, try to access Rama 9 from Sukhumvit Road to Asok Montri Rd to Ratchada Rd on a Friday at 5 pm.

This route in a car or taxi on Fridays can take anywhere between 10 minutes and 130 minutes at peak. It’s a 4 km stretch.