Buying property upcountry

[ichi]

for a guy who wants to move out to thailand?

i have heard from an acquaintance that i could have a house built in sisaket with 4 beds, 2 baths and a pool for roughly £4000. does any one know if this is true?

on the internet i can find only houses which are even more expensive than they would be here (UK) :S am i right in thinking that these are all houses built on special projects for foreign people and to high EU specs?

basically i wish to move to a fairly remote location (1 or 2 miles from a town or village) and live with friends, growing most of our own food. we are young student types so our highest possible budget is around £8000. do any of you have any advice to help us do that please?

thank you very much in advance!


p.s. im not sure if this is the right place but ive been reading threads about burglaries and stuff in your houses in thailand so i am hoping some of you are able to help

[ Title edited to reflect content ]

[margaretcarnes]

Hi ichie - lots of issues around self build, not least the acquisition of the land, which is always leasehold for farang, and would involve setting up a registered company if you don't have a Thai partner.
Then there's the visa requirements - I guess you're nowhere near retirement age, and would need to show a minimum regular income.
Doing your own building work/labouring is against the law. Doing your own farming/growing for profit is against the law.
There's plenty of advice on here about all these things if you have a search - and farang involved in property development too who will be able to advise on costs and other pitfalls, but these to me are the 3 main points.
Expats have often had their own homes built mind, and for much less obviously than sale prices on a development, but all those I've known do it have Thai wives (and one ended up with an extra floor...)
Above all, these things take a lot of time and constant supervision - hence the extra floor - so much of your capital would be needed to be able to stay around somewhere and supervise the process. Maybe for several months.
Otherwise, welcome!

[Randy Cornhole]

Welcome to the forum ichi...

i have heard from an acquaintance that i could have a house built in sisaket with 4 beds, 2 baths and a pool for roughly £4000. does any one know if this is true?

Sounds too good to be true to me. I was having a 3 bed bungalow built up near Surin and that was around £12,000 without a pool and free land (well the wife's)...

[Procyon]

i could have a house built in sisaket with 4 beds, 2 baths and a pool for roughly £4000. does any one know if this is true?

I think the only place you can get a 4 bedroom house with a pool for 200k is Mogadishu.

[Spitfire]

Good points from Margaret there and agree with Randy, too good to be true, 4000 Pound Sterling is about 212,000 baht at today's exchange rate, so doubt it very much to be honest.

As mentioned, many foreigners build a house on their Thai partner's land, so no need to buy the land, which brings the price down but it doesn't belong to the foreigner, belongs to the Thai (which for most who are married is OK and fine). If, from your spec, and you were married to a Thai with land then you're probable looking realistically at a million baht (close to 19,000 Pounds) or so, maybe more.

Spending foreign currency on high value items at the moment is expensive as the Thai baht is massively over-valued, this should change later this year or at some point as the UK is "officially" out of recession as of yesterday. Personally, I'm waiting for the baht to get back to at least the low to mid 60s to a pound before doing anything else.

Building houses in places like up-country Sisakhet is a lot more complicated than you might imagine. There are issues to deal with that you wouldn't even imagine along with what Margaret mentioned about visa/working points. The easiest way to overcome the visa problem if you are a younger person is to get a teaching job in Sisakhet and you'll get a work permit which helps in numerous ways. Looking through the Legal, Visa, Finances & Employment forum/section, about halfway down the main index page, will help you on this subject, lots of good advice there.

You'll find that almost everything here regarding these sort of areas of endeavour is calculated to be as difficult as possible for you. Best thing to do would be to come here and do some investigating of the preferred area, then make your mind up.

If your're thinking of living where you mentioned then a good move would be learning a little Khmer.

Good luck.

[Norseman]

Hi and welcome to the forum ichi.
Sorry to be so negative but I believe that a house with 4 bedrooms will cost you around 14 -15.000 GBP + the swimming pool and that can easily cost you another 6 - 7.000 GBP.
What about the property? Will that be free? If not, you have to add another lump of money, maybe around 4000 GBP for 200 Rai of land and still, after spending all this money, who will the owner be?

You will also have to consider the Visa conditions as you are obviously too young to reside here based on a OA Visa.
Work permit?
Visa runs?
Income must come from abroad as you can't work as a farmer and sell the crop.

A good piece of advise is : Rent .... Don't buy!!!

[kendo]

You would be scraping to build a small house for under a million baht, but to be honest who in there right mind would want to build a house at the moment with the baht being so strong against the pound.

Another handy tip what you think it will cost add atleast another 30% on top.

Kendo.

[kaokalok]

[quote="Norseman"] If not, you have to add another lump of money, maybe around 4000 GBP for 200 Rai of land and still, after spending all this money, who will the owner be?

Sounds like a very interresting offer

[Spitfire]

Must have been a slip on the keyboard there regarding land size, think the viking must have been talking about is Wah or Talang Wah.

For any that are interested, then......

Thai to Metric

* 1 Wah = 2 m
* 1 Talang Wah = 4 sqm
* 1 Rai = 1600 sqm
* 1 Rai = 400 Talang Wah
* 1 Rai = 0.40 Acre (approx.)
* 1 Rai = 0.16 Hectare
* 1 Ngan = 100 Talang Wah

Metric to Thai

* 1 m = 0.5 Wah
* 1 sqm = 0.25 Talang Wah
* 1 Acre = 2.53 Rai
* 1 Hectare = 6.25 Rai

[STEVE G]

I hate to add to the negativity, but I'm afraid I agree with all of the above.
Unless you're involved with a Thai, to live in a remote village as you suggest would be very difficult and if you are it will be possible, but will cost you more than £4000.
You can built a small very basic local bungalow for about twice that, if you already have some land.

[Norseman]

Sorry about the measurement.
Should be 200 square meters and not rai.

[brianks]

Down south inland from Kanom (70km east of Surat Thani by ocean) on a dirt road in a populated ag. valley I saw a nice new one bedroom house with enclosed one car garage that we were told was built for 400,000 thb. [Thai women got farang boyfriend to fund it and more but he is gone now]. Don't have any idea of land cost though. We could build a crude brick dwelling with open ceiling (4 walls + roof and bathroom with bug entrances everywhere) for about 250,000 thb there asside from land costs. Would need P/U truck or Motorscooter to get around as dirt road can get difficult after a good rain (which is year around there).

[johnnyk]

A Thai friend built her cement-block house in Lopburi province for 400K on family land. Its decently liveable (big improvement over the leaky wooden house she grew up in) but Thai toilet, no hot water and no kitchen. And she was there to speak Thai and supervise.
200K sounds like bar stool frothing to me.

[kendo]

A Thai friend built her cement-block house in Lopburi province for 400K on family land. Its decently liveable (big improvement over the leaky wooden house she grew up in) but Thai toilet, no hot water and no kitchen. And she was there to speak Thai and supervise.
200K sounds like bar stool frothing to me.

I totally agree with your last statement my house was supposed to cost 1m its 4 bed and it more than doubled with fixtures and fittings, one thought why would you want to have a pool in an issan village, the whole village would think it was fare gain and even the soi dogs would be in there.

[johnnyk]

A Thai friend built her cement-block house in Lopburi province for 400K on family land. Its decently liveable (big improvement over the leaky wooden house she grew up in) but Thai toilet, no hot water and no kitchen. And she was there to speak Thai and supervise.
200K sounds like bar stool frothing to me.

I totally agree with your last statement my house was supposed to cost 1m its 4 bed and it more than doubled with fixtures and fittings, one thought why would you want to have a pool in an issan village, the whole village would think it was fare gain and even the soi dogs would be in there.

Not to mention the buffalo and maybe even the "iron buffalo" in for a wash!