My Thailand Property Dream and the COVID Collapse
They say to make a million in Thailand, you need to start with $2 million. Well, I only had $250,000 and I moved to Thailand hoping to become a millionaire. I was sick to the back teeth of the outlook of my life back at home in the UK. And I’d been to Thailand on holiday and fell in love with the country. Thailand seemed to be alive. So many people seemed to want to live there and it felt like anything there was possible.
At that moment in time, I was 43 years old, working jobs that I despised. And when I say despised, I mean that in the truest sense of the word. I always felt that I was meant to be the one in charge. Why was it that my manager got that role and I didn’t when I felt like I was equally as qualified as he was? And when little things like that add up throughout the course of your working life and nothing ever changes, nothing ever gets better, and you’ve got no hope of anything better ever coming your way, that’s when you start to think about taking drastic measures.
At the time, though, the thought of moving to Thailand to start a business wasn’t a drastic measure. It was the most fun and the most exciting thought I’d had for as long as I could remember. I was always an extremely driven and ambitious person. But life just got in the way. And it was always a case of saying to myself, “Next year is your year. Next year is your year.” But next year never came in the way I hoped it would.
My latest job, before I made the decision to move to Thailand, saw me sitting for 8 hours on the same chair, looking at the same computer, doing the same menial tasks that I’d done for the previous year, selling things that I didn’t believe in to companies that didn’t need the service. And I hated that job more than anything.
When I took that holiday to Thailand, that was the first time I realized that life could actually be different. I could actually have meaning and purpose and excitement because up until I went to Thailand, I had come to terms with the fact that I would never have what I wanted or be happy. And I was coming to the understanding that the likelihood of anything ever happening to me that was better was most likely not going to happen. Thailand made me feel like me again, the 20 year old me who wanted to take over the world. And it really did give me a new lease on life.
The First Trip 2016
It was 2016 when I was 43 and when I went to Thailand for the first time, and it wouldn’t be very long before I would be going again. Everyone remembers their first time in Thailand and I’m no different. I was going together with my girlfriend at the time and it was just meant to be a holiday like the ones we’d had in the past two weeks in Phuket to take in the sun, relax and recharge. And that was all I could look forward to every year. Those two weeks that I got to take a break from life. And I guess I was okay with that until going to Thailand.
Thailand made me reevaluate my whole life. Thailand made me understand that you don’t need to do what everybody else is doing. You really can do something different. The funny thing was when we returned from that holiday, I felt like I’d changed, but I could tell that for my girlfriend, it was just like any other holiday we’d been on.
I wanted to go back to Thailand in 2017 for our yearly break. I was thinking about it as soon as we got back from that one in 2016. But that was when the relationship that I had started to come to an end because my priorities and my dreams had shifted after Thailand and going to work just didn’t make sense anymore.
After that relationship ended, all I could think about was doing something different. And I decided to go back to Thailand again after quitting my job that same year. I wasn’t going with plans to live there this was still in 2016 but I did want to take some time for myself to really think about the direction that my life had taken. And I wanted to see if I could change what I was doing in my life and do something more exciting because I was starting to feel that the only constant in my life had been not having anything to point at or anything to hold on to to say that all the work that I’d done, doing all those jobs I didn’t want to do, was even worth it.
It was a question of coming to the realization that I only had one life. And as I woke up every morning with that understanding that that was one less day that I was going to have, it made me come to the decision that if I didn’t do anything now, I would be feeling the same way 10 years into the future. And the thought of still feeling like that filled me with dread.
I was going back to Thailand alone at the end of 2016 after making some very big changes in my life. I was open to anything, knowing nothing about what I was going to do. And even after everything that happened and even after everything went wrong, I don’t regret what I did. The regrets of not doing anything at all would have been far worse. Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself to try and make myself feel better.
Returning to Thailand Alone
It was December 2016 when I was back in Thailand, single and with a new appreciation of all the possibilities that life held. I’d only been to Phuket before and thought Phuket was meant to be the best of Thailand. So that’s where I went first. I guess that shows what little I knew about Thailand at that time, not even understanding that there were so many other places in Thailand that were just as good, if not even better, than Phuket.
Thinking back to my first time there and a little day trip we took to Phuket Old Town from our hotel further up the coast, I decided to stay in a hotel around that area and I felt at home as soon as I arrived. I was going to be spending Christmas and New Year in Thailand. My first time being away from home during that time of the year. And when I told my family that I wouldn’t be spending the holidays with them, I think that was the first time that they took seriously the fact that I did really seem to want to change my life.
I have a great family. My parents were always very supportive and they understood that at that point in my life, I wasn’t where I thought I would be. And why I talk about my parents, you will understand soon. I have two siblings, a brother and a sister, and they were both successful. They both had achieved things that I always thought I would have achieved. And I was the one growing up who was the most ambitious and the most driven. And if anyone could have pointed at any of us and said who was the most likely to succeed, everyone would have pointed at me.
Anyway, after I’d been in Phuket for a week, felt like I’d been there for a year. And while I knew I was going to be returning home, I had decided that when I did return, the only reason for doing that would be to work out a plan to move to Thailand. This thought got stronger throughout the month because while I was expecting to spend that whole month in Phuket, I just thought to myself, I might as well go and look at Bangkok, too. And I definitely didn’t expect that I would love Bangkok as much as I did because I was never really a big city person.
I think that was when I went from being 99% sure that Thailand was where I belonged to being 100% sure that Thailand is where I belonged because as soon as I arrived in the city, I felt like it was alive in a way places back home simply weren’t. Everybody seemed to be on the go. Change was in the air. Progress seemed to be rapid. When I spent some time exploring Bangkok, including places that I could rent long term, it was like everything I was doing was pushing me closer to Thailand and taking me further away from my old life.
I stayed in the Sathon area of Bangkok for the first week I was there. I got to learn how to use the skytrain, how to make sure that the taxi driver used the meter although I would find out later on that there was no skill to it, and it just happened to make a difference where you caught the taxi from. I guess the fact that the food in Thailand is the best food in the world was the icing on the cake. And realizing that if you stick to certain places, places that were popular with the locals, you could live so much more affordably than you could at home.
Discovering Bangkok
I spent the rest of that month in Bangkok, and I kind of felt like I’d already started living there, even though I knew I had to go home and work out how I was going to make living in Thailand possible. And the thing that I always clung to that filled me with confidence about life in Thailand was that all the places I went to, the coffee shops around the expat areas, the coworking spaces that I checked out, there seemed to be this new breed of expat coming to Thailand en masse. I really wanted to be one of them.
I actually met a guy who remains a very good friend of mine today. When I met him and got to know him, I felt like we were cut from the same cloth. We were the same person. We wanted the same things. Everyone that I met seemed to be the same.
When I returned home, I felt out of place. Everything seemed so stagnant, so stale, like what happened at home had already been determined, and all I could think about was going back to Thailand to live, even if I didn’t know how I was going to make that possible because I didn’t have very much money.
The Gift from My Parents
I remember going to visit my parents after I got back and they could tell that Thailand had changed me, but I wasn’t expecting them to say they would give me some of my inheritance early so I could chase my dream. When they told me they were going to give me £175,000, I thought they were joking, but they said they’d been talking. They both understood that Thailand was something that I needed to do. And I felt so proud that they stepped in to help me because up until they did, I most likely would have gone to Thailand, most likely would have been returning a lot sooner than I did. To be clear, this was all the money I had. How I opened my story, this was the money I was referring to that I had.
This happened very quickly after returning home. A very quick turn of events arriving home, my parents telling me this, and having a family gathering at my parents’ favorite restaurant to wish me all the best. I guess what I’m saying is that I had a supportive family, and I was returning to Thailand in early 2017 with what I thought was enough money to build an empire. I also felt pressure that I needed to succeed to show my parents and my family that I made the right decision and that it might have taken me a lot more years to be successful than I originally hoped. But at least I’ve made it now.
It’s one thing to let yourself down. It’s one thing to lose your own money. But to let down the people that believed in you and supported you and invested in you is an even worse feeling. But the thought of failure, the thought of anything going wrong didn’t even enter my mind when I landed in Bangkok as a brand new expat in Thailand. I thought that finally it was my turn. It was my moment to shine and to build the life I’d always wanted.
Settling In and Finding a Path
The only thing getting in the way of that was doing it. Oh, and also working out what it was I was actually going to do. I had a few ideas, but no more than that. But I did plan to take my time, learn a little bit more about the country, find out exactly where I wanted to live, yet always have it in the back of my mind to keep an eye out for any opportunity that came my way. I spent my first month feeling like I was the luckiest man in the world.
I stayed in Bangkok getting my bearings and looking into which parts of the city I could see myself living in. And I had made the decision that I would like to live close to the Chao Phraya River. I don’t know what it was about that part of Bangkok, but that’s the part that excited me the most. I was going to spend another month going to different parts of the country just to make sure that Bangkok was going to be the best place to base myself.
Firstly, I went up north to Chiang Mai. It was a nice place, different to Bangkok and Phuket, but for me, it felt too remote even though it was only a one-hour flight from Bangkok. I also went to Hua Hin, a town supposedly very popular with expats, which was definitely true. But the types of expat there, at least how I found it, were people already of retirement age. People who had already had their working lives and were in Thailand for retirement. There were younger people there as well, but I left Hua Hin thinking to myself I could see myself moving there when I finally retired myself.
At this point, I was already 44, but I didn’t feel it. I felt based on where I was in life that I should be 24, like it was time for me to start. And although I was in Thailand to start something and build it, in a way, I had this weight on me like I should have already built something by now. It was a strange emotion to have. Excited to be in Thailand, happy to be finding out lots of different things, looking forward to what the future would hold and all the opportunities that might present themselves to me. But also that nagging doubt that if I haven’t made it by now, I’m not going to make it. But I did my best to push those feelings away.
I went next to Pattaya, knowing that it was a very popular place with both tourists and expats. However, I just didn’t get on with Pattaya in the slightest. I wasn’t in Thailand to go drinking in bars. You may be surprised to hear that I hadn’t stepped foot in a bar since arriving in Thailand. I never understood what all the fuss was about and I didn’t go into a bar for quite a long time.
I was very happy that I took the time to go to different parts of the country because it made me come to the conclusion that Bangkok was the place I wanted to live. I still hadn’t decided what it was I was going to do to make my fortune. But I wasn’t in a hurry. I wasn’t blowing through money like there was no tomorrow. When I went around, I stayed in very cheap hotels. I ate street food. I never went out for a drink because I wanted to save my money for whatever it is I was going to do with myself.
Choosing a Home in Bangkok
I rented a small studio unit on the Thonburi side of the Chao Phraya River. I approached a language school that I could go to to learn Thai, which would also give me the opportunity to get an education visa, which I could use to stay in the country. And as soon as I moved into that condo, I felt like I really hit the ground running. Although I didn’t know what it was I was going to do yet, I tried to be as disciplined as possible. 5 days a week from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., I would be on the computer researching things. I would go to meet up with other expats in a few of the coworking spaces that I found. And I spent all my time thinking about what it is I was going to do because I knew that the decision was so important. I only had one chance and I wanted to make it count.
You can do as much research as possible, but before long you understand that time really is of the essence, and the first thing that I was excited about was something that I hadn’t thought about until I happened across the idea by chance. I’d say I’d been in Thailand for a few months, and the expat scene was alive. I was always running into people who had just arrived in the country, people who had been there for a year or two, and everyone who was there seemed to be doing something so out of the ordinary and unique. When I came across my first idea, I felt like it was boring in comparison.
I’d been out with a group of expats around the Phra Khanong area of Bangkok, and when I left to walk back to the skytrain, maybe around 8 or 9:00 p.m., I walked past a sign. There was nothing out of the ordinary about this sign. In fact, I’d seen signs exactly like this countless times before. But instead of ignoring it like I usually did, I thought when tomorrow came, I would do a bit of research. It was just a sign outside a brand new condo building saying “For Sale.”
And at that moment, I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing something like this before. My parents made their money in property and they were always very proud of what they managed to achieve and the properties that they owned. And perhaps it was that sense of familiarity that made me think about looking into what condos were available to buy around Bangkok. I knew as a foreigner in Thailand I couldn’t own land, but I could own a condo. However, up until walking past that sign, the thought of buying a condo wasn’t something I considered.
I don’t know what it was, but I went to bed that night feeling excited that maybe I’d found my thing. And what followed was me spending the next 10 days straight looking through all the websites of all the estate agents in Bangkok, looking at all the different listings. I started reading other people’s experiences who bought property in Thailand. Yet, I quickly found that the information available from other people who had done similar things was like a minefield. The people who said they did it usually said they were happy with what they did and would point to a few things to show why they felt this way. However, it was the people who didn’t invest in property in Thailand who were the ones most set against it. And I took this as being very valuable information. If the people who say they bought a condo for the most part appear to be happy with what they did, and the people who say they didn’t buy a condo are the ones talking about why it’s such a bad idea, that made me think I should throw my weight behind the guys who talked about it being something they were happy that they did.
During those 10 days, I didn’t go to view any condo, although I did start to learn about the market, and I even spoke to my parents for advice. They just told me they had no experience in Thailand about what the market was like and it was better for me to do my own research and make up my own mind, which I was starting to do.
Finding a Property Investment
I decided to go and view that brand new condo in Phra Khanong, the one whose sign I saw, just to see what it was like. Immediately, I was underwhelmed. I felt the price they were asking for this unit didn’t make sense. What you could rent it for wouldn’t have been enough for the purchase price to make sense. And that’s when I started going down the rabbit hole of looking into condos in older buildings because those condos appeared to be priced differently to new builds. That was something I wasn’t used to from back at home. Properties didn’t appreciate in value. They generally went up.
When I found what I thought was a great second-hand condo available in Phrom Phong, I came very close to buying it. The reason I didn’t was because I bought another condo instead, still in Phrom Phong, but I just felt it was a better investment. A small one bedroom unit. At the time, I paid 3.1 million baht, and I expected to be able to rent it for about 15,000 a month after spending a little bit of money on renovation. It was such an exciting time when I bought that condo because I felt like I was finally on my way. And I even made a deal with myself saying that by 50 the target was to have 10 condos in Bangkok fully paid off.
I spent 100,000 baht doing some basic renovations and after owning it for about a month I listed it as available for rent. From what I gathered, renting out a condo in Bangkok could be a bit hit or miss. I did know that there were units left empty for long periods of time. But I also knew that the Thai mentality was to never put the price down if you weren’t getting results. Often seeing the price of things raised to make up for lost time. It was the exact opposite of what I was used to and what most people I knew were used to. So I thought if I put my condo for rent at a good price, somebody would rent it. And they did. Around 3 weeks after it was made available, I had someone move in paying a two month deposit and 1 month in advance, and they were paying 14,500 baht in rent. That was a huge win.
When that contract was signed, it was another foreigner who rented it, and I felt like I was on top of the world. And being a landlord, I felt just came so naturally to me. I always felt like I was an owner. I always felt like this is who I was meant to be. And now I was finally living it.
With what remaining money I had, it was my plan to eventually buy two more condos. And although I knew at the time that as a foreigner, I couldn’t just go to a bank and borrow money to buy a condo or take out a mortgage on a condo I already owned, I did think that there would be ways around this. I did think that there would be something I could do so I could compete on a level playing field with locals. But I just didn’t know what I would have to do to find those ways around the problem. There was one company I found that would lend on a condo that I already had as a foreigner. However, they would only do 50% of the value, and the interest rate, I believe, was something crazy like 12 or 13%. But the idea of getting any kind of financing wasn’t something I was thinking about yet, because I still had more research to do, more condos to look at, and two more investments to make.
The Weekend That Changed Everything
It was around this time when that tenant moved into my condo that I noticed a few of my friends mainly seeming to do online kind of gigs. A few of them worked for themselves. I never really knew what it is that they did. And another guy worked for a company but worked UK office hours. There seemed to be so many things that people were doing to be able to stay in Thailand. But I felt like what I was doing was real because it was tangible and it was there. I could see it. It was actually in the country. But I guess that’s not important.
My friends, though, they wanted to go away for a weekend. We’d been planning on doing something for a long time, but never got around to it. And one evening, we’d met up for a drink. By the end of that evening, it was decided that at the weekend, the five of us were going to go to Pattaya for a lads’ weekend. I wasn’t very enthused about the idea of going to Pattaya, but I was very excited about the idea of celebrating my first success. Very excited about the idea of spending time with friends just enjoying life.
I didn’t like Pattaya the first time I was there. I never thought I would go back and I didn’t expect to get there and have all my friends who were there with me convince me to go with them to Soi 6. I hadn’t been to a bar in Thailand before. I had no intention of doing so. But if friends are going, then I was going to go too. Biggest mistake of my life that was. And if only I could go back and change things, I would. But I can’t.
I hadn’t thought about having a relationship in Thailand ever since I arrived. I was solely focused on what I was there for. And I don’t think I even thought about a relationship as something I would ever do. It just wasn’t something I was thinking about. The idea that before long I would be in a relationship with a girl, a girl that I met in a bar, the first and last time I ever went into a bar would have been something I would never have believed.
We left the hotel, which was only a short walk away from the street my friends wanted to go to, and one of them said that there was an English style pub down the street. So, how about we go for some English food? That sounded like a good idea to me because ever since I’d arrived in Thailand, I’d survived on Thai food, which I really did enjoy. But the thought of having something from home appealed to me. It really did feel like an actual English pub, only you had waitresses from Thailand, and I can’t remember what I had to eat. I do remember we had a number of drinks, and that was okay with me.
I could tell that at least two of my friends were very excited to go and hit the bars, and I was happy to go along. And after we had a few more drinks in that English pub, we left already a bit tipsy, and we went to the first bar we saw. It seemed to be quite a quiet day. We were the only guys in that bar when we arrived, and there were more girls working there than there were us. And pretty much as soon as we went in and ordered a drink each, three of my friends had already left the group and had gone speaking to one of the girls that they wanted to speak to.
An Unexpected Meeting in Pattaya
I was just thinking about having a few more beers and returning to the hotel. Before long, my friend the guy who I talked about quite early on, who is still my friend today, he got up and left, saying, “See you in the morning.” And he returned to the hotel. I was about to do the same, and I don’t know why, but I decided to order one more beer when a girl brought it over to me the only girl that didn’t appear to be speaking to anyone else at the time, when she asked if I could buy her a drink. Whether it was that I just thought “when in Rome” and that’s why I said okay, or whether it was actually because this really beautiful girl wanted to speak to me and it made me feel things that I didn’t expect to feel, I will never know. Because I did say yes and then yes again and again. Before I knew it, all my friends had left and I’m alone with her.
When I went out that evening, I never thought that I would meet somebody. I thought I would turn my nose up when I went into a bar, thinking about leaving as soon as possible. But I didn’t do anything like I thought I would. I did the exact opposite. And after I’d spoken to her for a long time, the thought of not taking things further just didn’t make sense. So, I left the bar with her.
She was 23 years old, about half my age. But at the time, if I’m being truthful, I didn’t think that was an issue because you would see guys with girls three times younger than them, and she was only two times younger than me. It didn’t help that she made me feel things that I didn’t know I could feel. She made me want to do things I never knew I would want to do. When it was time to leave Pattaya and go back to Bangkok, I just asked her, as she was still with me at the time, if she would like to go to Bangkok with me for a few days. She did. So, I made the excuse to my friends that I was going to spend a bit longer in Pattaya and look at what condos were available to buy there. That was the only thing I could think of saying because I didn’t want to admit what I was actually doing.
They left for Bangkok and as soon as they did, I went back up to my room where she was waiting back downstairs and booked a taxi to take us to Bangkok, not really knowing why I was doing this because it wasn’t part of the plan, but also feeling so incredible that I was doing it that the thought of not doing it made me feel upset. It was like I was just going with the feelings I was having at the time, regardless of anything. When we got to Bangkok and to my condo, the one I was still renting, she never left from there. After she’d been with me for a few days, I just felt that she completed me in a way I didn’t even know I needed completing, and she did return to Pattaya to go and collect her things. But she came back the same day, and from that moment on, she was a big part of my life.
Expanding the Portfolio
I had found another condo that I was interested in buying. It was quite close to the condo I was renting in Thonburi. And while I wanted to buy one more with a view of a river, this building was just set back from the river and you couldn’t see it. But I guess that was why at the time it was within budget. Again, it was an older building, seemed to be well managed, and the purchase price was 2.8 million baht. Based on the research I’d done about the building, I should be able to rent this out for the same price as my other one. It didn’t need any renovation work apart from maybe 20 or 30,000 baht just touching up a few things. Aside from that, though, the whole process of buying the condo to touching it up and getting it ready to rent out, it just took under a month.
I hadn’t spoken to my girlfriend yet about what it is I was doing, but I did tell her when it was ready. I told her one morning I wanted to show her something. When we arrived at the condo building, I don’t think she knew what to expect. The unit I bought was on a quite high floor, which meant it had good views. When I told her it was mine I bought it and I’m going to be renting it out I didn’t pick up on at the time the fact that she seemed to be even more perfect after I showed her. From the moment I met her up until then, it was the only thing that made her happy. The only thing that she wanted to do was make me happy. It seemed that’s what it felt like. And I honestly thought that was just who she was the type of person she was, and the sort of person whose life revolved around pleasing others. And I thought I was so lucky to have found a girl that could add to my life as opposed to take away from it.
I was very wary, which is why I never tried to meet a girl before, because I knew that in many instances, the girl was only after money. But she didn’t appear to be after money. She appeared to be after a purpose in life. And I thought her purpose had become me. And that’s why this is so sad because I was so wrong. All I would have needed to have done would have been to speak to someone who could have given me some advice or even spoken to myself about it, telling me, “Are these feelings real or is it just hope?” But the reason I didn’t speak to my friends was because I was embarrassed to admit that that one night in that bar in Pattaya had seen me meeting a girl and now she was living with me.
I wasn’t spending a lot of money. I was very clear with her upfront what my goals were. And although I hadn’t told her what I was doing until I took her to view that condo, I felt like her goals were aligned with mine. It took a bit longer to find a tenant for my new condo, but it was less than 2 months and that was rented. And now I had two condos, two tenants, and enough money to buy one more. I was thinking if I got one more condo and rented that out for the same price as the other two, that would bring in 45,000 baht. I had so many different ideas what I was going to do when that happened. Ranging from trying to finance the purchase of another condo and keep trying to do that, or just accepting that income was covering my base and then thinking of something completely different to do as well. The thing was, though, property and being a landlord kind of made me feel like I had become the person I always thought I was going to be.
After a few more months, I got one more condo. This one in the Nana area of Bangkok. Not an area I liked, but one that was popular with expats, which is why I went for it. That rented out straight away after I bought it. And now my total income was, give or take, 45,000 baht. That’s when I felt like stage one of my plan had been ticked off, and it was time to think about the next thing from there.
I was very happy with my girlfriend, who I was getting more serious with as the days went by. And after I told my parents about my latest success, they told me they were going to come and visit Thailand themselves. They wanted to see what it was like. They wanted to see me. And that was when I had to tell them that I’d met someone. I didn’t tell them anything about her, but they said great. They can’t wait to meet her. I just hope they wouldn’t judge me when they realized she was so much younger than me.
A Visit from My Parents
When my parents decided to do something, they did it. And they were in Thailand only 6 weeks after saying they were coming. Only for 2 weeks with a week in Bangkok and a week down in Phuket. Ever since I’d been living in Thailand, Phuket didn’t offer the same feeling or the same excitement as it did when you’re not living in Thailand. To me, it seemed like the place that everyone went to who didn’t know anything about Thailand, and those that did know things about the country went somewhere else. I was just happy to go wherever my parents wanted to.
I went to meet them at the airport when they arrived and I took my girlfriend with me and I was happy to see that they didn’t seem to have any concern about her age. Although I bet my mom was screaming inside at herself wondering what I was doing. The reason why my parents going was such an important time was because the two weeks that they were there, I stopped thinking about work. I stopped thinking about what was going to come next. And I was living in the moment for the first time since I’d arrived in Thailand to live. And that brought me so much closer to my girlfriend without even realizing that that was happening.
We took my parents all around Bangkok, went out on a few boat trips in Phuket. By the time they were leaving, that was when it hit me that I’ve got so much work to do, so many things to do. But those two weeks were what I held on to as the sort of life I would want to live in the future when things finally came good. If I could live my life in Thailand like I did during those two weeks all the time, that was the goal. And I felt a huge drive inside me to really make sure I didn’t just rest on my laurels and be okay with a mediocre income.
At this point, my girlfriend and I had been together for a little over 4 months, but it felt like she’d become the most important part of my life. Throughout all the time that she was staying with me, she never asked for money from me. She didn’t have any kids to support back where she was from, and she didn’t appear to need money for anything because I was paying for everything for both of us. I told myself very early on, if she starts asking for money, that’s going to be a sign to end things. But she hadn’t asked for money at all, and we hadn’t talked about it, and I felt like I wanted to make what we had official.
Before I met her, the thought of getting married was something I never paid close attention to. And while I spent a bit of time thinking about if it was the right thing to do, everything told me that it was a great idea. And I was also thinking that if we were married, there could be some benefits that went along with that in terms of the business I was doing and in terms of how the business could be expanded and the goal reached. I thought she was the answer not only to the question of who I would eventually settle down with and be with, but also to the question of how can I take my business to the next level so we can get to the point in time where we can live a fantastic life in Thailand.
She was delighted to be getting married and I wanted to do the ceremony in Bangkok. I didn’t want to go up to the village where she was from because it just didn’t interest me and also I wanted my family to come and be a part of my big day. My family came, that happened, the wedding was done, and by early 2018, I was married. Three condos still rented out and a huge drive inside me to continue expanding what I was doing. And now that I was married, she would play a pivotal part in this dream.
The Leverage of Marriage
As I’ve already alluded to, because I was a foreigner, I wasn’t playing by the same rules as local people were. And while I hoped that eventually when I had all my money invested, there would be ways to get around the fact that I couldn’t just go to a bank and borrow money against my condos to buy another one apart from that one company I mentioned that would lend money at a very high interest rate I wasn’t able to find any other solution to this problem. That’s where my wife was able to step in because she was Thai. She was local and therefore I was able to play by the same rules as everybody else.
However anti foreigner Thailand as a country seems to be, the way I think about things, it’s like in my country, things have gone way, way too far in one direction. Yet, in Thailand, it’s like things haven’t even started yet or set off in the right direction. I’m not saying that people should be able to just move to Thailand and do anything they want. But there should be some considerations for people who want to spend their life in the country and who want to use that time and effort to grow a business which in turn will indirectly grow the economy of the country they want to be in. This isn’t even me saying that I believe foreigners should be allowed to own land in Thailand. This is purely me saying that if a foreigner is living in Thailand and has a condo in Thailand, at the very least that foreigner should be allowed to go to the bank and take a loan out against their condo under the same rules and conditions as a local.
I guess it’s pointless talking about it because it’s not going to happen. But those thoughts at the time didn’t matter because I could just do everything I wanted to do through my wife, who I believed was only interested in one thing. And that one thing was making me as happy as she could possibly make me.
The first thing that I did that I hadn’t planned on doing, which my wife suggested, was to move out of the condo that I was renting and into the unit close by in Thonburi. The tenant had moved out, and it made sense to live there ourselves because after paying for the rent where I was living, I still ended up with the same amount of money anyway. This way, we didn’t need three condos rented all the time. We only needed two condos rented all the time, and that brought in the same income. So, that was the first thing we did.
I had spoken to my wife and said what my hope was, which was to take out finance on one of the condos and use that money to buy another. The rent from the new condo should cover the mortgage on the condo that was still rented out. So, what it should mean would be getting the same amount of income, but we have one extra condo that’s being paid for by the person renting it. This is how I’d seen my parents do their business. This is how they had success. This is just what I thought people did. And I get it now that in Thailand things work differently and you can’t replicate the system from one country in another. I thought that by doing this it would just be the next step and then we would look for the next one and the next one and eventually we would hit our target.
We spent a few months looking at more condos. And although I didn’t really like the Nana area of the city, that condo was the one that rented out the quickest and also it was the one that gave the best return. So, we spent more time looking around Nana at other buildings and ultimately found a unit in the same building, which is when we approached a bank, talking about what we wanted to do. The unit that we found was slightly cheaper than the one I already had in that building, a few floors higher, same unit size, same layout. What I wanted to do was take out as much money as I could from the one I had and use that to buy the other one. They wanted 2.7 million for it. I planned to offer 2.6. We just needed the bank to agree to lending 2.6 million on the one I already had.
Seeking Finance Through Marriage
Because my wife was in her 20s, we both thought getting a mortgage for the longest period of time possible would be the best idea a 30-year mortgage. And based on the introductory offer that appeared to be possible for the first 3 years, the monthly payments would have been around 12 and a bit thousand baht, which meant that even after we should still have a little bit of money left over for maintenance. It did feel like it would be a long time waiting 30 years to be able to take proper ownership of the condo. But how I thought about things and how they would work would be like they did at home. Prices would increase, things would change and get better because Thailand did appear to be getting so much better. And that’s why this is what I hoped would happen.
Unfortunately, it became quite clear very early on that the bank wouldn’t just lend 100% on a condo, even though we could prove that it was rented out and proved that the idea we had was financially sound. But when they found out I had another condo, they said it may be possible to get the amount we need by using both of the condos I had as security. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear because I wanted to do this twice once with one condo and once with another, keeping the one we lived in free of debt. But we went away to other banks to see if they had a better choice. When they didn’t, that was when we decided this is what we should do.
I had to transfer those two condos to my wife so she was able to get the loan. She would be able to do that. And then it was the plan that the new condo could go into my name, although we would have to do a bit of juggling, sending the money out of the country and back in to meet the requirements of a foreigner actually buying a condo in Thailand. We were going to have payments of 12,000 a month for the mortgage we took out on those condos, but we were going to have three condos to rent out now as opposed to two, which meant that when they were rented, income should be the same. Yet, we have one condo being paid off.
I’m not saying that we rushed into this straight away, but I carefully worked out how I hoped it would work, how I thought it would work, believing that over time the prices would increase, building land would keep getting used up, and Thailand would get to that developed stage where old properties were just as sought after as new ones. I wasn’t thinking months and years. I was thinking years and decades.
But when we went ahead with this and managed to find someone to rent the new condo almost straight away, and while I’m still not directly giving my wife any money, the thing that hit me straight away was: what now? What next? Because while I wanted to continue getting more condos, while I wanted to continue growing what we had, I didn’t know exactly how to do this. I still owned outright the condo we were living in and the condo we just bought. So, we decided if we could borrow against those two as well and buy one more, then this should be the next step for us to take. We didn’t know if the bank would agree to loaning more money.
But one thing that we did do, which in hindsight was a very stupid thing to do, was we went to buy a second-hand car. It was only a few hundred thousand, but we deliberately purchased it in my wife’s name on finance, and we paid it down quickly over the next 6 months. After that, we went to the bank, the same one where we’d mortgaged before, and asked if we could have another one based on these other two condos I owned. They said it was most likely that it would be approved. Because of that, both those condos were transferred to my wife. They were mortgaged, and we bought one more unit with the cash, still in Nana, but in a different building. And again, we juggled the money around, sending it out of the country and back in so it could belong to me.
The Risk of Five Condos
We now had four mortgaged condos and one condo owned outright. We owed approximately 5.5 million baht and we had in the condos that were mortgaged about the same again. I think it was at this moment in time when I changed the goal from having 10 paid off condos by the age of 50 to just getting to the point where the condos we had were paid off and that would be enough. And even though all the condos were rented out well into the end of 2018 and early 2019, I still had the itch to do even more because it felt so good every time we added a condo to the portfolio.
Taking a western mentality with you to Thailand with regard to property when I did this, I felt like I’d done something amazing. But after we had the last condo, the fifth one, and the only one that belonged to me, I think that was the first time it hit me that if what we were doing worked, things would go very well and we would have a great future. But it wouldn’t take very much to happen for things to go wrong.
Five condos, living in one. Four rented out at an average of 15,000 a month, a total income of 60,000. We had those two mortgages though, which totaled around 25,000 a month, which meant if the condos were always tenanted and we paid down the mortgages over the whole length of the mortgages, we’d have 35,000 to live on. If somebody moved out of one of the condos, we wouldn’t have enough to cover living expenses. If somebody moved out of two condos, we really wouldn’t have enough living expenses. And if, God forbid, we only had one tenant or no tenants, we’d be out of pocket 25,000 a month.
Well, I know how bad that sounds and it was something that I thought about at the time. I didn’t pay too close attention to it because I had the western mentality to property. There were lots of eventualities that I thought about, exit strategies, because I was thinking that maybe not over the next few years, but maybe over the next 10 to 15 years, the condos we had would go up considerably in value as the country continued to develop. Perhaps the fact that I was able to rent out the condos that we had as easily as we could gave me a false sense of security because I always ran into people who said they had a condo and they weren’t able to rent it out. The thing I thought about wasn’t that I was lucky. I just thought I’d done my research. I’d found the best areas. I found the best condos for the best return. And it really can be a case of believing you’re doing one thing that you’re very good at and not understanding what’s actually going on and what’s actually happening is happening not because of the reasons that you believe it’s happening for.
COVID and the Collapse
We had a tenant move out halfway through 2019, the condo in Phrom Phong. And we decided we would actually move to that one and rent the one out in Thonburi as it would take us closer to the other condos so we could always be in the area if anything came up. I did spend a month doing a few things to that condo in Thonburi before putting it up for rent, but it was made available again late into 2019. And I could really feel it when it wasn’t rented out because what little money I had left, probably around half a million baht and that was it, was starting to go down and I just hoped somebody would move in. Nobody moved into that condo and then COVID happened. Not only did nobody move into that condo, two of those tenants that we had in other condos, both foreigners, left Thailand and returned home. And now we had three empty units, one still rented out, but mortgage payments that were double what little income was coming in.
Nobody could have foreseen something like COVID happening. But it was COVID happening that made me realize just how close to the wire I’d allowed things to get by doing what I did. I did what I did because I’ve seen it work at home for many people and I didn’t do anything differently than somebody who invested in property at home at the right time did and saw the value increase purely by luck instead of management. But now we were in a very bad position. And no matter what I thought of, I just couldn’t think of anything to do to fix this problem.
We needed new tenants in the three empty condos, but nobody could come into Thailand and prices were reduced. We couldn’t even get anybody in for 10,000. The condos that I was hoping to increase in price over time were actually worth a bit less now. And if I take a step back and look at the situation from my position today, the thing that makes this even worse was if I could have held on and made it through the hard times, I would be in a much better position today. But the problem was if I couldn’t think of something soon, I wouldn’t even have a chance to make it through the bad times. It was one of the worst points of my life. But to make it even worse, my wife just didn’t seem to understand how serious our predicament was.
I guess I should cut to the chase. When it became clear that finding a tenant for any of the condos was not going to happen anytime soon, the only thing I could think of was trying to sell the condo I had that wasn’t mortgaged to try to bring in some quick cash. It was the furthest thing from what I really wanted to do, but if I didn’t, everything would collapse. I reluctantly sold that condo for over a million baht less than I paid for it just to get rid of it as quickly as I could so I could have some working capital, hoping things would turn around.
We moved into one of the units that wasn’t rented out, but my wife just couldn’t understand what the problem was. I mean, she understood that we needed to rent these places out for our income, but it’s like she thought that I could pull money out of thin air to replace any income that we lost by not being able to rent them out. And we started falling out all the time, which really didn’t help things. Only 6 months after selling that condo, all that money had gone living expenses, the mortgages that needed covering and that was when things were starting to get desperate.
I did think to pay off a little bit of the mortgage with some of the money to reduce the payments, but that was probably the worst thing that I did because when I had just a couple of hundred thousand baht in the bank and when there seemed to be no hope of anything turning around, that was the first time I thought everything was lost. I was still arguing with my wife all the time. It was a constant problem that we faced together.
The Final Losses
If I could go back and change things, I would have asked my parents for help because I bet they probably would have helped me. I just didn’t feel like that was where I was in life anymore. We had the condos for sale, thinking if we could just get some money out and pay down some of the mortgages, we could keep the rest. But the problem was we had loans out and in order to sell the condos at the speed we needed, we’d be losing so much of the equity that was in them. But it felt like we had no choice. We sold another one, this time for a 1.1 million baht loss. And based on the loan that was on that property, we only had 5 or 600,000 out of it. And although that made things a bit better because the payments weren’t as high, by the start of 2021, all that money had gone and me and my wife weren’t even on speaking terms anymore.
What happened from there was very quick. When it became clear that we needed to get a divorce because we didn’t see eye to eye and we would end up doing bad things to each other if we carried on. That was a very shocking time for me because when we got the divorce, everything that I had, everything remained belonging to her. And when I reached out to a company that I dealt with before who helped me register the condos in my name when I bought them originally, asking for advice on what to do, it appeared that I would either have to get her to agree to give some money back, accept what had happened, or take her to court and I didn’t have the money to do that.
She was left with three condos with outstanding loans of around 4 million baht and equity in those condos around 3 million. This is very give or take here, but she had payments to make in her name and I made the difficult decision just to write it off and blame COVID for what happened which is what I did. I left Thailand not long after with my tail between my legs, so close to being successful. Yet, I’d lost all that money because of things out of my control.
If you think about what the difference was between me, who tried to do this, and people who have done this throughout the years and made lots of money, they were lucky and I wasn’t. That’s the way I see it.
The Aftermath
When I got back home, that was the first time I had to tell my parents what had happened. And I felt shy and embarrassed that I’d lost all that money that they gave to me. But they were quite supportive, believing that it was COVID that caused this to happen. And the more I think about it, the more it was COVID. I will admit that I overextended what I was doing. I will admit that perhaps involving my wife was a bad idea. But if COVID didn’t happen, most likely things would have progressed like I hoped they would have done. And if I look at the condos today that I had and how much they’re worth now, I would have been able to sell them. And that could have been my exit strategy. But we can’t look back and say “if only.”
This is my Thailand story. You can make of it what you will. You can judge me in any way you want. But before you do judge, the first thing I would like to say is I tried my best. The second thing I would like to say is I can’t help the family I was born into. And if you or anyone else in a similar position would have your parents like that ask for your money, you wouldn’t say no thank you. I bet you wouldn’t.
I’m in a better position today and I have been back to Thailand since then and it was a really unfortunate turn of events that caused what to happen to me to happen. I’ve learned to accept it. I’ve learned to deal with it the best way I can. But I have had to come to terms with the fact that the person I want to be the visionary, the empire builder, the leader, the owner is the person I can’t be. And as soon as I told myself that that was okay, not everybody can be like that, that was when I started to feel better. Although it took so much longer than I would have liked.
