How to Find an Apartment in Thailand for First Timers
The assumption is that you haven’t been to Thailand before, or you’ve been once and you don’t really know what you’re doing over there.
A lot of these tips they’re actually not just for Thailand; that makes sense if you were looking for an apartment anywhere. But these tips will give you something to think about. Again, the assumption is that you haven’t been there, and when you get there, you’re going to use an agent.
Questions to Ask Your Agent (And Yourself)
So, you’ve gone to Thailand. You’re staying in a hotel. You’ve decided, “Right, I want to find an apartment,” and you’re going to go to an agent. So what do you need to ask the agent? Explain to the agent. What do you need to do?
Let me go through these points and these are good points, and these will give you something to think about.
1. Heart of the City or Quiet Neighborhood?
Number one decide if you want to be in the heart of the city or in a quiet neighborhood. Obviously that refers to Bangkok or any major town Chiang Mai, Khon Kaen cities, basically. So what you’ll need to do is decide: do you want to be really in the heart of things, or do you want to live on the outskirts where it’s a little bit cheaper? That’s what you’d ask the agent.
2. Expat Community or Live Like the Thais?
Number two do you want to be in a sort of expat community, or do you want to live like the Thais do, alongside the Thais? Obviously, living alongside Thais in a Thai neighborhood it will be cheaper. But then your conversations are going to be limited if you don’t speak Thai, and there won’t be so many Western style shops around that area.
3. Budget: Very Cheap or Luxury?
Number three do you want to live very, very cheaply? Are you on a very limited budget? Or do you want to live luxury a quite high standard?
The thing is, especially in Bangkok, when you rent apartments, you can get a small kind of room for as little as 7,000 or 8,000 baht if you go out of town a little bit. You can pay 100,000 baht plus for some of the apartments that line the streets along Sukhumvit. That’s something you need to think about.
4. Furnished or Unfurnished?
Number four do you want the apartment to be furnished, or have you got your own furniture? One thing I will say on this a lot of the time, it’s just not worth bringing your own furniture, because it is cheap to buy this stuff in Thailand. When you calculate the cost of shipping it over and the hassle factor of getting it through customs, a lot of the time it’s just easier to take your personal effects and buy your white goods, sofas, things like that just buy them when you get there.
5. List Your Must Haves
Number five list the main things you need. If you’re going to rent an apartment:
- Is it important for you to have a pool?
- A gym?
- What’s the local entertainment?
- Is there a school nearby (if you’ve got a family)?
- BTS station whereabouts is that?
- Are there any 7 Elevens close by? (7 Eleven is obviously convenient you can pick up all your bits and pieces from there very important.)
6. Questions for the Agent
Number six while you’re dealing with the agents, some questions you need to ask them. You need to say:
- Which areas would they suggest would be a good area for you to live in?
- What’s the traffic like? (Because obviously you won’t know.)
- What is local shopping like? What options do you have? Are there big supermarkets, or is it just small Thai mom and pop shops?
- If you’re a family man wife and children what are the local schools? How far away are they? Are they international? Are they local? Are there traffic jams during the school run times?
In Bangkok, obviously being a major city like any major city, there are always traffic jams. But are they particularly worse going to the school that your child will go to?
7. Shuttle Service to BTS
Number seven a lot of the condos will have a free shuttle service from the apartment building to the BTS station. Typically, what they’ll do is every 30 minutes the bus will be there. You can jump on board, it will drop you at the stairs to the overhead train station. And when you come back, if you wait there, you won’t have longer than half an hour to wait. That’s quite a convenient service.
8. Electricity Costs
Number eight I did mention this before, but again a lot of people were surprised at this. You need to ask about the electricity costs. The government rate is about 4 or 4.5 baht per unit. Some landlords are charging 8 or 9 baht over double.
So make sure, before you commit to any sort of contract, you know what the rate is that they’re actually charging. Get that checked out in the contract as well.
9. Security Deposit
Number nine you need to find out what the security deposit is. Most of them, from my experience, want two or three months’ rent up front plus a month’s security deposit. You might be able to negotiate that down now that business is tough for them. That’s something you’ll have to take up with your agent.
10. Document the Condition Before Moving In
Number ten if you decide to take a property if you see an apartment, you think, “Yep, it’s nice. I’ll sign up” what you want to do before you move in, maybe with the agent, is just go around and take your own photographs of any scratches, damage on the walls, tiles lifting anything like that.
It’s notoriously hard to get your deposit back in Thailand. I don’t want to say anything more than that at the moment. So if you’ve got these photographs and you’re waiting for your deposit and your landlord says, “Well, that mark wasn’t there when you moved in,” you’ve got the proof that it was there, and hopefully that would make it a lot easier to get your deposit back.
11. Pets
Number eleven if you’ve got a pet a cat, dog, whatever it is you need to ask, “Can you keep pets in that particular apartment?”
