Buy or Rent in Udon - Best Option ?

[old-timer]

Personally speaking, I would always buy quite simply because I see paying rent as a waste of money. Also, let's say you really like your rented dwelling, and after a couple of years you could do with a new kitchen or bathroom or re-dec or garden, etc, would you get it done considering the place isn't yours - hardly likely. Rent is cheap in Udon, but rent is rent, money down the drain.
Let's look at the other side of things - buying - yes it's true that you may loose if you sell at the wrong time or your WFB turns out to be an undesirable, but if all goes well you will not have the paying rent noose around your neck.

OT..............

[thrilled]

I believe renting is the way to go.When ya buy you still pay.Even when ya sell the place ya don't get back 100%.
And thailand isn't as stable as it once was.If ya can afford to lose the money maybe 1 or 2 million baht then buy the place.If your talking about 10 million baht or more you should really think it over before you take the plunge so to speak.

[old-timer]

I believe renting is the way to go.When ya buy you still pay.Even when ya sell the place ya don't get back 100%.

What if you buy and have no intentions of ever selling. Buying means you pay once and it's your wife's/birds. No more rent ever.

OT....never pays rent.....

[arjay]

OT....never pays rent.....

Not even for "Well fit Birds"?!!

[easterneye]

I cant quite see the point of this post OT as your not actually asking a question as the post suggests , merely making a statement . However for what its worth I,ll chuck my tenpenneth in ,, agree with your sentiments about money down the drain on rent and better to buy ( generally ) speaking , but ofcourse it depends on the relationship ,, it must be all too easy to fall in love quickly get all starry eyed and buy a nice place for about 40K of English money early in a relationship and wave goodbye to it within a year or so ,,,,so in that scenario a rent job would probably be the safest bet ,, if like us when we buy we will have been married 7 years ,again no gauruntee of the outcome I will be the first to admit , but hopefully a better scenario under which to buy ,, which indeed we will do.
Good luck to anyone buying I am sure we all need a bit of it

[douglas]

Hi,
A new house which cost me 980,000B in 2005,(nearly 14,000GBP) similar house now selling for 1,900,000B.( nearly 40,000GBP).
That should answer your question. Saying that you never get your money back is also incorrect. See above. Also at the time I bought two houses, Glad I did. Good income from the rent off the second one.
On second thoughts please rent, don't want my income cut. The only expense I have is paying for upkeep of the roads, street lighting and security. 100B a month, which you would have to pay even when renting on the same estate.
You also don't have to wave goodbye to it if you split up. Land in wifes name, house in my name, and I have a 30year lease on the land from wife. Only way I would agreed to buy the land in her name. Belt and braces.

[Chriss]

I rented while we were engaged for two years and for the first year of marriage, shouldn't have been but I guess I was skeptical after hearing some falang stories, all was going in the right direction so I decided to invest in building a house. 9 years and 3 houses later all's still well in the household and now as far as I'm concerned no more building this is my last house and it's an investment that will be inherited by her indoors when I pop off and the family when she pop's off, just the same as back home.

[jackspratt]

Hi,
A new house which cost me 980,000B in 2005,(nearly 14,000GBP) similar house now selling for 1,900,000B.( nearly 40,000GBP).
That should answer your question.

I don't think it answers the question.

For your 2005 purchase you use an exchange rate of 70, and for a current purchase your rate is 47.5.

To me this would demonstrate a very good reason NOT to buy now - on the assumption that the exchange rate is unlikely to go down any further, but is a very good chance of improving in the short/medium term. This would more than likely cover any increase in the capital value of a house.

[douglas]

Hi,
Jack. This is why I put the value of the house in B. and the GBP rate in brackets. There is nothing wrong in quoting the rate in GBP at the time you bought, or sold, and both the quotes were correct at the time of going to press. And the cost of the house has almost doubled in value Bhat wise. disregarding the exchange rate.
Don't forget it also affects the renter, if his money comes from the U.K. ie. a rent of 10,000B a month when I arrived in Udon cost me nearly 145 GBP now same rent would cost me over 200GBP. This is without a yearly rise in rents, you should be so lucky.
Also, if the exchange rate for the bhat rose by 50% ie. To about 70B to 1GBP it will not cover the present capital value increase of the house, as the house value, in Bhat, has rose by almost 100% in five years. 0.98MB when bought, 1.9MB if I sold it now. So my money would have doubled Bhat wise.
I don't know what the Bhat will be doing in years to come, leave that to the so called experts. Just letting the poster know my experiences of buying a house and quoting the facts,in my case. Which the poster wanted to know. Not speculation. Also if buying a house and land you have to pay to get the deeds transferred to your names. I paid a deposit on my house/land and as my money was in Britain and it took me four weeks notice to withdraw it. On paying the estate manager she said it will cost 35,000B to transfer the deeds over to our names. Showed the letter I got from her where it stated the price included transfers etc. She told me she did not realize the price for this was 35,000B., and I thought hard titty. She learned from her mistake. I knew about this because I inquired before I bought, and had a good wing man that knew the ropes.

[WBU ALUM]

As Bob Helm articulately pointed out in another thread regarding "advice", sinking a lot of money into land and home ownership only takes money away from living here long term with rents so inexpensive.

Personally, I prefer to rent and allow funds to grow for further years than to sink them all into land and a house now. Our house has all the room that we need, and we'll need even less once the kids are on their way. After my wife retires in about 13 years, at that time we will build whatever she wishes on the farm.

On the other hand, I can understand someone with unlimited financial resources going ahead and biting the bullet and putting money into land and a new house. If you have it to do, more power to you.

[douglas]

Hi.
WBU. Back home a new 2 up 2 down terrace house costs about 200,000 GBP and that is for first time buyers only and subsidised by the government. A three bed detached house is in the region of 400,000GBP plus.That is what I call expensive. I priced a one bedroom flat last year 225,000GBPs. Where I live you will be very lucky to buy a single garage for the price I paid for my property. If you rent you are not allowing funds to grow, but you are making a householder rich by paying rent. As I have found out with my second house. If you could not have afforded the 14,000GBP as I did, now worth 40,000GBP at todays house prices. you should of reconsidered about living here. The second house is paying for itself through rental. Plus giving me a good monthly allowance which I am saving. If today's trends are anything to go by, a big if. in about 13 years time you will be paying about 3 to 4 hundred % more for your rental property. I have never found house prices to fall in all my travels.
I live over here on my pensions. O.A.P. just under 200GBP and my other pension of 110GBP. This enables me to get home every two years and to live comfortably. I do not have unlimited financial resources and have to watch my money carefully. But I thank god that I had the common sense, and bought my house. Unleashed the noose around my neck of paying rent to someone and making them rich. People say rental is cheap, SO IS BUYING. But up to everyone to do there own thing UTY.

[WBU ALUM]

Hi.
WBU. Back home a new 2 up 2 down terrace house costs about 200,000 GBP and that is for first time buyers only and subsidised by the government. A three bed detached house is in the region of 400,000GBP plus.That is what I call expensive. I priced a one bedroom flat last year 225,000GBPs. Where I live you will be very lucky to buy a single garage for the price I paid for my property. If you rent you are not allowing funds to grow, but you are making a householder rich by paying rent. As I have found out with my second house. If you could not have afforded the 14,000GBP as I did, now worth 40,000GBP at todays house prices. you should of reconsidered about living here. The second house is paying for itself through rental. Plus giving me a good monthly allowance which I am saving. If today's trends are anything to go by, a big if. in about 13 years time you will be paying about 3 to 4 hundred % more for your rental property. I have never found house prices to fall in all my travels.
I live over here on my pensions. O.A.P. just under 200GBP and my other pension of 110GBP. This enables me to get home every two years and to live comfortably. I do not have unlimited financial resources and have to watch my money carefully. But I thank god that I had the common sense, and bought my house. Unleashed the noose around my neck of paying rent to someone and making them rich. People say rental is cheap, SO IS BUYING. But up to everyone to do there own thing UTY.

You won't get an argument from me, douglas.

I agree regarding the purchase of a home here in Thailand. It's cheap compared to where I am from, too. It's just what each individual prefers, and I happen to prefer renting for now.

[Pakawala]

You guys have left out one other option... marry a gal that already has her own house, like I did. I had to invest US$4500 to upgrade to a western standard and am very happy with the result. We have 2700 sq.ft. (about 26 sq.mt.) of livable floor space, 3 bdrm, 2 1/2 bath and located inside the ring-road. Well worth my $4500 investment.

Before we met I was a sworn 'renter' because I feel that,
1. Things change, what looks like a great neighborhood can change over time. If you rent, you can move.
2. Douglas says the value of his house has more than doubled. That's fine if you're in the market to sell and you have a buyer. If you're planning to stay there, what's the advantage?
3. I was told when I first arrived that unless you plan to live in a house for over 10-12 years, you'll never get your money out of it. Don't know how true that is but at the time, there were plenty of empty house sitting around and very few buyers. That was 3 years ago, don't know what the market is like now but, at the rate of renting, I could rent for well over 15 years before I reached the price of buying.
4. Lastly, in those days I was single so buying really wasn't an option.

[old-timer]

We have 2700 sq.ft. (about 26 sq.mt.)

OT's already spoken once this week about another members calculations, and now I find that once again I have to educate another member. Pakawala - please don't talk bolloxs, re-calculate your sq.mt.
Did anyone on this forum get an education ?

OT........

[Pakawala]

Please excuse my 'bolloxs' OT, 2700 sq. ft. equals 250.8 sq. mtrs. Sorry I dropped off a zero and offended your sensibilities.

[fatbas***d]

Personally I would rather purchase my own home, always have, even when the economics don't stack up, but here in Udon rental properties are so cheap, and property is difficult to dispose of if circumstances change, I rent, mainly because I can't afford to pull anything out of the trust that provides my income in Australia.

The house I live in is 2 story & 4 bedrooms in a nice estate. rent is 8000 PCM on a house that cost when new 2.5 Million, replacement cost 3.5 Million but actually has a current realisable worth less than 2 mill.

Gives a return to the landlord of less than 4%, in fact quite a bit less because the LL pays for maintenance, which this year was 16,000 PA which gives her a nett return of 3.2% PA on her purchase price..
Personally I don't know why she bothers, (mind you I'm happy that she does), because capital gain has been negative over the 10 yrs she has owned the place.
The downside is that its difficult to make improvements, upside is I can give a months notice and move somewhere else if needed.

[fallenlocks]

OT....never pays rent.....

Not even for "Well fit Birds"?!!

and what hapens to the house , land , car and motorbike ,
you bought , and your wife owns ,
if/when , she finds out about the WFB .???