We were living in Chiang Rai in 2022 when we made the decision to buy some land and build a house. It was not a hard decision to make for Kwang or me. But after hearing from expats about their experiences when doing the same, I wanted to avoid some of the pitfalls they mentioned.
As is well known, foreigners cannot directly own land in Thailand. There were rumblings that very rich foreigners (not me) may be able to at some stage but I heard no more about it. So the purchase of land for our house had to be made by my wife. The search for a suitable plot took us to Phayao. My wife already had some land in Phayao which she had inherited. However, it was not even half a rai in size and was right next to a road that was being upgraded to a highway. Not at all suitable. So the search was on again.
Now we had the land it was time to choose the design of the house and the developer. It was now March, 2023. I let my wife research and choose the developer and design. All I was interested in was that it met our requirements.
So we had a large plot of land that required preparation for the construction of a house. Even though we had not actually signed a contract to build a house, we got on with making the land ready. We did this at the same time as trying to find a mortgage.