Requirements for Our New House

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.

So a list of requirements was started. Over the weeks the list changed but finally it was complete.

As you will see from the list, to meet all of the requirements appeared a bit daunting. Especially the requirement about the mortgage. However, Kwang and I do not give up easily and were pretty confident we would achieve all of what we wanted, even if it took months. We started the list in late 2022 on a scrap of paper. 

House Build in Thailand - What We Wanted

The list was as follows:

1. The land had to be in the region of 1 Rai in size.
2. The land had to have a water and electricity supply nearby.
3. The land had to be no more than 15km from a town and in a side soi.
4. A decent road to the town had to be within 1km of the land.
5. The house had to be built by a proper development company, not Somchai and his mates from the village.
6. The house had to be of modern design.
7. The cost of the house must be met with a 100% mortgage/loan from a Thai bank.
8. The repayments for the mortgage to be less than 25,000 baht per month at the current interest rate - no more expensive than renting a decent condo/house.
9. The house had to have 3 bedrooms, one of which would be my radio shack / office and the main bedroom would have en suite facilities.
10. The house must have 3 bathrooms (including the en suite).
11. The house must have a hot water system throughout.
12. The house must have a bath in the en suite bathroom.
13. The house must have a western style kitchen.

Whilst making the list we searched around Chiang Rai for some land to buy so that the location requirement was met. We must have looked at a dozen or more plots of land but the plots that suited our requirements were too expensive so we had to either forget our location requirement or go to another province.

So we gave up on Chiang Rai and started to look around Phayao. Would we find it? Yes. More on that in a later post.