posted from Feedback James B.
The Advantages of Buying from the Court/Bank
My wife and I bought the land we are going to build on from a bank.
"8 Rai of river side land (80 meters of river frontage) in a northern town, the land has an orchard and an existing Thai style house with conrete groundfloor and teak uper floor. The house will make perfect temporary residence while we build our own home".
The land had been seized by the Court after the owner, who had moved to Bangkok had mortgaged the land but then failed to meet payments for a debt.
The court auctioned the land but, we were not looking at the time of the auction and when we did eventually look we found the land had been bought by the bank to which the original debt had been owed.
We did manage to find out that the bank had bought the land for a little over 3 million baht, the outstanding loan was less than Bht500K.
We had to wait until the land was assessed by the bank's agents from Bangkok and placed on their public land sale website - this took several frustrating months and meant that to be sure not to miss the sale we had to check their website daily.
Eventually the land did come up for sale and after discussion with the bank we put in an offer of Bht4Million (taxes paid by vendor).
Two days later the land was taken off the website and we received our notification of 'Offer'.
Then after a couple more months of waiting my wife called to say the bank had phoned her to tell us to come to the bank in three days with the full payment. We were both working in Singapore at the time so we had to negotiate time to pay, and we did this by insisting on a witnessed survey with the land office before payment.
A delay of two weeks was agreed; the survey arranged and transfers from overseas signed up.
Clunk click, as easy as that, we did the survey up north, travelled down to Bangkok to pay, then back up north to transfer the land documents, and finally back to Bangkok to redraft our wills.
We never used any agents or lawyers, and we never hid from anyone that we are a mixed race couple. My wife's name is on the deeds, and my name is there too as her husband and cohabiter on the property (as suggested by the land registrar).
The bank's head office told us they had three other offers for the land, the nearest to ours being a mere Bht300K short.
When we were re-drafting our wills, our lawyer made the following comment.
"Having land from the court is very good - the court judgement affirms the rights of ownership and exchange and absolutely rules out anyone claiming the land is theirs"
That wasn't the only good news, between first seeing the land and completing the deal the Bht dropped in value against our overseas account currency by a whopping 17%.
And the next time I checked the bank's website for land in the same area, all the plots had risen by over 20% since our purchase....
Maybe the word had got out that a Farang had just bought into the local market..
Buying from the bank
Moderators: MGV12, BKKBILL, Sometimewoodworker
I'm adding a link to this other post regarding hidden charges when buying from the bank http://coolthaihouse.com/blog/?p=154
I wouldn't want anyone else to get caught with that one.
Itchy
I wouldn't want anyone else to get caught with that one.
Itchy
great story
thats a great story James, nice to hear a flang coming out ahead occassionaly
when are you goiung to start building
-
john squire
- Posts: 9
- Joined: Mon Jul 24, 2006 10:22 am
- Location: chiangmai
I think the problem is house and land prices have shot up considerably since the first post on this thread (early2005).
I also always suspect that if a foreigner shows interest in a piece of land then the seller/agent/lawyer will imediately asume a better price can be had.
Not only that, we learned the hardway that our leg work finding the right piece of land can and was used for someone else's advantage. Prior to buying our land we found a plot we liked and contacted a local lawyer to start negotiations (the price was rediculously cheap), when we called a few days later we were told the land was alreadt being sold to ANOther - Odd because we had been in long discussion with the owner and he had catogorically stated that there was no other people interested - he even cut the price if we agreed to buy sooner.
My suspicion is that the lawyer spotted the bargain and passed it on to someone else (or kept it for himself).
As it worked out the land we eventually bought was far better, more expensive but we got what we paid for.
Try going to a different bank - We bought KaskornThai and are very pleased with their professionalism.
In the end you'll get exactly what you wanted, it just takes time, luck and no small amount of cunning.
I also always suspect that if a foreigner shows interest in a piece of land then the seller/agent/lawyer will imediately asume a better price can be had.
Not only that, we learned the hardway that our leg work finding the right piece of land can and was used for someone else's advantage. Prior to buying our land we found a plot we liked and contacted a local lawyer to start negotiations (the price was rediculously cheap), when we called a few days later we were told the land was alreadt being sold to ANOther - Odd because we had been in long discussion with the owner and he had catogorically stated that there was no other people interested - he even cut the price if we agreed to buy sooner.
My suspicion is that the lawyer spotted the bargain and passed it on to someone else (or kept it for himself).
As it worked out the land we eventually bought was far better, more expensive but we got what we paid for.
Try going to a different bank - We bought KaskornThai and are very pleased with their professionalism.
In the end you'll get exactly what you wanted, it just takes time, luck and no small amount of cunning.