Buying a condo

[Wally Dorian Raffles]

I posted something simular to this over in the real estate section, but it seems the mods have to check any threads before they are allowed ......it also seems the mods are alseep over there, as it hasn't apeared yet. big night marmers?

Anyway, this is my question. If i were to buy a condo in thailand, for say, 4.5 million baht. Do I only need 20% deposit, and will most banks be fine with that? Also, how much would the monthly payments be on a condo which i pay 4.5 million for?

Thanks in advance

[Marmite the Dog]

big night marmers?

How did you know?

Actually, I have the property section on ignore, but I'll take a peek in there now.

[Wally Dorian Raffles]

^doesn't really matter now. prolly get more responses here anyway, ....but i did try to do the right thing

Where did you go lastnight??

[Wally Dorian Raffles]

I just tried to reply to your post on the other thread, ...and it didn't go through. are posts moderated there too???

[mrsquirrel]

I just tried to reply to your post on the other thread, ...and it didn't go through. are posts moderated there too???

He just doesn't like you.

[Marmite the Dog]

are posts moderated there too?

Only Australians' posts.

[Torbek]

I posted something simular to this over in the real estate section, but it seems the mods have to check any threads before they are allowed ......it also seems the mods are alseep over there, as it hasn't apeared yet. big night marmers?

Anyway, this is my question. If i were to buy a condo in thailand, for say, 4.5 million baht. Do I only need 20% deposit, and will most banks be fine with that? Also, how much would the monthly payments be on a condo which i pay 4.5 million for?

Thanks in advance

Repayments depend on the term of the loan, of course, but let's say you put down 20% and borrowed 3.6 m you would be roughly looking at 30,000 pm.

Do banks lend to foreigners yet? I know one of the big banks did (pretty sure Bangkok Bank) but you had to borrow via their Singpaore branch and fees were bit rich. SGD 5,000 when I was looking at it.

[William]

Wally,

This sounds like a property developer deal. Often I heard of property developers in Thailand tell foreigners they could pay 10-20% and monthly payments for 2-3 years. Thereafter the foreigner needs to make a lump-sum payment to the developer - either in cash or through a refinance.

Although it was the case in circa. 2000-2002 that foreigners could put 50% down-payments sourced offshore and borrow 50% from a bank to purchase a condo in Thailand if they had a work permit and were paying tax that could be verified, trhe Bank of Thailand has since changed these rules and now 100% of the purchase price needs to be imported from offshore in order for a foreigner to be registered as the legal owner of the condo property. I should say, however, that this may have changed since I left in Nov 07.

I fear that the deal you mention is the property developer telling you the first part of the structure I mentioned above, without telling you the second part. Previous agreements I looked at using this structure effectively said that the foreigner would forfeit the property if they were unable to find the funding at the required time. If that is the case, you could well find that you end up having to pay a large sum in a short space of time or losing the property.

Another factor you need to check is that many condo projects in Thailand are structured in the same way as strata property are here in Aus. Namely you need to pay an annual or periodic payment to the condo management company. I have seen cases where the initial condo property purchase price was not that expensive (relative to what you would pay here in Sydney ), but where the annual fee to the management company was extremely high as a percentage comparable against purchase price - so I would certainly suggest that this be checked.

But the simple fact is that if you need to borrow money to buy property in Thailand, then you probably should not be doing it - even though it is tempting