Find the right Bangkok real estate agent

Guides for Bangkok

• Selling

  Why Your Property Isn’t Selling in Thailand

  Six reasons a Thai listing stalls, and how to work out which one is yours before you drop the price again.

• Buying

  How to Buy a Condo in Thailand

  What to look at, what to check, what the deposit protects, and what actually happens at the Land Office.

• Selling

  Exclusive vs Open Listings in Thailand

  Open listings look safer and often are not. The difference is who owns the outcome of your sale.

Areas in Bangkok

Pick the neighbourhood you are buying or selling in and see who works it.

• Sukhumvit
• Thonglor
• Ekkamai
• Asoke
• Phrom Phong
• Sathorn
• Silom
• Ari
• Ratchada
• Rama 9
• Bang Na
• Riverside

Selling or buying in Bangkok: common questions

• Which parts of Bangkok see the most agent activity?+

  Most enquiries concentrate on the Sukhumvit rail corridor, where Asoke, Phrom Phong, Thonglor and Ekkamai sit within a few stations of each other. Sathorn and Silom hold the business-district stock, Ratchada and Rama 9 follow the MRT north-east, and Ari, Riverside and Bang Na each answer a different brief entirely. An agent’s real coverage is usually narrower than a city-wide profile suggests.

• Is the Bangkok market condominium-led?+

  Inside the rail network, yes. Nearly everything an overseas buyer or a relocating tenant looks at is a condominium unit, because the land inside the loop was built out long ago. Detached houses and townhouses still trade in Bang Na and the outer districts, and they are a different transaction with different paperwork, so the agent who is strong on one is not automatically strong on the other.

• How much does walking distance to a station really count?+

  Enough that many tenants filter on it before they look at anything else. Bangkok traffic makes a ten-minute walk and a ten-minute drive completely different propositions, and the gap widens in the rain. Listings routinely describe a building as near the BTS when the walk involves a footbridge and a main road, so measure it yourself rather than trusting the phrase.

• Who is renting in Bangkok, and does that change how I should sell?+

  It changes who your buyer is. A great deal of inner-city stock is held for letting to corporate postings, embassy staff, teachers and students, so investors are pricing your unit against the rent it can command rather than against what you paid. If yours is a tenanted investment unit, an agent with a working lettings desk will read that more accurately than a pure sales agent.

• What is worth asking a Bangkok agent before you sign anything?+

  Ask them to name the last three deals they closed and in which buildings. The city is large enough that a strong record in one corridor says very little about another, and towers a single station apart can behave differently. Ask too how they handle the transfer appointment at the Land Department, because that day is where an unprepared sale usually stalls.