How Much Is My Property Worth in Thailand?

Three different numbers, three different purposes

Most confusion about Thai property values comes from treating three unrelated figures as if they were estimates of the same thing. They are not, and none of them is derived from the others.

The market value is what a willing buyer will pay you now. It is the only one of the three that anyone owes you, and it is discovered rather than calculated — from what comparable units have actually changed hands for recently.

The appraised value is the official valuation applied to your title. It is produced through the government’s own appraisal process, under the Treasury Department, and the local Land Office applies it when it works out what is payable on a transfer. It is revised on a cycle rather than continuously, it is set by land and building characteristics rather than by how nicely your kitchen is finished, and it normally sits below what the property would fetch on the open market. It is not an opinion of value and should never be quoted to a buyer as one. If you want to know the appraised figure for your own title, the local Land Office is where to ask, and it is the only place that will give you a reliable answer.

The bank valuation is a lender’s number, commissioned by a bank considering a mortgage on the property. The valuer is instructed by the bank and is answering the bank’s question — what could be recovered if this loan went wrong — not yours. It is conservative by design. More on why that can still end up mattering to you below.

How comparables actually work

A comparable is a property so similar to yours that the price it sold for is evidence about yours. In a Thai condominium market that bar is higher than people expect, because the differences that matter are inside the building rather than between neighbourhoods.

Work outwards in order. Sales of the same unit type in your own building are the strongest evidence and, in a large project, usually sufficient on their own. Failing that, the same layout in a building of similar age and management standard on the same soi. Only then the wider area, and by that point you are estimating rather than evidencing. For a house or a villa, the equivalent order is the same compound or moo baan, then the same road, then the same area with a hard look at plot size and title type.

Aim to gather several genuine sold comparables rather than one, and prefer recent ones — a sale from the last few months carries far more weight than one from two years ago, and beyond about a year you should treat the figure as background rather than evidence. Then adjust each of them towards your unit, in both directions, and write the adjustments down rather than holding them in your head.

• Floor level and aspect — and specifically whether the view is protected by what can legally be built on the plot in front, which is worth checking rather than assuming.
• The registered size on the title deed, which is not always the size in the marketing material.
• Layout: two units of identical area can be very differently saleable if one has a usable second bedroom and the other does not.
• Condition and renovation, discounted heavily — buyers rarely pay back the full cost of a refurbishment, and almost never pay for taste.
• Furniture, which is worth something to a rental buyer and close to nothing to an owner-occupier.
• Freehold or leasehold, and for a lease, how many years are left to run and on what renewal terms.
• Whether the unit sits inside the building’s foreign ownership quota under the Condominium Act. The identical unit is worth more to an overseas buyer if it can be transferred to them freehold, and that alone can separate two otherwise matching sales.
• For land and houses, the title type — a chanote is a different proposition from a lesser title, and the difference shows up in both price and saleability.

Why asking prices are the weakest evidence available

The prices you can see on the portals are asking prices, and asking prices are what owners hope for, filtered through whichever agent was most willing to agree with them. They are the easiest data to gather and the least useful, which is an unfortunate combination.

Open listings make it worse. Because one property is commonly marketed by several agencies at once, the same unit appears repeatedly, often at different prices and with different photographs, so a count of listings in your building tells you very little about how many units are genuinely for sale. Stale listings compound it: an advertisement that has been running for a year at a price nobody paid is evidence about the owner, not the market. And in resort markets in particular, some listings are priced for an overseas buyer pool and others for a domestic one, which is why two apparently identical units can be advertised far apart.

The one thing an asking price does tell you is where your competition is pitched, which matters when a buyer is choosing between your unit and three others in the same lobby. Use it for that. Do not use it to decide what your property is worth.

Where real sold prices are found

Thailand has no open public database of sold prices, so this part takes legwork. It is also the part that produces a number you can hold your ground on.

Agents who have completed sales in your building are the most direct route, which is why the question to ask an agent is what they have closed rather than what they have listed. Several agents, asked separately, will triangulate: if three of them independently describe similar recent deals, you have something solid.

The juristic person or building manager sees every transfer of ownership in the project and generally knows how much has turned over lately, even where they will not discuss figures. In newer projects the developer’s own resale desk keeps track of what units have been reselling for, and has an interest in talking to owners.

The Land Office holds the price declared when a property transferred, and it is a real record. Treat it with care all the same: the declared consideration is used for assessing what is payable, and it is not invariably the whole commercial story, so a single Land Office figure should be one input among several rather than the answer. Never build an asking price on one transaction from any source.

What a bank valuation is for, and when it derails a sale

A bank valuation is not an independent opinion commissioned for your benefit. A lender orders it to size a loan against its security, the valuer works to the bank’s instructions and methodology, and the result is deliberately cautious. It answers a question about downside, not about what an enthusiastic buyer might pay on a good day.

That still matters to a seller, because it can end a deal you thought was done. Where your buyer is financing the purchase — most commonly a Thai buyer with a domestic mortgage — the lender lends against its own valuer’s figure rather than the price on your contract. If that figure comes in below what you agreed, the shortfall becomes cash the buyer has to find, and buyers who cannot find it renegotiate or walk. An asking price with nothing underneath it can survive marketing, survive negotiation, and then fail at the bank.

Two practical consequences. First, if you are pricing above what the recent sales in your building support, expect the bank to be the place it comes apart, and price with that in mind. Second, where your buyer is an overseas cash purchaser there is no bank valuation in the chain at all — the discipline that would have caught an inflated price is simply absent, which cuts both ways.

Getting agents to price it, and reading what they tell you

Invite two or three agents who have completed sales in your building to give you a figure. Do not tell them what you think it is worth, and do not tell them what the others said. You are collecting independent opinions, and one hint contaminates the set.

Ask each of them for the comparables behind their number, in writing: which units, which floors, roughly when, and what they think those sales tell them about yours. An agent who has genuinely worked your building can produce this in an email. An agent who cannot has given you a guess dressed up as a valuation, and the fact that it is a flattering guess is the problem rather than the consolation.

Be alert to the oldest pattern in the trade: the agent who quotes the highest figure to win the instruction, then starts working the price down once the property is on their books and the enquiries do not come. The defence is to ask, at the outset, what they would advise if there are no viewings — what would need to change, and at what point they would tell you. Someone who has thought about that answers it properly. Someone who has not says the market will decide.

Where the three opinions cluster, you have your range. Where one sits well outside the other two, ask that agent to justify it against the same sales the others used; occasionally they know something real about the building, and more often they do not. Then set an asking price with somewhere to move, and a floor you have decided on in advance and written down — because the moment to work out your walk-away number is before an offer arrives, not while one is sitting in front of you.