How to Rent Out Your Condo in Bangkok

Prove you own it, and that you may let it

The first documents an agent asks for are not marketing material. They are a copy of the unit’s title deed and a copy of the house registration book — the tabien baan — issued for that address. Between them they establish who the registered owner is and that the unit exists as a registrable dwelling. A tenant, a relocation consultant and the building’s own management will each want to see that chain before anyone signs, and hunting for a mislaid registration book afterwards has delayed more move-ins than any argument over rent.

If you bought off-plan and have never occupied the unit, check the book has actually been issued and that your name, or your company’s, appears where it should. Where the unit is held through a company, add the certified company affidavit and the signing director’s identification: the person who signs the lease has to be the person the company documents say may sign it.

Owners living abroad usually appoint somebody to sign for them. A power of attorney drafted for this purpose, with a passport copy signed across every page, removes a fortnight of courier delay later on. Have a Thai lawyer draw it rather than adapting a template, because buildings and corporate tenants read these closely and reject them freely.

• A copy of the title deed for the unit, showing the registered owner
• The house registration book (tabien baan) issued for the address
• Your passport or Thai identity card, plus the company affidavit if the unit is company-held
• Up-to-date receipts for common-area charges from the juristic person
• A power of attorney if you will not be in Thailand to sign

Furnished or unfurnished decides who replies

Most central Bangkok lets are fully furnished, and that is not a stylistic preference. A large part of the tenant pool arrives from overseas on a fixed posting and will not ship a household for it, so the unit is expected to come with furniture, white goods, curtains, lighting and a working kitchen. Offering the same unit bare narrows your enquiries to long-term residents and Thai families who already own their furniture. That is a genuine market, but it is a different one, and reaching it takes longer.

The practical consequence of a furnished let is the inventory. You need a signed schedule of contents with photographs and the condition of each item recorded on the day of handover. Without one, the conversation about the deposit at the end of the tenancy has no anchor, and it is the landlord who tends to lose that conversation.

Furnishing also transfers a maintenance obligation. In a furnished let the tenant reasonably expects the landlord to keep working what the landlord supplied — the air conditioning above all, in this climate, along with the fridge and the washing machine. Decide before you list whether you will service the air conditioners on a fixed schedule or only on request, and write the answer into the lease. It is the most common source of mid-tenancy friction in Bangkok buildings, and it is entirely avoidable.

The lease a corporate tenant can actually use

Many of the strongest tenants in the central districts are on company packages, and the employer, not the occupant, pays. That changes what the paperwork has to do. A finance department needs a lease naming the company as payer or tenant, receipts it can book, and usually a bilingual document, since the Thai text is what governs if the agreement is ever tested in a Thai court. An English-only one-page agreement will cost you that tenant.

A lease beyond a certain length must be registered against the unit at the Land Office to be enforceable for its full term; a shorter one is valid as a private agreement between the parties. The threshold, the documents required and the registration fee are all set by the Land Department, not by your agent — confirm all three at the district Land Office covering your building, or through your lawyer, before you agree a term in negotiation. Registration also means the owner attends in person or sends an attorney, which is worth knowing before you commit to it from another country.

Corporate tenants commonly deduct withholding tax from the rent and remit it for you, handing over a certificate you will need at filing time. Rental income is assessable in Thailand, and how much is due, when it is filed and how a non-resident landlord is treated are all matters for the Revenue Department. Get that from a Thai accountant. An agent’s rule of thumb is not tax advice, and the arithmetic changes with your residence status.

Land and building tax on the unit is billed separately by the local district office. Whether a let unit is assessed differently from one you live in yourself, and what evidence the office wants to see, is decided there rather than by the building.

What the juristic person requires before handover

Every Bangkok condominium is run by a juristic person — the legal entity representing the co-owners — with a manager who controls key cards, lift access, car park stickers and the moving-in booking. None of that is released on a tenant’s say-so, and none of it is released to an owner in arrears on common-area charges. This is the step that most often stalls a lease that has already been signed.

Requirements vary building by building and almost none of them are published, which is precisely why an agent who works your building routinely is worth more than one with a larger portal presence. Expect to supply most of the following, and to be given a moving-in window rather than a choice of time.

The house rules bind your tenant too: pets, whether short-term subletting is permitted, the hours the service lift runs, and whether the unit may be used as a registered business address. Read them, and attach the clauses that matter to the lease. A tenant who breaks a rule nobody showed them is still your problem, because the juristic person deals with the owner, not the occupant.

• A copy of the signed lease, or an owner’s letter of consent naming the tenant
• Passport and visa pages for every adult who will live in the unit
• A refundable deposit for key cards, fobs and car park access
• A booked service-lift slot for the move-in
• Evidence that common-area charges on the unit are paid up

Reporting a foreign tenant, and the things owners forget

If your tenant is not Thai, the obligation to notify the Immigration Bureau that a foreign national is staying at your address sits with the owner or possessor of the property — not with the tenant. The period you have to file in, the form and whether a fresh notification is needed each time the tenant re-enters the country are set by Immigration, and local offices differ in how they apply the detail. Confirm the requirements with the office covering your district, and agree in the lease who physically files it. Delegating the task to a managing agent is normal; delegating the liability is not.

Settle the utilities before handover. Decide whether the electricity and water meters stay in your name with the tenant reimbursing, or move across, and check whether your building resells water through the juristic person rather than billing the utility directly. Internet is usually the tenant’s own account, but the building may permit only certain providers into the risers.

Insurance is the other routine gap. The building’s policy covers the structure and common areas; it does not cover your fit-out, your appliances or your liability to a tenant. A landlord’s contents policy is inexpensive relative to the fit-out it protects, and an insurer will want to know the unit is let rather than owner-occupied.

Setting the rent and choosing who lets it

No portal tells you what your unit lets for. Asking prices are what owners hope to achieve; the number you need is what comparable units in your building, and in the two or three nearest buildings, have recently been signed at. Only an agent with completed lets holds that, so ask for it directly — which units, which floors, which months, furnished or not — and treat vagueness as an answer in itself.

Within a single tower, the things that move the figure are floor, aspect, whether the unit faces a main road or the interior of the block, walking distance to the BTS or MRT entrance, the state of the last refurbishment, and whether the layout suits a couple or a family. Two units of identical size in one building can sit in visibly different segments of the market, which is why a per-square-metre average across the district tells you very little about yours.

The letting commission, when it is payable and what happens on a renewal are matters of agreement between you and the agency. Get all three in writing before instructing, along with who conducts the check-out inspection and who holds and returns the deposit. Ask how many lets the agent completed in your building over the past year, what those tenants were, and how long units sat empty between tenancies.

A good letting agent earns their keep in the second year rather than the first, when a tenant who might have moved renews instead because the air conditioning was fixed promptly and the renewal was raised early. If you are choosing between agents, ask what proportion of their tenancies renew and how they go about it — the answer tells you more about how your unit will be managed than any headline rent will.