"I'd like to sell my condo"

The 60 year old French owner of the business immediately perked up at that and said, "Sit down sir, can we get your some water or a coffee?"  We got talking to assess the whole situation and he especially liked that I was the first owner of this condo.

This was actually the first stop on my bike ride.  Out of curiosity I happened to see a new business in the office that had replaced the 'Pattaya Sales and Rentals' nearby.  I didn't stop in because there's a possibility the Australian owner never left town and may have simply changed the name of the business.  The last thing we want is for him to know I'm in town, but he probably knows anyway.

Nonetheless I kept on riding and deliberately targeted businesses towards 2nd Road instead.  I talked for hours with this French agent and he struck me as the most professional of all the ones I had met previously.  Of course you end up throwing the dice with any of them, but the information he gave was the most detailed.  That was a good sign.  He also was forthcoming about the mountain of paperwork involved for both parties.  Thankfully I had all the necessary basics including the proof of sale, proof of ownership, and proof of tax which was all managed last August during that whole nightmare.  The Thai bank account was also a huge plus.

Basically, all that legwork done in August was going to make a potential condo sale that much easier now.

He also explained that I needed a 'debt free letter' from juristic to prove my account with them is all squared away.  The catch with that is the letter expires in a week after getting it.  There's no point in applying until a buyer shows up.  But it takes a week to approve that paper before taking it all to the land office.  Put all this together:  the chances of selling on this trip are slim.  And yet, as I predicted correctly, you have to be in Pattaya to make this sale happen.

Another thing is that the buyer needs a paper to prove that the money comes from overseas.  Well, sort of.  There is always a Thai way around these things.  If the sale does go ahead this trip which would be some sort of miracle, there is agency commission and ownership transfer fee that usually goes 50/50.  It's all built into the price which he helped increase on my behalf.

He must have read my mind and told me, "Don't go around town all day visiting these different agencies."  Of course he would say that but the explanation he gave was, "What they will do is keep adding to the price you give them and so when buyers see the same unit being sold for different prices at different agencies, this makes the condo lose value"

That was a fair point, and he was certainly the most professional in that he knew the right people, had the right lawyers, and was actually working here.  Or at least that was all from the talk he said.  There's no way to win here.  You have to take a risk and hope for the best.

I decided to visit just one more agency near Starbucks.  This time a Thai-American woman helped re-list the place because apparently the previous management had left in a huff and deleted all the files.  Oh boy.  Her line of talk was that I had unrealistic expectations for trying to sell the condo within a week or two.  She said it would take around a month minimum.  Even so, she was pitching the rental option.  Rents had certainly gone up from the last visit which was good, and all the evidence on the ground confirmed it.  She also mentioned that the buyers market is slowly picking up and moving in a good direction.  All this was good to know.

Like a stock, you want to sell when more and more people are buying and the price rises.  This doesn't mean sell at a low price, but you generally want to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.  My prediction is a buyers market will be happening in the next year or so.

I felt more confident after this run compared to the last trips.  There's no perfect way to manage this, but if I can't sell immediately then it sounds easier to rent out the place out now compared to before.  Satisfied, I figured it was time to hit the bars.