Flat-hunting in Bangkok is interesting. In contrast to Berlin, Bangkok has what real estate dudes call a “renter’s market”: There’s an oversupply of condos, so people looking to rent one are in a very favorable position.
Two stories first!
First Story: Berlin Housing Market
I own a flat in Berlin which has a notoriously broken property market with a huge undersupply of housing (the political solution so this is to introduce rent controls – not sure how that makes new housing appear, but hey, Berlin has a great political track record, just look at our airport).
Anyway, when renting it out, I was like “let’s be idealistic and give everyone a chance and actually list it online, right?” – you see, this is rare, because usually apartments are handled similarly to drugs (which you also have in Berlin) – they are dealt with secretly. Most commonly, to-be-rented flats are referred among friends, and often the prior tenant might try to bring in friends as a new tenant.
Anyway, I put the listing online and 24 hours later, I had 1,000 applications. Wow! I took it offline because it dawned upon me that any higher number of applications might be impossible to sift through (“let’s be idealistic and read all applications, right?”).
I started going through the applications and gave up after 50 or so.
Anyway, what did I want to say? The Berlin property market is completely broken. There’s a huge undersupply of housing. Getting an apartment here is near-impossible – no apartments are listed online (except mine, for 24 hours), so you have to rely on “friends” or other connections to get one. It’s crazy.
Second Story: Renting a Flat in Bangkok
Contrast this with my process of renting my condo in Bangkok: You can literally point somewhere on Google Maps, look up condos in that area (all of them have vacancies), schedule a viewing in the next 1-3 days, and sign the contrast shortly later.
A few funny anecdotes from this process:
- At my favorite condo which I ended up choosing later, I asked the real estate agent “so umm is this condo popular? should I sign the contract right away?” – you see, I’m used to Berlin standards where nanoseconds matter, as you have to assess the flat in a few seconds and then grab a pen to sign before anyone else does – she replied “yes! it’s very popular! just last week one other person looked at it!“.
Okay. So the Bangkok definition of “popular” is “one person viewed it last week”. Quite a contrast to “1,000 applicants in 24 hours”. - Being used to German bureaucracy which is rather unflexible, I was like “so umm I’ll be moving in at the 1st of next month, right?” – you see, in Germany, you can usually only move in on the 1st of any month, maybe on the 15th if your landlord is extremely flexible – to which the agent replied “well.. when do you want to move in? any day is okay”. So I moved in on a random day, like the 14th or so. Wow.
I might write up that process in a separate post to not go off topic here.
Onwards to the Bangkok condo reviews! I thought I’d share those because 1) someone I recently met asked me to and 2) I think other people could benefit from this, too, to get a better impression of “what you get for your money” in Bangkok.
The Line Sukhumvit 101
- Location: Southeast, BTS Punnawithi
- 24k THB / month
- 35th floor
- ~40sqm
- Duplex unit (two stories!)
I must say I really liked the idea of a duplex unit (that’s the smart term of having a “two-story condo”. Not sure how it feels to walk up and down stairs all day long. Anyway. The living room was super spacious with two-story windows. Pool was on a lower floor and looked okay. The top floor gave me the impression that the property developers somehow ran out of ideas what to do: There’s just a running track, a climbing wall (?) and a small soccer court (?). Didn’t really give me the impression that people hang out there a lot.
There was a coworking space downstairs which was furnished more like a coffee shop, which was cool. Seemed a bit small though, it was quite packed while I was there.
The location is close to BTS Punnawithi which is in the southeast (but still central) area of Bangkok. It could be a good location if you’re considering working at True Digital Park which is close by. In all other cases, the location might be okay-ish, but not the greatest.
Still, all in all, this was a cool one and probably my #3 pick.
The Line Phahon Pradipat
- Location: Ari (central)
- ~25k THB / month
- ~40sqm
- ~20th floor
I wanted to see this one because it has crazy good reviews on Google Maps (4.7 stars when I checked) and because it was in an apparently-hip neighborhood (Ari).
The pool and gym are on a lower floor. The gym looked above average, it was quite spacious and there were free weights, nice. The big feature of this condo is that it has a separate building which mostly functions as a coworking space – nice! You can see me walk through there in one of the pictures below – note though that while the “condo coworking spaces” always seem to look nice, my experience has been that they are often not suitable for real work, at least if you’re as neurotic about ergonomic stuff as I am. Look at the chairs – they’re comfortable, yes, but not for working. How do you work in a slightly reclining chair like that without a desk? Anyway.
The roof felt like they either ran out of money or ideas as it only consisted of grass.
The two-room condo setup of this one seems to be fairly typical for the most recently-constructed condos in Bangkok. I would describe it as “yes, it has two rooms, which is great, but it makes you feel 10% claustrophic, which is not great”. It just felt a bit too small.
But, yeah.. still a cool condo. It also had a “secret back door” to the Seven-Eleven supermarket in front of it, that was super cool. You wave your keycard in front of it and end up in the supermarket. I’m sure you could impress your date with that (“wanna go through the back entrance?”).
Still, not my first choice. There just wasn’t anything which stood out here.
The Reserve Phahol Pradipat
- Location: Ari (central)
- ~25k THB / month
- ~40sqm
- ~20th floor
- Duplex unit (two stories!)
This one was cool! Another duplex unit. It seemed like the build quality was somehow way above average in this one. I’m not an architect or so, so this is mostly based on gut feeling (great).
The coworking space in the top floor looked awesome. It even looked mostly well thought-out as there were some reasonable chairs in front of reasonable tables. There’s an additional “coworking-hang-out-bar-like-area” one floor higher, check out the picture. Super cool.
The room was really cool, too – a duplex unit and, in contrast to The Line Sukhumvit 101, the upper floor is somewhat “part of the same room”, so you’re actually looking down into the living room from the bedroom. Unfortuantely, the view was mostly obstructed by an office building which is next to this condo. So you probably want a unit on the other side.
The owner was extremely kind and was willing to throw in a washing machine (not literally) if I signed. Not that that would have changed my decision, chuckle..
This would probably have been my #1 choice, but I really wanted a separate study to work from home. Also, hardly any condo has a desk and chair (?) which gives me the impression that working from home seems not to be a thing here. So this one is unfortunately only my top #2. But, again, the build quality and overall polish really stand out here.
Supalai Premier Asoke
- Location: Asoke (central)
- ~22k THB / month
- ~60sqm
- ~20th floor
This one was interesting for very unexpected reasons. The learning is this: If you settle for a slightly-older condo (which in Bangkok means ~10 years old, while in Berlin it means ~100 years old), you can get some pretty great value for money. This condo unit was way larger than all the others, because the building was older.
However, there are drawbacks: I learned on Reddit about the bathroom “smell”. In short, if your bathroom smells, it’s not good because something nasty is going on. This bathroom smelled.
Also, the facilities were.. weird? The top floor was just mostly empty, and the gym similarly looked like someone had randomly placed three treadmills in an otherwise-empty room. I think it could be similar in other older condo buildings.
But, theoretically, there are probably some real bargains to be found in this context, if you’re willing to search through listings of older condo buildings and are fine with probably-less-fancy facilities (gym, coworking , etc.).
Life Asoke Rama 9
- Location: Asoke (central)
- 23k THB / month
- 40sqm
- ~30th floor
People tell you to not judge a condo by its facilities. That’s because you look at them once, get into the pool twice or so, and then never use them again and only hang around in your flat. There’s some truth to that. But, regardless, the facilities of this one were mind-blowing:
- 2 separate coworking spaces
- 2 meeting rooms
- 1 “cinema”
- 3 pools (!)
- 2 gyms
- 2 Seven-Elevens
I think a lot of this boils down to the fact that this building is simply huge. It has 2,000 units or so. That’s crazy! Which, sometimes, makes me wonder where all those 2,000+ people are hanging out when I’m in the gym with.. 4 other people or so?
Now, as stupid as it may sound.. I chose this one not necessarily because of the facilities, but because it actually had a study which could be separated from the living room with a nifty glass door. Also, it already had a desk and even two chairs! Whoever lived in this before must have been serious about remote work.
The three pools on the topmost floors are awesome and ridiculous and.. I’ve only been in them twice or so. Still, I go to the gym(s) regularly and the Seven-Eleven which is part of the building is very convenient.
My #1 choice. Check out the pictures below!
Conclusion
So many great condos in Bangkok, and so little time. You really run into some sort of optimization problem as you don’t want to spend all your time doing flat viewings while being uncertain how long to extend your hotel room.
Ah, and one of the biggest point is being close to the BTS or MRT. Personally, I prefer the MRT as it’s quite a bit cheaper, but then again, it’s probably ridiculous to go shopping for luxury condos and then skimp out on public transport.
Also, there are some counter-intuitive things which I wouldn’t have thought about initially:
- Most units have beds which are 1.40m wide – I like a larger bed. You can replace your bed in many cases, but some units have something of a “coherent design concept” where the bed is in the same design of the entire unit, so.. getting rid of that bed might be not possible.
- Hardly any units have desks and desk chairs.
- The coworking spaces tend to not be super great – expect to work in a “normal” coworking space.
- There are dedicated delivery areas for food delivery drivers. This means they drop off your food on a specific table, attach a note to it and leave. So you just take the elevator down and pick up your food whenever you’re ready.
- There’s something like a “condo post office” which receives your parcels for you when you order stuff online. You get a push notification in an app that you’ve received a new parcel, and then simply pick it up (even on Sundays – mind-blowing for a German person).
- Getting internet is extremely trivial and cheap. I walked into an AIS store (on a Sunday, again!), told them about my condo building, selected a package, and two days later an AIS person on a motorcycle arrived (this is mind-blowing for a German person who is used to wait for 6+ weeks). They even set up your router for you with your chosen wifi credentials. Awesome. 600 THB / month or so for a symmetric (no this is mind-blowing for a German person) 500mbit/500mbit/s line.
Note thought that the peering to Europe is often not great, so choosing a faster package generally doesn’t make sense.
And that’s it.. for now! Hope my experiences are helpful for you 🙂 good luck with your Bangkok condo search!
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