I just closed on a piece of land here in Thailand, so I thought I’d jot down a few notes.
My friends in the real estate and mortgage biz in the US will get a kick out of this, so enjoy part 2 of 3 (and click here to read part 1).
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Really? ANYTHING?
I settled on “Monkey Butt Holdings.” (T-shirts and swag coming soon.)
There are no rules or standard to that, but they just wanted some quick cash up front. They even asked for a bigger down payment, to which my buddy’s Thai wife got heated and threatened to call the whole deal off. So, the seller’s wife acquiesced, and we settled on 20% down.
My friends in the real estate and mortgage biz in the US will get a kick out of this, so enjoy part 2 of 3 (and click here to read part 1).
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- I think the best part of this whole entire experience is that the Thai government let me name my corporation anything I wanted.
Really? ANYTHING?
I settled on “Monkey Butt Holdings.” (T-shirts and swag coming soon.)
- I kept waiting for someone to stop me, pulling me aside and saying, “No, no, you can’t do that with a business here,” or the adult in the room to chastise me, but alas, Monkey Butt soon became official.
- Corporation formed (without having to look under bridges for homeless board members), the next step was to make an offer. The negotiation took place almost strictly between the two Thai wives, with all of us foreign dudes on the sidelines scratching our heads.
- I offered to put a 20% deposit down…but they wanted more!
- Corporation formed (without having to look under bridges for homeless board members), the next step was to make an offer. The negotiation took place almost strictly between the two Thai wives, with all of us foreign dudes on the sidelines scratching our heads.
- I offered to put a 20% deposit down…but they wanted more!
There are no rules or standard to that, but they just wanted some quick cash up front. They even asked for a bigger down payment, to which my buddy’s Thai wife got heated and threatened to call the whole deal off. So, the seller’s wife acquiesced, and we settled on 20% down.
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- There are no title or escrow companies here! The deal was registered through a local authority who is sort of like a village chieftain. But it’s not a primitive setup at all, as real estate attorneys and official documents are involved.
- There’s no earnest money deposit with your original offer, you just hand over the whole deposit immediately once you agree on a price and then draw up a contract.
That’s right, the sellers get to hold onto the deposit! If you back out of the deal for any reason, you better believe you lose that money.
- Financing isn’t available for foreigners through Thai banks. It may be possible, but you’d probably have to have a ton of money in a Thai bank, a business and plenty of
The rates would be sky high and the payment window very small by our standards. Some foreigners may get So, I had to pay cash.
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- Remember that when many foreigners buy property in Thailand, they want to pay cash. As I mentioned, Thailand (and especially the Pattaya area where I live) is a huge bank/laundry mat for foreigners who want a safe place to park/clean their money, often times they scoop up condos, buildings, or businesses as quickly as possible.
Property here is particularly popular with Chinese buyers and often Russian, Indian, etc.
- That’s especially true of new condos. I remember seeing a new condo development that was just in the presale stage. Driving by one morning, there were about 50 people in line, most of them holding duffel bags or designer bags. They were filled with cash!
This group of people in line were mostly Chinese nationals who were holding bags of cash right there in the street to put down a deposit on a condo - or a few of them – sight unseen! They didn’t even need to go look at the units!
- Where else in the world can you hold a bag of cash on the street and not worried about getting jacked?!
- I did open a Thai bank account just to hold the money I saved in the three months before we closed on the deal. To open the account, they wanted my lease agreement and I had to go down to the immigration office to get an official form stamped as well as very awkward headshot photos that have me looking like I’m in a hostage video.
- After my Thai company was formed and I had saved the needed funds, we could close on the property early. That meant taking out the money in cash and bringing it to the land office to hand to the sellers.
- I was planning on going to the bank on my mountain bike, fill up my backpack with the cash, and pedal home as fast as possible. But, my good friend, Big John, here offered to pick me up in his truck and run security.
- John is 6’7” tall and served in the military all over the world in some really nasty shit, so he’s about the best person to have watching your back!
- At the bank, the teller handed me eight stacks with one hundred thousand Baht each without blinking, and John drove me on back home. We were scheduled at the land office early the next morning, so I was committed not to do something stupid in the next twelve hours that might jeopardize my life savings!
I could imagine just stepping out for “one beer” and stumbling back home around 5am sans money but with a brand new tattoo and wedding ring to show for it.
- I didn’t want to be the dude who fumbles the ball heading into the end zone, so I forced myself to stay home.
- Once John dropped me off and I locked my door, I surveyed my apartment. Where should I hide the money?
I needed a secure spot that wasn’t obvious like under my pillow, wouldn’t get thrown out, damaged in a plumbing leak, and could stand up to a fire in case the entire building lit into flames.
- I got it! I neatly placed the stacks of Thai Baht notes in a Tupperware container and placed it in my freezer. COLD hard cash, baby!
- Believe it or not, it wasn’t my first rodeo storing copious stacks of cash in a freezer.
Back in the day when I was a humble house painter in Connecticut, scraping and clawing my way through 80 hours per week of manual labor, I could put away some good cash by the end of the season.
I was completely unaware about how the whole “adulting thing” worked. I thought that if you put cash in the bank, the IRS would automatically know about it, and you’d be screwed come tax time.
So, I took $75,000 in assorted bills and wrapped them in foil and put them in my mom’s freezer for safekeeping.
She even used to joke that one night, she’d accidentally take one of the foil packets out and defrost it for dinner.
- Fast forward about six months and I was ready to head west to Sacramento, California. I knew that it was not wise to be walking around with that much cash (nor could I fly with it), so one day after work, I took the foil packets out of the freezer and drive them down to the local bank branch.
- I walked up to the teller, still wearing my dirty and splattered painting clothes, looking like I’d just crawled out of a dumpster, and told her I wanted to make a deposit.
I then slid her five foil packs containing $75,000 in frosted cash!
- The poor lady had no idea what to make of it. She called her manager over, who looked me up and down like I was actually robbing the bank, before finally just doing the transaction.
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- Fast forward twenty-two years (my God!) and at least I put the cash in nice Tupperware this time, to make it presentable and avoid freezer burn.
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