Renting a house in Chiang Mai is definitely
easier than renting a house outside of a major city like Chiang Mai, such as in
Lampang or Chiang Dao where we have worked previously. At least in Chiang Mai there are a fair few
real estate agents who have houses advertised on websites which you can look
through and they can organise for you to look at. That said, it is still not an easy process as
we have experienced in the last couple of weeks.
Firstly, even though there are hundreds of houses
to search through in websites such as http://www.ddproperty.com/
we found that most of the houses we were interested in, when we inquired with the
real estate agent, they were no longer available. So I would have a short-list of 10 houses
which were listed on the website, but when I called the real estate agent only
1 or 2 at most would still be available.
A lot of time was wasted considering houses which weren’t available in
the first place. I think they leave houses on the website to entice people to
make contact with the real estate agent.
Secondly, although many landlords in Chiang Mai
are using the services of real estate agents, a lot of houses still are
advertised privately, by a “for rent” sign outside the house. If you just relied on websites and real
estate agents you would miss out on a lot of houses for rent. Knowing that I spent a few days just driving
through neighbourhoods street by street looking out for “for rent” signs.
Red "For Rent" sign in front of a house (not our one but one of the many we went past)
Thirdly, we have a big family of 4 kids which
is amazes most Thai and the majority of houses are built with only 3 bedrooms
and small living areas which suits most people.
But we were looking for at least 4 bedrooms and a large living area, close
to the kid’s school, close to a shopping centre, without a spirit house if possible,
able to have a dog and which didn’t have too much furniture (majority of houses
for rent in Chiang Mai are partially or fully furnished).
In the end, we had looked at over 20 houses
with real estate agents and on our own for several weeks and had found a few
places which we could live in but nothing which we felt was just right. In the end, we gave ourselves just one more
day to find a house and if nothing turned up we were going to take a house
which was o.k, but was fully furnished and a smaller living area than we
wanted. On the last day, I was at
immigration and met another missionary and he told me about two neighbourhoods
they looked at when they were searching for houses.
After I had finished at immigration I went to
these two neighbours and drove up and down every street looking for “for rent”
signs. Finally I found a sign and rang
the owner and organised a time later that afternoon to see the house. Once I went into the house, I realised that
this could be “the house” and I quickly rang my wife and organise to pick her
up and get her to see it while the landlord waited.
The house fit with almost everything we were
looking for and the landlord was more engaged and helpful than any other
landlord we’ve dealt with. They didn’t
advertise their house on real estate websites because they wanted to be very
selective about who rented their house and they had rejected a lot of previous
people who had wanted to rent their house.
They immediately dropped the rent by 2,000 baht per month and when we
told them that we liked the house but as Christians we wanted to pray about it
overnight and get back to them the next day, they dropped the rent by another
500 baht per month because we were involved in helping religion.
We are really thankful to God for the provision
of this new house.
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