As our current lease with The Spa Resort ends on next Friday Aug 23, we are facing the possibility of being homeless!
The Crazy Contract of Premburi
We have decided to rent the Premburi townhouse over a month ago and have been waiting to move in ever since. It looked like we could move in on Aug 23, but we haven’t signed a contract. The person in charge of renting said she was working on it. We pretty much stopped looking as well. We knew that it was a bit overpriced, but for the convenience of living on campus, we were okay with it for this first year. Finally, this last Tuesday (first day of school), we got a copy of the contract. Gary read it quickly and told me that the contract was crazy: it was very punitive and completely biased towards the owner. I took a look at it with Gary on Wednesday. It was crazy! For example:
- If the house were to be burned down by a fire due to our negligence (how will one prove that?), it would be our responsibility to rebuild the whole house.
- If anything stops working while we rent the house, it is our responsibility to fix them. For each day that the repair is not being done, we will be charge a fine of 10,000฿. In Thailand, good luck getting anyone to come out to fix things immediately even if you call for the repair immediately. If somehow they do, you will be charged accordingly.
- If the house becomes unlivable due to a force majeure, we can leave but will need to give a 30 day notice. Seriously? We would be in a dire need of looking for a new place to live but still have to pay rent for a place that’s unlivable?
These were just the major issues. There were minor things such as visitors etc. It was incredible that such a contract was even written. We took out our pen and started crossing things out! As I was doing so, Gary said, “You know that we are basically losing that house, right?”
We took the marked up contract back to the Residence Spa and gave it to the woman in charge. We explained that some of the clauses in the contract were just unacceptable to us as they were completely biased towards the landlord and no protection for the tenants. I also tried to explain that in the U.S., the landlord would be responsible for the structure of the house and would be purchasing home insurance for that, whereas the tenants would be responsible for their own personal contents and would purchase a renter’s insurance for those in the event of theft or destruction. The lady said that she would take a look and get back to us. We dropped by on Thu to check on the progress, but she hadn’t had a chance to do so yet. She said Friday. We stopped by on Friday, still the same and she said that she would look at it over the weekend. So we emailed her today but no response. Gary called her after lunch and she told Gary that she could only make minor changes to the contract, and not deleting whole clauses. This basically meant that the contract would not be acceptable to us and we wouldn’t be living there! We have to move out of our current townhouse in The Spa Resort by Aug 23 as a new tenant is moving in, but now we don’t have a house to move into. We have wasted the past month looking forward to move in there so that we could focus our energy on other things, such as living a healthier life style, or firming up business plans etc. Oh well, we were looking for excitements in a new country, but this is way beyond what we have bargained for!!! In a last attempt, Gary emailed the lady and let her know that we would be signing a different contract by Monday 1pm unless she could make some changes to her contract involving the repairs and penalties. If so, she should let us know so that we could take a look and make a decision. She wrote back later that she would have a draft for us to review on Monday. So we can continue to hope that the new contract will be reasonable, though we both think the chance of that is very slim.
More House Hunting
Meanwhile, we have been back on the house hunting circuit. The bad news is that we haven’t found anything we really like.
The Spa Resort on Wednesday Robin showed us a 3-bedroom house (duplex) in The Spa Resort for 40,000฿. It feels much better than our current 1-bedroom. The first floor is the kitchen and living room. The second floor has the master bedroom and a second bedroom. The third floor is accessed through a spiral staircase that creaks when you walk on it (even with my weight). It’s like a very large attic but I can’t imagine putting Samantha there as I will be constantly worried about Samantha having an accident on the stairs.
A house in the Mountain View Mu Baan (Thai gated housing development) on Wednesday
We pass by the Mountain View development everyday on our way to town. There is a little restaurant right outside the development in which we have eaten several times. There were cows (or water buffalos) lying right outside the Mu Baan gate on the grass before they cut the grass, so Gary called it the “Moo Barn”.
Anyway, when we went to have lunch there on Wednesday, we asked the waitress if she knew of any houses for rent there. She gave us a realtor’s name and phone number, and Gary called him immediately.
Ron came to meet us on a motorbike. He was in his late 60s or early 70s (I am not good at judging people’s age), from South Africa. He showed us a two-bedroom for 12,000฿. While we liked the price immensely, there was really nothing else that we liked about the house. It was dirty and cramp. Ron said that he had another unit in town for just 10,000฿, but it was also a 2-bedroom, so we decided to forget about that.
A house near Four Seasons Resort on Thursday
Our friend Alisa (she was the realtor we met last October when we came to visit for the very first time) showed us a house near the Four Seasons Resort for 60,000฿, but possibly can be rented for 40,000฿.
The house has a separate guest bedroom and bathroom downstairs and a separate Thai kitchen. When you go upstairs, you will enter the house on a long corridor, which is the western kitchen (a bit strange), and then enter the living room. The living room is quite large and has balconies on both sides. Then there are two bedrooms after the living room, accessible again through another corridor. The house is not bad but the flow is a bit strange.
The development itself is quite pretty. There is a beautiful pond full of lotus flowers. The swimming pool overlooks large open grasslands. The problem is there is hardly anyone living there! It’s a pricy place for vacation homes and the only people we see are maids and gardeners. They hang out by the pagoda and by the pool. The pool water is cloudy. It seems that rich people just buy houses for their maids and gardeners (same thing in China). Maybe I should become a maid and live rent free!
7 houses around Mae Rim area on Friday
We looked at quite a few houses yesterday with another realtor Nan who specializes in Mae Rim properties only. She’s a former high school English teacher and is married to a Canadian. Her English is pretty good.
Anyway, the first house is just a few minutes away from the school. It is advertised as 95% finish. Well, not quite. The whole site is a complete mess. The doors to all the bedrooms (3 or 4) are all locked so no one can see them. The road to the house is a dirt road. Even if we really want this house, it is difficult to imagine that all these problems can be fixed by next Friday for us to move in. Nan said that the owner bought this house from the developer who went bankrupt. The house is also for sale for 5M฿. Not for us…
The second house is at the Mountain View Mu Baan again, but a 3-bedroom for 25,000฿. The landlord lives close by. Looking from the outside, the house is quite nice, but the inside is dirty. There is water leak on the floor. The furniture looks tacky. Not really for us. It’s amazing that most owners don’t bother to clean up the place before showing, but Nan agrees with us that’s the mentality of a lot of the owners in Thailand and she has a hard time convincing them otherwise.
The third house is in a local Thai village just off 107. It is a beautiful 3-bedroom Thai house for 35,000฿. Everything is made of wood, and well crafted. It’s quite dark inside until you open the thick wooden window frames. The house has views of the rice paddy fields right outside.
While I like many of the details of Thai house, it still feels too dark to me. Gary on the other hand really likes this house because it has a lot of character. We both agree that the location just won’t work. It’s with a bunch other houses that don’t look very good and there is a dog constantly barking in the background. Not really for us…
The fourth house is located in the Summit Green Valley Country Club, about 20 minutes from Prem, right off 107. It’s a two-bedroom house located on a large plot of land for 50,000฿. The owner has a construction business in town and had been using this as his vacation home when he wanted to golf, but has become too old and too busy to do that for quite a while. The house itself is quite large, but most of the room is taken up by this circular large living room. The two bedrooms are not very big at all. Just not a very functional design in our opinions. The price is also too high.
The country club is quite nice and this home is located on a quite patch with only one other house next to it. Apparently someone from the Swiss embassy lives there. If only the Thai house were in this location, then Gary said he would rent it. I am not so sure if I would.
The fifth house is also in the same development, next to a policeman’s home. It’s a 3-bedroom for 35,000฿. The outside looks okay but the inside is just not that great. There is no view to speak of and you can be intimate with your neighbors.
The last two houses are located in the Palm Spa Village, very close to the Green Valley Country Club, right off 1260 (on our way to tennis lessons). Both houses look quite attractive from the outside, but not so great inside, especially the first one. The development itself again is very quite, with no life inside. It’s not really the kind of environment we want to live in. We want to be around some people, just not noisy ones.
After looking at these houses, I was quite happy when I got back to my small 1-bedroom townhouse in The Spa Resort. Even though we knew that we were overpaying for the Premburi place, it looked like a paradise and we just hoped that they would be reasonable with the lease.
A house in a local Thai village today (Saturday)
We looked at one more house today with one of Alisa’s friend Alice (Chinese Thai grew up in Australia). She took us to a Thai village not too far from Prem.
The house is located on a large plot of private land not dissimilar to the Spa Resort in terms of feel (though quite a bit smaller). There are about 5 properties on this land all owned by the same Thai owner. The grounds is quite pretty, with fruit trees everywhere. We were told that we could pick the fruits and eat them for free, just not for sale. Good deal!
The house is a 2-bedroom for 15,000฿. It’s a very attractive price, but not the house itself. Samantha also said that she wanted more space! We couldn’t disagree…
Well, more houses to look at tomorrow and Monday!