Thailand Guru Personal Home Guide

Real estate agents show you only places where they get a commission, for "free".

A "guide" takes no commissions and instead charges a daily fee to drive you around showing you the best places for your needs, and serves as a Thai-English interpreter and translator.

A guide is like a real estate agent in that the guide has their own database of condominium and apartment buildings (including those which don't offer commissions, or small commissions), as well as houses the guide network has visited before. In addition, a guide will search on-line Thai and English language listings, the popular Thai language real estate magazines, call any phone numbers on signs as they drive you around, and call any other agents of other real estate companies as necessary. The guide is 100% on your side.

In Thailand, a much larger percentage of property owners refuse to use a real estate company at all, compared to our experience in North America. Very few property owners will sign an exclusive contract with a real estate company, and many will not negotiate or sign any contract at all, or even contact a real estate agency!

Honestly, we don't like limiting ourselves to showing you just the small subset of properties for which we could get a commission. It is much nicer to just show you the best places for your needs. If we are driving you thru a neighborhood and see another nice house with a For Rent sign on it which you like, let's call it! Doesn't matter if it's the sign of another agent, or if the owner doesn't like agents. We are your translator and interpreter!

We will also advise you about the good and bad sides of any property. Because we don't depend on selling you a property to make any money, we won't just tell you the good side and overlook the bad.

The most important thing is that you find the best home, not that the real estate agent gets a commission.

In Thailand, a much higher percentage of property owners (compared to North America) have always preferred to advertise their property by themselves, rather than use a particular real estate agency or agencies. They will usually get far more inquiries from publishing a classified ad in one of Thailand's leading property magazines for this purpose, which are thick magazines with ads categorized by region and subregion, and the customary first place that Thais go looking for properties (besides just driving around).

People generally know the region they want to live in, so they just drive around that region looking for signs, and call places in that region from the magazines.

You need to be able to read and speak Thai to do this ... or else you need the Thailand Guru Personal Home Guide to go with you.

Internet listings are on the rise in Thailand. However, Thailand is still well behind North America and some other western regions as regards home listings on the internet. Furthermore, the English language listings in Thailand are much smaller than the Thai language listings.

We have adapted our services to the reality of Thailand, rather than trying to force a Western real estate business model onto a resistant subculture of property owners, for the sake of presenting Westerners a Western-conventional real estate agency they are accustomed to.

We can do it either way -- your choice.

If you want a "free" real estate agent, then we can do that quickly and in short order, by presenting the subset of condominiums and homes for which we have a commission arrangement. You can see some of our commission properties in our on-line website, www.kkBkk.com (and we don't have photos of most properties available, especially rentals which come and go too quickly).

However, if you want to see a much wider selection, then for a relatively small daily rate, we can show you a lot of condos, apartments, or houses which you hadn't seen anywhere else because the owners don't normally go to real estate agencies in order to market their properties.

Notably, the vast majority of homes on the market have no photos on the internet. We judge them by the neighborhood they are in (which we are usually familiar with) and from talking with the owner about the property.

Our guide fee is usually a small fraction of what we would get in a commission (depending on your budget).

Of course, we are guaranteed of getting the fee at the end of the day, regardless of your decisions or indecision (and there is no need to hurry), and you are guaranteed of getting at least an orientation to Bangkok and the market. Nevertheless, most clients eventually choose one of the homes which we showed them.

The fee depends upon the particular location and size of region you specify (it may take significantly more research if you aren't sure which region you want to be in), whether we spend a full day or half day driving you around, and your general search parameters (some people also want research on schools, and like being driven around to a lot of regions). However, we can usually narrow it down on the phone with you by discussing your needs and preferences and giving you expert advice, and then propose a fee for in-depth research and driving you around.

In any case, we focus on finding the best home for you. A careful choice of home in the beginning will help optimize your life experiences in Thailand.

The process goes like this:

1. You contact us, we discuss your needs, wants, and preferences, and we eventually make a decision whether to proceed. This part is of course free. It might take a few days if you aren't in a hurry. If we both eventually agree to proceed, then:

2. We perform research from all sources, Thai and English, including the internet, magazines, and selected other agencies who we trust. Sometimes, we will drive around an area on our own. We come up with a list of potential properties and make appointments with owners (or their agents such as a family member with keys or a real estate company).

3. You arrive, we meet you and go over the map, discuss issues for each candidate property including traffic, public transport, shopping and other conveniences, and various other plusses and minuses. Then we drive you in our car to view the properties and regions.

Even if you plan to use multiple agents, hiring a guide first may be a better idea because a guide will give you a complete regional overview and will tell you both the plusses and minuses of everywhere.

We give a lot of general guidance and orientation to Bangkok in our web page on Bangkok house, condominium and apartment regions, but personalized service can go into far more detail according to your individual needs, wants and preferences.

To explore the possibilities of having a Personal Home Guide, please call us at 02-960-0556 or +66-2960-0556, or fill out our form on our Contact Page.

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