There are in essence two different ways to get a price to construct a retirement home in Thailand

1. Via Unit Rates In Order To Assess The Price Of Construction.

Utilizing a Rate/metre squared, that is to say Baht per square metre, is the first and simplest method to obtain an estimate for building your retirement hone in Thailand. The rate/m2 for constructing houses in Thailand changes according to the position within Thailand and the type of the construction. There are additional factors that have an effect on unit rates, but there are usually no factors published to allow for them. As a case in point, the price various house builders give and can vary significantly, for instance, on whether or not he has plenty of projects booked up.

Thai Internet forums are a place to find for unit rates, but they ought to be used with prudence and taken as a guide only to get an idea for the probable price of your retirement house in Thailand. The writer is not aware of any published 'official' unit rates for constructing new homes in Thailand.

Another source of unit rates are the bigger architectural and building companies. One such company has just issued to the writer a rate range of 15,000 Baht/m2 to 20,000 Baht per square meter.

You may want to transpose the reported 15k to 20k Baht/m2 to a rate based on the Legal Tender of your own native land and compare it to unit rates for the area where you live. For example I currently live in the United Kingdom where the currency is the £ (GBP). The unit rate given by the Bangkok company equals three to four hundred £ /square metre compared with the normal rate in the UK of approximately £1,000 /metre squared. This infers that building in Thailand is 30 to 40 pc of the price for building in the United Kingdom.

A spreadsheet called the "Build Cost Guide" presents unit rate costs for property across a range of sizes and qualities of houses for England. You are allowed to obtain a copy from the Home Building & Renovation website.

The construction price of a home is calculated by multiplying the unit rate by the complete floor area of the house under assessment.

There is no need to obtain or involve a construction company when making use of unit rates to arrive at a costing for constructing your house.

There is an added disadvantage in the unit rate technique because it is an overall rate and ought not be used for non similar areas of a house if those areas are completely different in format.

By way of example my planned retirement property in Pakchong, Thailand, has totally different ground and first floor configurations. The home is based on a traditional Thai post residence where the 2nd floor which contains the living accommodation is held up on twelve posts or columns and is approximately 3 meters higher than the ground floor level. The ground level itself is half left unfilled for development in future and the other 50 % is purely a walled area to form a store. Clearly the same unit rate should not be used for both floors. (Unless the unit rate was based on a similar configuration of accommodation)

Should your intended retirement residence have sections of the building that are clearly different in complexity and consequently price does one utilise the unit rate across the board, or change it for the lower cost rooms? This is the case with my retirement home in Pakchong which has on the first floor both normal living accommodation and also some large open and courtyard areas and this shows one more complexity in using unit rates in residence pricing.

In the end the unit rate approach can only be adopted to get a very broad idea of the probable price and is actually not accurate enough for setting a budget.

This means they can only give you a budget image of the probable price of your home compared to the normal cost of similar properties of similar size and should not be utilized to generate a precise cost based on the exact arrangement of your house.

2. Getting Hold Of A Building Company's Cost Estimate By The Use Of House Plans For Constructing A Property In Thailand

An alternative to adopting unit rates is to get hold of a to put up your retirement structure in Thailand from a construction company. This is typically based on a set of designs that you have had created for the home.

Clearly, the more correct and comprehensive the layouts, the more precise the price will be. Further documents might in addition be furnished to augment the drawings and these comprise a Scope of Works describing the shape of the project (not often issued in Thailand) and Schedules. The Schedules are typically a schedule of finishes, lists of doors, ironwork and so on.

There are 3 major problems with this method.

A) Obtaining The Drawings And Other Papers

I was able to turn out my own Computerized plans and Documents for my planned retirement property in Thailand as I'm fortunate in that I am capable of using CAD software and I am familiar with building design.

When creating property drawings, either on your own or through the expertise of another person or company, it is a better plan to study a few already produced Thai house drawings to acquire ideas and inspiration for your own home. You may download many of free Thai house plans in pdf and AutoCAD format from the Thai Government website.

If you are not attracted to this method you will have to find somebody to put together the house plans on your behalf. If you seek to obtain a Thai Architect to undertake this on your behalf then you could come across a few hurdles you didn't expect - as I did.

For starters, locating an Architect in Thailand is not easy and it took me several weeks of searching. Admittedly I do not live in Thailand and all my searching and negotiations were done on the Internet. I actually only found one company (in Bangkok) who responded properly enough to give me any confidence in their capability.

Next, having found your Architect, how do you clarify to a designer what you need? This is particularly difficult (impracticable?) if you are unable to get together in the same room as the architect and pour over ideas and solutions. Undertaking that by the Internet from outside of Thailand is almost impossible.

- You Have To Have All The Papers Translated Into Thai

Even if it is simple to come across a Thai translator who is able to translate Word documents on your behalf, it is challenging to get a person who will be able to translate English to the Thai language inside a CAD drawing. As well as being able to make the translation, they must also have the ability to manipulate the Autocad software program, and own the program.

Although I stated that on the whole construction companies do not understand English I did manage to find 2 quotes from Thai builders with designs and documents in the English language only.

An extra technique to try is to get the translator to translate the English language building phrases and words on the drawings onto a new text file. Therefore they do not have to access the computerised drawing software.

- Construction Companies In Thailand Can Pick And Choose Their Projects Due To The Ongoing Construction Boom

We only received two estimates for our project from a total of 6 Thai builders we approached. The majority of them reported that they were too busy on other construction projects to oblige us. It looks that lots of building companies are working on massive projects in the resorts of Thailand (Like Hua Hin) and that our minuscule by comparison scheme in Pakchong is of no interest for them. I hope you have better luck finding a builder to construct your Thai house!

The method we followed to locate construction companies asking home occupiers "You occupy a pretty house, can you tell me who the builder was?" My wife finds it trouble-free to become acquainted with anybody and one day she was chatting with the Security Guard at our hotel and he announced that he could obtain an estimate from at least a couple of construction companies. We accepted that offer but didn't receive the quotes. One was too busy and the other wanted 5,000 Baht up front before working on a quote in case he wasn't selected as our building company!

It transpired that our pleasant Security Guard who so willingly contacted the local construction companies to get hold of an approximate estimate from would be expecting a commission of 10 percent of the construction cost if we used one of 'his' house builders to put up the house.

Article by Scott Riefler

If your idea of building a house in Thailand sounds like fun, this article on building a house in Thailand may help you. There are many facets to building a house from the building permit to the final construction. For the sake of keeping this not too long, we will assume you have already purchased you land and acquired a building permit.

There are several different building arrangements you can work out with builders in Phuket, Thailand. You can hire people to work for you and you pay them a daily wage. This pay as you go can work quite well but there are a few drawbacks. Usually the workers won't be moving at top productivity to stretch the job out longer. You may also find your costs can get out of control as you won't be able to calculate how long something will take. The other problem is you need to be around every day to make sure your not paying for people that aren't showing up or not there.

Another variation of this theme is you for labor and buy your materials yourself. The foreman will give you a quote for the labor for whole job. Usually the builder will not include things like electric, pluming, doors and windows. You want to make sure what and what not is included in the price they give you. You also want to be able to pay them when they hit certain milestones during the construction process.

A good variation one of my friends does is pay his builder a daily wage times the number of people he has working on your site. So for example if the builder has ten people on the site he pays his builder about one hundred fifty percent going rate for his labors but the builder has to be responsible for them. The contractor makes his money on the markup difference on what he pays his people and what he charges my friend.

You can also hire people to small jobs by the meter on what they call "mow". This means you pay them for the work they do. This is common in painting and rendering crews where they k now how long it will take them and you just buy the materials. The one thing you have to watch for here is they tend to waste materials when you hire them this way.

Paying the builder to do all the work is very common on the island also. I build a small bungalow this way about four years ago as a model unit. The one major thing to have to watch here is the builder will usually ask for a large down deposit and you will wait a long time for them to start your house. Many builders keep the deposits of unsuspecting farung and you never get your money back even if you take them to court and win. Never trust builders too much and always have a start and finish date on your contract.

The last way I like to talk about is hiring your own crew and doing the work yourself with Thai laborers. One way to do this is hire a foreman who has contacts in Issan and can get five to ten workers to come down on the bus to work on your housing project. You will have to pay transportation and have to build housing for them. When the project is finished, they will take the bus back home.

In summary, there are many ways you can go about hiring a builder or Thai people to build your house for you in Phuket, Thailand. You can hire your own, hire and pay by day and or pay as you go. You can choose to work with a builder or building company or hire your own and build your own way. Building a house in Phuket Thailand can be a rewarding experience if you have the time to try it.

About the Author

Scott Riefler is an expert in dealing with Phuket Real Estate and finance related matters. He regularly contributes articles to web guides on real estate and home refinancing.You can sign up for my newsletter at: Phuket apartments