Finding a really sweet pad in Bangkok is a rite of passage for anyone new to the city, as well as a draining and sometimes mystifying quest for old hands. Where to look? How to look? By local standards, what’s considered big or small, a good deal or a bad deal? What should you look out for? How “native” do you want to go? We covered this a few years back in an episode of Bangkok Podcast, but it remains one of the biggest issues facing expats here today. But recently a friend emailed me some interesting problems with finding a place – he had too much money.

Backing up a bit, my friend – let’s call him Zack, who has lived here before and knows Thailand very well – is married to a woman – let’s call her Miri – who is one of the lucky group of expats in Bangkok employed by a big foreign company. As is typical in most of these arrangements, her salary is pretty substantial, and comes with a generous housing allowance. I didn’t get the real number from Zack, but I’m going to guesstimate the allowance at 75,000 baht a month (US$2,100).

NOT an apartment in Bangkok, but man, one can dream, right?

NOT an apartment in Bangkok, but man, one can dream, right?

If I had 75k a month to pay for rent, I’d be living large. Literally. Space in Thailand is calculated in square meters, and the condo I live in now with my wife and son – a nice 2 bedroom place on the river close to the skytrain – is 80 sq.m (860 square feet). Not huge, but it’s cozy and does the job nicely. A quick search on some of Bangkok’s property websites tells me that for 75k a month I could find a place that’s around 120 sq.m (1,300 sq.ft). For two people, that’s pretty awesome. I expect Zack to invite me to many parties.

Not a lot of apartments want to deal with “expat package” tenants.

Now, the problems.

The first issue he encountered was that not a lot of apartments want to deal with “expat package” tenants, because it’s all done above-board, with paperwork, receipts, and taxes. I don’t know the specifics behind this reasoning, but it seems obvious that someone is skimming a bit of money off the top at some point. Zack said that this reduced his options by about 50%.

The next issue is that the company is providing 75k a month for housing, so Zack and Miri need to find a place as close to that as possible. If they find a nice place for, say, 50k, they don’t get to keep the 25k left over. It’s very much a first-world problem, but I think most people would want to take full advantage of the offer. So that reduces the options even more to 1) places who will take the money and 2) who charge, say, 70-75k per month.

The third problem is they want to get a dog, which isn’t really related to the issue of having too much money, but it further reduces their options. Not a lot of condos in Bangkok take pets.

Anyway, the point is that even if you have a fantastic housing allowance, finding a place in Bangkok can be harder than you think. That being said, if anyone wants to give me money for a condo, I’m willing to put up with the headaches.