How to buy a property in Thailand? Without intermediaries and overpayments!

We very often see ads about the sale of real estate with the tempting headlines "Buying without intermediaries". However, how many clients understand who intermediaries really are when buying and selling real estate abroad and what are their advantages and disadvantages? You will learn about this by studying the article from the experts of Sky Property, which specializes in any real estate in Thailand!

Does a professional real estate agency become an intermediary between sellers and buyers?

If you evaluate only one side-yes, it is an intermediary! At the same time, this is a superficial representation of the agent's activities in organizing transactions with real estate objects. The agent, in addition to helping the seller and the buyer to meet each other and confirm the terms of the transaction (the traditional work of intermediaries), also performs other important duties, without which the sale becomes simply impossible. And specifically:

• Legal control of the transaction. Reliable verification of the contract and the seller's title documents.
• Acceptance of ready-made real estate in Thailand in the interests of buyers.
• Financial consulting. Assistance in transferring funds abroad.
• Registration with government agencies.
• Storage of the buyer's documents, when circumstances do not allow you to come to the transaction in person.
• Monitoring the implementation of both parties ' contractual obligations. Including monitoring the construction of the building.
• Consulting after the transaction. As customers buy properties in a new state, quite often not entirely familiar, many of them need support even in simple matters. The relationship with the agent does not end after the transaction, as it does in the home country.

So, should a trained agent be considered an intermediary if he performs work that is quite often performed simultaneously by several specialists?

We believe there is no.

Is it possible to purchase a property independently, without an agent?

Yes! But with the mandatory condition that you:

1. You are familiar with the local legislation and the processes of legal registration of the transaction.
2. Speak at least English without any problems. But quite often English does not save, you need to know the local language.
3. You are well versed in local real estate or have a lot of free time to study the market for at least 2-3 months

Of course, there are people who know all this, never turn to agents and buy real estate abroad on their own. An important caveat is that this will require the investment of resources and time to perfectly navigate.

People who can independently buy property in Phuket, agents never complain. They simply have nothing to do with them.

In most cases, the people who complain about the agencies are those who are simply not able to cope without their support. For example, I remember a funny case when a client from Moscow (the owner of the villa) sent the following email: "Sorry, but how do I dig out the scanner to send my documents?" It's probably a very difficult problem for her to find a scanner in Moscow. Only an even bigger problem is the task of quickly selling expensive real estate, stating to the buyer that there is no way to find a scanner in Moscow, so the owner did not send the documents confirming the right to property. In the end, they simply did not recommend this option to the interested buyer. Later, through our agent, a man purchased a wonderful villa. However, the owner of the first villa, who could not find a scanner in the capital, was extremely dissatisfied with the cooperation.

In our opinion, the agent is not an intermediary, in the traditional sense of the term. Any professional agent carries out the work of organizing and conducting the transaction, and not only brings the two sides together.

But activities in the real estate industry are currently not licensed and attract all sorts of people who do not have professional skills. And moreover, very often you will meet scammers. Naturally, this negatively affects this direction as a whole and causes discomfort to professional agents. And recently, when there are more and more buyers who are interested in selling apartments in Phuket, there are immediately a lot of "entrepreneurs" who want to wedge themselves between agents and clients at all costs. Because by doing so, they guarantee themselves a comfortable existence without doing anything.

How do they present themselves on the market? These are special web resources, so-called "bulletin boards", which are intermediaries in the classic form. Booths that obsessively offer various excursions, cheap souvenirs and immediately "sell" luxury real estate "without intermediaries". What about the seriousness of this kind of business can I say??? These are real estate exhibitions, platforms, applications, aggregators, platforms - such projects can call themselves as they please. In short, this is everyone who does not work with real estate objects in practice, but only transfers the contact of potential clients to agents.

And for what purposes is another additional link required? Why go to an intermediary site, so that your contacts are then transferred to a real agent, and then wait for you to be contacted. You can immediately go to the agency's website. And the agency, by the way, draws up a contract with each real estate object that is located on the site.

Do you want to overpay intermediaries who have nothing to do with the proposed property? After all, they never even inspect the objects that they "sell". Such intermediaries are not able to offer professional advice, due to the fact that they simply do not have the required information. Often, the information on their resources contains gross errors or is even completely unreliable. They are also not able to deal with qualified transaction support and solve possible problems.

What is "No overpayments"?

Intermediaries, using gray schemes, offering buyers their tariffs for the service, charge sellers twice as much as the agency. All this translates into a serious rise in price, given the cost of the property itself. Unlike them, agents act only under contracts provided by the developer. At the same time, they receive a payment that is offered by the developer himself. As a result, the agencies will not be able to change either the amount of their own fee or other terms of the contract. You will save significantly by buying a property through an agency. At the same time, the agency is not a useless link between the buyer and the developer. The vast majority of developers simply can not keep large sales departments and try to transfer this work to other experts. The money would still have gone to managers ' salaries and advertising. As a result, the value of the property would not be less without the functioning of the agencies. And the developer would carry more financial risks with poor sales. For this reason, this scheme is optimal, it has been operating for decades and completely suits everyone. Up to 90% of today's real estate developers sell with the help of agents. In addition, an experienced agent knows where to bargain and get the best price and optimal conditions for his clients.

The conclusions are obvious. You should not overpay by taking part in the gray schemes of ordinary intermediaries. Do not feed the huge number of people who want to sit on the neck of professionals to get money out of thin air.

Work with qualified agencies that fully accompany the client's transaction before its official registration with government agencies. And after the sale, they offer high-quality service.

You can always distinguish the websites of real agencies by the "Contacts" page. In addition, the agency has an official office in the state where the property is purchased. And on the page "About company" there should be information confirming that this is a real estate agency, and not an intermediary.