Buying, selling, renting, mortgages, law and tax, written so you can decide when you finish reading
Both are done at the land office and both require a survey, taking around three months plus the local queue. The expensive trap is that selling ten or more subdivided plots falls under the allocation law, and further splits within three years count towards that total.
Spend in order: prevent the fall, then detect it, then call for help. A fall for an older person rarely ends in a graze, so a few hundred baht of sensor lighting is worth more than a fall-detection watch costing tens of thousands.
A landlord cannot raise the rent while a lease runs unless a review clause was written in. But staying on after expiry without signing creates a lease with no fixed term, endable on one rent period's notice, and years of tenancy add nothing to that.
A surge is voltage spiking briefly and it destroys electronics. A sag is voltage staying low for a while and it destroys motors, because a motor draws more current to hold its power, the windings run hotter, and the damage accumulates until they burn out. Different problems, different protection.
Start at the roof rather than the windows, because in a Thai house the largest share of heat arrives downwards from above. The roof space takes full sun all day and accumulates heat, turning the ceiling into a radiant panel the size of the room that keeps working long into the night.
They cost a few hundred baht and every brand works the same way, so what makes them useful is where you put them. The five that earn their keep are under the kitchen sink, under the basin, behind the washing machine, near the water heater or pump, and near the air conditioner indoor unit.
Read three clauses before anything else: financing, the transfer date and slippage, and how transfer costs divide. Those are where money changes hands. And returning double the deposit when a seller breaches is a contract term you have to ask for, not an automatic consequence of the law.
The 99 percent on the sign usually means infrared or ultraviolet rejection, which is only part of the energy arriving through the glass. Ask for total solar energy rejection, which counts the heat the glass absorbs and re-radiates inward. And however good the film, external shading always beats it.
Being on the house registration does not make you the owner, and the householder is not the owner either, because ownership sits with the title deed. What is worth real money is one accumulated year on the registration, which exempts a sale from specific business tax, and it need not be continuous.
Most houses do not, and the reason people think they do is usually wrong. Three phase is not stronger and will not make the air conditioning colder: sockets deliver the same voltage. What it gives is more total load capacity. Before converting, try a larger single phase meter.
No, and the bank cannot require it. The Bank of Thailand states that a financial institution may not make insurance a condition of loan approval. What it may do is quote two interest rates, with cover and without, which is a different thing. Ask for both sets of terms in writing and compare total interest.
Breakers trip on overcurrent and short circuit, which protects the cable from overheating rather than protecting people. What protects people is a residual current device, comparing outgoing with returning current. Many houses in Thailand have breakers on every circuit and no residual current protection at all.
