Village in the City

This terrific little apartment –the one I would live in if I were single–with a cool rooftop deck/garden is on the top floor of completely remodeled townhouse 12 minutes walk from the Ekamai BTS. It has 50 square meters of space done in classy Thai loft style with new fixtures and real antique furniture throughout. Great views and breezes in a lively, safe neighborhood popular with teachers, NGO workers, and artists. You will pay more than twice as much for anything like this space and you won’t find  anything that has our style for any price.

New bathroom, kitchen. Air conditioned. Other furnishings and fittings including internet, cable TV, linens, etc can be provided as negotiated.

For a view of the building and neighborhood click on this short video:

Email to Nim at villageinthecity.com and I will answer your questions and give you directions if you want to visit. Or call Nim at 081-838-0829. For background on who we are and our other properties visit our project “Village in the City”
villageinthecity.com

For a short audio clips of our apartments by Bangkok Podcast’s Tony and Greg, our favorite podcast of life in Thailand, click here.

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And take a short tour of the neighborhood by clicking below on the video!

DIRECTIONS:

Ekkamai BTS Station Phra Khanong Nuea Vadhana, Bangkok 10110
1. Head southeast on Thanon Sukhumvit/Route 3 toward Soi Chaiyaphruek/Sukhumvit 65 400 m
2. Turn left at Soi Chaiyaphruek/Sukhumvit 65 220 m
3. Turn right Destination will be on the left 350 m

Finished soon. Like living in a garden!

I have five apartments in this little neighborhood 10 minutes walk from the BTS Sukhumvit line station. Two of them are occupied by happy tenants and the other three are nearing the end of my typical remodelling process. I’d like to tell you a little bit about why I like this neighborhood.

It is very hard to find a quiet neighborhood where you can walk or jog in perfect safety, know that you have reliable friendly neighbors who don’t put up with rowdy teenagers or kamoys. This urban moo bahn (= village in Thai) is built on the estate of a high Thai police official, now a retired antique collector, who developed the project years ago and still lives at the entryway to the area. A fair number of the familes here arre career police people, and you won’t find a more secure situation than this in Bangkok.

I finished my first two remodels last year and have great tnenats with wonderful artistiic tastes. My other three units will be finished in January 2013, this month, and I am offering them either as three units, 50 square meters each, or as two larger units.

Most of our past projects have been good for the single tenant or a couple, but our house remodel a quick walk from the latest new Udomsuk stop for the BTS (still only 20 min from Bangkok center) is going to be perfect for reasonable size (80 sm) a secure neighborhood with friendly neighbors, parking, a  dog, a budget price  but the same classy “Country Thai/French” style that is the hallmark of Nim’s loft-style designs. Our target completion for this project is early 2012 and we will open it for rental reservation soon. If you would like to help us finish off this remodel with your needs in mind, please contact us by phone or email now.

You can click through these photos of the neighbothood and my five apartments here. Three of them will be ready this month!

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Nim on a stroll with village kids, Bu Hua Chang

Nim, owner of villageinthecity.com,  is developing some property across the road from the local school  in our part-time, village, Bu Hua Chang, which is just about the nicest village I know of here in the kingdom (and I’ve been here a long time). Her plan is to open a little private education center there offering extra programs for kids with the support of volunteers and college students. This would be very low key and informal. But many things are done informally here and she knows how to do that especially in our village. Her idea is that some volunteers would be willing to come to Thailand perhaps for a few months, paying their own way and some small expense to live in the village and she would help set them up so that they would have an opportunity to both learn a lot and give a lot of their time and talent to these terrific kids.

In other words, it would be a sort of low-key Peace Corps without the bureaucratic hassle of the Peace Corps and time commitment of that organization.

Right now this is not all in place so we cannot offer any specific setup for you but we will keep your interest in mind and let you know how this advances.

Nim has been prowling markets looking for  this type of furniture for twenty years, but the bulk of her pieces, shown below, she acquired about four to six years ago at places like Chatuchak Sunday market, roadside shops on outer Soi 71, fire sales, and upcountry, mainly in Korat province. Oddly, many village Thai would prefer factory made things which seem more stylish to them, wood implements and houses suggesting poverty and low status. Most of the larger items — old village style beds (with “secret compartments” for valuables, two examples in the following loft apartment listing below), wardrobes, bookcases, silversmith benches, could be had for prices on the order of $100 US. Smaller items –doors and windows, mirrors, even some fine pieces of temple art — were sold in the market for a few hundred baht, but they are increasingly hard to find as the perception of the value of old “junk” changes.

Most of these photos were shot in our Jim Thompson-style Thai house on Ekamai and our new project on Sukhumvit Soi 18, both of which we expect will be available for rental in 2012.

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Are you looking for a condo which is more spacious than the current glassy boxes or the pre-2000 huge mausoleums? Noble development hit the perfect balance with several projects in the mid 2000 decade: clean modern design, balanced light and shade, quality finishes. The Noble Ora project on Thonglor in vibrant Thonglor district of Bangkok (Bangkok’s Beverley Hills, according to Time magazine; most popular neighborhood with Euro, Japanese, and American expats) is one of Noble’s best.

This condo is two bedrooms, two baths, 3 balconies, 115 square meters. high floor, corner room, cool view. Sophisticated building and management with swimming pool, fitness, full security, parking. Currently rented but due to open soon. Rental on these units varies from 45000 to 60000 baht per month This condo does not fit our future business profile so we are renting it now at a bargain price for up to one year with an option to buy for an attractive price, about 20 percent below other units available in this building with asking prices at 100,000 baht per square meter. (You can check Craigslist for “Nobl Ora”) An attractive deal for an expat who is thinking of settling in Bangkok at one of the best properties with good size (115 square meters) but wants a one year “test drive”.

Images of this Noble condo and setting

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How much to live  in Thailand?

We get this question all the time from our American friends.

Many years back when I was living a comfortable life in the fashionable suburb of Palo Alto,  California i recall having discussions with friends about the necessary size of a “nest egg” for retirement at say age 60 or so. If I suggested a figure of a million dollars (for a couple, or, as often as not in America, a man paying support for a former spouse), my friends would shuffle uncomfortably and say well they didnt know about THAT,  which meant that they already had gone through the calculation and had come up with a lot more than a million for a retirement requirement.

Today a million dollars wisely and diversely  invested might yield and income of say 6 percent ( as a 30 year annuity at say 4% return over inflation) which would provide about $5000 a month income. If this were combined with Social security at $2000 a month, the total would be abiut $ 7000 or 200,000 baht per month, a lifestyle the Thai would call “hi-so”. Half a million dollars plus social security would still yield close to 150,000 baht a month. I’m going to call that “the gold standard” for living in Thailand.

But what about lesser amounts, say for younger people or others who have been hard hit by the downturn? Here is our suggested menu:

25,000 baht per month   (830 USD)  Young Thai college graduates are happy to earn this much. Also hardworking service people, waitresses, beaticians working fairly long hours, can earn the same. Young foreign people taking time in Thailand provinces seem satisfied with this wage, which is typical for a beginning english teacher or NGO worker.

60,000 baht per month (2000 USD) Comfortable but simple living in Bangkok for many upper middle class folks from wealthy countries. High salary for English teachers.

100,000 baht per month. Dr Iain Corness, who wrote the excellent book Fahlang and Fahlang Sequel, suggests this as a reasonable middle class level for a foreigner with Thai wife and family in a smaller city. Foreigners in in Bangkok with the same circumstances with children,  whom most send to (expensive) private school, wiil have a hard time on this. Europeans seem generally thrftier than Americans, so this might be realistic for them.

150,000 baht per month. Gold Standard, as suggested above. Good but not lavish living for couple or small family.

Many younger educated Americans have got beyond the stage of attaching importance to  “making a high impression” on others, e.g. via display of the trappings of middle class success — trimmed lawns, cars, mail order fashion, all the latest Apple gear. Genuine inexpensive craft-style furnishings, such as we use in our projects, may be more to their taste. These visitors to Thailand will feel little distress at taking a bus, eating street food, and enjoying a budget nightlife, and will not be disappointed in their experience in Thailand, where a little downward mobility may be the best route to a more enjoyable and satisfying life.

Our unit left, new remodel right

This street is a dead end with good parking, two minutes from the Banjak BTS, 15 min to downtown.

Higher Sukhumvit: prices up, but still great value for shophouse loft style.

Last weekend we toured some great neighborhoods on higher Sukhumvit areas (Ekamai to Udomsuk) which is the focal area of our efforts at villaginthecity.com. We found the following:

-good (friendly, neighborhoody, pleasant, safe) areas for the expat who wants to enjoy the “native quarter” can be found but availability of promising shophouse and townhouse properties with good transportation links (eg skytrain) is tightening.

-land prices are up from last year, with shophouse lots, typically 12-24 square wah, asking prices now at 200-300k baht per square wah. (One wah is 4 square meters or 43 square feet land area). This works out to be about 200 $US per square foot.

-shophouses (2 to 4 stories) modernized in our loft style can be priced at about 30,000 baht per square meter (this is usable floor area, not land area). This is a little less than 50 percent of the price of new condos in the same area (see graph).

We conclude that there are still good opportunities for us to selectively acquire and improve these properties, adding value through our access to credit, design and construction experience, and stock of country-style antique furniture and ornamentation not otherwise available. At present we plan to continue this focus with emphasis on rentals to expat and Thai clients who prefer this new style of urban living.

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We are offering this rare and beautiful teak house for rent in 2012. It is remodelled inside to fit western needs and tastes. Conveniently located a minute off the popular Sukhumvit Soi Ekamai, this house is a Jim Thompson-style landmark in a fine Thai neighborhood. For a quick view click on the following video:

Construction of teak house off Ekamai, Bangkok