This is my experience on moving to Thailand on a DTV. I feel like someone may find this useful, and thus decided to share.**
Introduction**
- I'm a digital nomad and have been interested in moving to Thailand for a long time because the cost of living seemed low, the weather is ideal, and I could easily conduct my business from there. Ever since 2020 I've been looking at apartments in Thailand through ddproperty, propertyhub and other websites, and had been impressed by the cheap prices for incredibly nice looking condos. Now I just needed a Visa.
- I applied for a workcation DTV online, right after it was announced. The visa was granted to me within 1 week. My embassy asked me some follow-up questions regarding my business and asked for some extra documents, but overall the process was simple.
Finding an apartment
- I went to Thailand for the first time in August, in order to find a long term rental apartment. I quickly noticed that all of the listings at ddproperty.com and other property websites are fakes, and the apartments don't really exist. Around 50% of the time I would get no response, and the other 50% of the time they would get back to me, offering another, significantly more expensive apartment.
- I managed to book a temporary apartment in Bangkok for 2 months, while I continued to look for a permanent condo to live in. I learned that the way to find condos in Bangkok is to join various facebook groups, and message the "agents" there. The same thing would continue in the facebook groups; whenever I found something interesting, the "agent" would get back to me saying that the place is no longer available, and they would offer something more expensive. This even happened on listings that were posted just 2 minutes ago. It felt quite bad that the only way to find an apartment here is to deal with dishonest people who you don't know (they never post with their real names), and who could be scammers. In Thailand anyone can call themselves a real-estate agent, and there's almost no way to check if someone is legitimate or not in these facebook groups.
- Eventually I managed to set up a meeting with someone from a facebook group, at a building I was interested in. I had accepted that the prices on the property websites were false, and I would have to pay more than I initially thought. Upon arriving there, the person told me that they aren't able to come, and someone else will come instead. Eventually I met with a 20-30 year old Thai guy at the lobby of an apartment building, where he asked me to pay 1 months rent, 2 months deposit and 1 months "reservation fee" beforehand. They told me this is how it works in Thailand, and if I wanted to reserve the apartment in advance, I would have to also pay this 1 month "reservation fee".
As I wanted to have an apartment ready before my 2 month contract in my old condo ended, and I especially wanted to rent in this particular building, I felt like I had no choice but to pay. I wasn't going to find anyone better from these facebook groups. He did show me a unit in the building, but he wouldn't give me a rental contract before I had paid everything. I didn't know the guys name, and it seemed that the name of the real-estate company he worked for was made up (didn't find anything online), but I paid him a lot of money in cash and hoped for the best. Luckily he didn't run off with my money, and I was able to move into the apartment as promised after my old lease ended.
Bank account and rent payments
- After moving in, I began to pay my monthly rent payments to the agent through bank transfers. I quess the agent then sends the money to the landlord. After my first payment though, they complained that I had not paid enough. I had double checked that the sum was correct, and I also sent them some payment confirmation slips. I knew that my bank charged me a fee for an international payment, and I had accounted for this in my payments. Next I sent them the extra amount they were asking for, but they still said they didn't receive enough money. It turned out that on top of my fees, their bank was also charging them a fee for receiving international payments. This fee was significantly higher than my bank's fee. Of course, they made me pay for this too, and now I pay even more every month than I was prepared for.
Opening a bank account in Thailand would solve this issue, but it's not possible on a DTV. I have tried this at many different banks in Bangkok, and they require a work permit or a long term student visa in order to open a bank account for you.
Because you can't open a bank account, it also means that you pay a fee for withdrawing money from an ATM. In my case however, the cheapest way to pay my rent is to withdraw the money from an ATM, take the cash to a Thai bank in person, and pay my rent there. I will do this every month, as this is cheaper than paying through an international bank transfer to the agent's account.
I recommend anyone coming to Thailand on a DTV to bring as much cash as possible with you, and try to survive on that money for as long as possible in order to avoid ATM fees.
Overall I'm still happy, even though the DTV has some limitations and even though I ended up paying a lot more for a condo than I was prepared for. Thailand is a nice country to live in, and to do your work, even though knowing the language would help a lot.
