What has been your experience with lease lengths and contracts while renting in Thailand?

I pay month to month, no jargon no deposit

I never pay a deposit. I pay one year in advance and bargain hard. Landlords cannot resist that big wad of baht in advance. And you won't see them for a year.

My wife has many properties you pay first month, last month and one month security- no lease

Depends on how professional the agent is. In general I haven't seen any unreasonable clauses. I agree with what has been said above: in one or two pages you cannot put a lot of detail, and it's quite possible that the longer contract protects you better.

The contract should offer protection for both parties. It is difficult to imagine that enough detail would be included in one or two pages, especially if it is in Thai and English. If someone offered me a very short contract I would be more concerned about getting my deposit back at the end than if a well worded contract was offered. My current contract was downloaded by the agent from the Internet and included several ridiculous clauses and omissions. I made her wait for about an hour while I went through it crossing out the things I would not agree to, improved the wording in some sections to be explicit and added in several clauses to protect me. I then talked through the changes with the agent and we initialled all of the changes before signing the contract. The agent could not complain, as I had asked several times to see the contract in advance.

Choose your landlord wisely

If you're not comfortable with the lease, don't rent it. There is a reason it's 8 pages and when that reason becomes clear to you, it will be too late.

To answer your question: I have had 2 places no lease, one place several pages and one place one page.

i personally just drop the whole pdf into chatgpt and ask for whats something out of ordinary or red flag and he point out few things and how to make them better i suggest that to the agent and they agree to make things more clear and better

Pay/lease monthly, 1 month deposit, 1 month up front.

I've had 2 leases from high quality agents. Both had everything in Thai and in English, and were 10+ pages including inventories of what is already in the condo, what the water and electric meter read at the time of move-in, etc.

Doesn’t matter about contract length but what’s important is contract content.

Ours is 2 pages

@Jack ***************

and last one was 2 as well. Yes we have late charges built into this one too