I've joined a Pai group and others have said that too, but also it seems you can easily rent a house in Pai for 10,000 a month which seems ok to me. It could be a problem if prices continued to rise though.
Also my mothly budget, based on my pension alone would be about 35,000 to 40,000 baht, is this realistic? I don't plan to stay in any of the major resorts, ideally somwhere fairly quiet and rural, I was looking into Pai as a good place