Rent or buy a condo in Hua Hin: the rent your purchase has to beat.

Should you rent or buy a condo in Hua Hin?

Buy only if owning costs less each month than the rent you are quoted for the same kind of unit, over the time you will actually stay. Owning costs can be added up before you sign. The rent you have to collect yourself.

The whole decision is one comparison, built in five steps:

1. Collect three rent quotes for the size and area you would buy in, ideally in the same building.
2. Add the running costs of owning, per month.
3. Add the cost of getting in and out, divided by the months you will stay.
4. Add what your money would make where it sits today.
5. Compare. If the quotes are higher than your total, buying is cheaper. If they are lower, renting is.

Each step is worked through below with the Thai fee stack. Where to buy, if the sum says buy: the best areas to buy in Hua Hin. The fees themselves, line by line: the Hua Hin cost page. This page does not repeat them. It uses them.

Why is there no Hua Hin rent figure on this page?

Because the Hua Hin rents on file were collected on an older method and have not been re-run on the one the site now uses. Until they are, no Hua Hin rent or yield figure is published anywhere on this site. A rent I cannot stand behind would bend this decision.

Asking prices are a different matter, because they do not depend on the rent method. Those are published: two areas, about 5 percent apart at the median, on the Hua Hin area page.

What this means for you: the rent side of the sum comes from quotes you gather. Three rules make them usable.

• Same building, same size as the unit you would buy, where you can. A quote from a different building answers a different question.
• Ask whether the quote includes the common-area fee. The owner is billed that fee every month, let or not, so it belongs on the owning side of the sum.
• Use the middle quote, not the lowest.

What does owning a Hua Hin condo cost each month?

Before the price moves: the common-area fee, typically ฿40 to ฿70 per m² per month across Thailand; the annual land and building tax, 0.02 to 0.1 percent of the appraised value; sinking-fund top-ups; and whatever your money would make elsewhere.

An illustration on round inputs, a 50 m² unit at ฿4,000,000. These are chosen to show the method. They are not a Hua Hin listing.

The sinking fund has no rate to publish. Ask the juristic person, in writing, for the current balance and the schedule of major works. A thin fund becomes a special assessment on the owners, and a tenant does not pay it: the sinking fund, and how it fails.

Costs you pay either way, like electricity, cancel out. Leave them off both sides.

How long do you have to stay before buying beats renting?

Long enough to spread the fixed cost of getting in and out, and in Thailand that turns on the five-year line. Sell within five years of registration and the seller pays 3.3 percent Specific Business Tax. Sell after and it is 0.5 percent stamp duty instead.

The same ฿4,000,000 illustration, bought and sold at the same price, with the 2 percent transfer fee split half and half each time, a common convention:

Three things the table leaves out on purpose.

• Withholding tax. The Land Office computes it on the day from the appraised value and your years of ownership. It can be calculated before closing. Have it done.
• The sale price. The example sells at cost. This site publishes no Hua Hin price trend, so what the unit sells for is the one input nobody can hand you.
• The start date. The five-year clock runs from the day ownership registers at the Land Office, not from your deposit.

The exit in full: selling a Thai condo as a foreigner.

How do you work out the rent your purchase has to beat?

Add the monthly running costs, the entry and exit costs divided by the months you will stay, and what your money would make elsewhere. That total is your break-even rent. Quotes above it favour buying. Quotes below it favour renting.

1. Running costs a month. Common-area fee times your m², plus the annual tax divided by 12, plus a sinking-fund allowance from the building's own figures.
2. Transaction costs a month. Your share of the transfer fee in and out, plus Specific Business Tax or stamp duty depending on the five-year line, plus the Land Office's withholding figure. Divide by the months you will hold.
3. Money cost a month. What the purchase money makes where it sits today, per year, divided by 12.
4. Price change a month. Subtract any rise you are prepared to bet on, add any fall, divided by the months held. Leave it at zero if you would not bet either way.
5. Compare the total with the middle of your three rent quotes.

In the illustration, before the money cost, the sinking fund and withholding, owning comes to about ฿3,456 to ฿5,222 a month over six years, and about ฿6,483 to ฿8,250 a month over four. Selling before the five-year line adds about ฿3,028 a month in this example. Your money cost goes on top.

If you are weighing buying to let later instead, run a quoted rent the other way: the Thailand rental yield calculator has the Thai cost stack pre-filled, and the general rental yield calculator takes any market.

When is renting the better call in Hua Hin?

When you are not sure you will stay past five years, when the purchase money cannot arrive from abroad with the paperwork Thailand requires, or when the building cannot show you its sinking-fund position. Each moves the sum against buying before the price does anything.

• Under five years. On the ฿4,000,000 example, the Specific Business Tax costs ฿112,000 more than stamp duty would after the line.
• The money leg. To buy, the funds must arrive from abroad in foreign currency, documented by an FET certificate in your own name. The same document is what lets the sale proceeds leave later: the FET guide. Renting ties up none of it.
• The building's books. A depleted sinking fund is inherited by the next owner as a special assessment. A tenant is not billed for it.
• The next buyer. If you will sell to another foreigner, the building's 49 percent foreign quota must have room on the day. The proof is the foreign quota letter.

When buying does win the sum, the question becomes which unit, and that is a building question. At the median the two Hua Hin areas are only 5 percent apart, so the building moves your price far more than the area: the Hua Hin area page.

Header photo: Elmschrat, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. All credits: image credits.