Resale Home market needs a lift

The US has many large cities and metro areas that boast a similar stan¬dard of living, enabling its people to move around freely to secure new jobs and new homes.

Almost all residential realestate transactions are conducted with the help of the Multiple Listing System (MLS), whereby sellers list their properties for sale with the system in their area. Participating agents share the system, and the selling agent splits the commission with the listing agent. The system allows transactions to be transparent, with details of the properties being made known to prospective homebuyers who contact the participating agents.

By contrast, people who want to sell or buy houses in Thailand do not normally go through the agency channel. Most sellers place their proper¬ties in the classified pages or simply place handwritten signs on fences. The Internet has helped sellers and buyers meet online, but information provided regarding the properties can still be very sketchy. Less than 25 per cent of residentialproperty transactions in Thailand involve a structured agency. So the actual size of the resalehome market is not fully understood.

If you work in an office environ¬ment, then Bangkok is the most like¬ly place to live in. The lack of office space elsewhere encourages provin¬cial people to migrate to the capital and limits the movement of people to other parts of the country. Without relocations, existing home transactions are limited.

The lack of a shared system of information in the secondaryhous¬ing market makes it even harder for people to access data on what is available.

The Real Estate Information Centre (REIC) has launched a website called ClickThaiHome.com to help people search for resale homes. This website lists more than 200,000 resale properties, with about 120,000 items being resale homes or condos.