Trouble in Thailand
The political turmoil aside, prospective buyers have lessons to learn from early investors in Thailand, many of whom are bearing the brunt of their dream building. Alex Frew McMillan reports
‘‘The range of builders on Koh Samui runs the gamut, from reliable companies with strong track records – to companies that set records for locking up your money and then incurring endless delays, or worse, simply running off’’
Plenty of people living in Asia dream of building their own private villa, cornering their own little bit of their favourite getaway as a holiday home. But a tropical paradise can quickly become a tropical hell for overseas owners trying to construct their dream home remotely.
With direct flights from Hong Kong to both Phuket and Koh Samui, Thailand is a particularly popular spot for Hong Kongers to call their second home. Although Phuket is the most established villa destination in Southeast Asia, Koh Samui is catching up, both in terms of quality and cost.
According to CB Richard Ellis, there are around 550 villas on Koh Samui, including projects under construction, either individually owned or in one of 41 villa developments. Prime beachfront plots cost around 17 million baht per rai (HK$3.7 million for a local unit that equals two-fifths of an acre, or 17,222 square feet), but hillside lots can go as cheap as 4 million baht per rai (HK$878,000). The slower pace of development compared with Phuket means Koh Samui retains much of its laid-back island charm.
But Patrick Caviness, a resident of Koh Samui who lives in a villa on the south side of the island in the Gulf of Thailand, says anyone planning on joining the owners of those 550 villas has to enter the project with both eyes open.
“There are a lot of real disaster stories,” he says. Significant construction problems happen “a lot more than you would imagine. A lot more than people want to talk about”.
The difficult decisions start with the team you select. Identifying a developer and architect with experience in building tropical homes is a good start, and then you have to rein in the company to avoid it over-designing the home or running over your budget.
The next important consideration is which contractor to use. The range of builders on Koh Samui runs the gamut, from reliable companies with strong track records – to companies that set records for locking up your money and then incurring endless delays, or worse, simply running off.
“A lot of people have a good plan and they wind up with a bad contractor, and just get into all kinds of trouble,” Caviness says.
Big developers may bring in large Bangkok companies, but individual buyers must normally use a local contractor. It’s vital to vet the company well and make sure they are well established.
“There are a lot of ways that the contractors can cheat the client,” says Caviness, a former investment banker who started restoring old homes in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas, in the US, before moving to Hong Kong, where he worked in venture capital. After retiring to Koh Samui, Caviness decided to start helping expats build and complete their homes. Paired up with an Australian electrician who is married to a local Thai, he is now the executive director of Samui Custom Homes, which walks absentee owners through the villa-building process.
A typical cost dodge, Caviness says, might be to substitute a two-inch drainage pipe for the four-inch pipe called for in the plans. That can leave you with drainage problems later on. Or the contractor may put in thinner wire for the electrical system than the architect requested, running the risk of fire hazards or shorts in the not too distant future.
It’s hard for foreign owners to keep track of such minutiae, particularly if they are organising the construction from a distance. So it is a good idea to use a third-party project manager to oversee construction.
Villa owners often love the look of teak and traditional Thai hard woods such as mai dang, lompur or makah, but a disreputable builder may try substituting cheaper wood for the pricier hard woods, which can lead to warping. And even if they do stick to a commitment to use a hard wood on the surface, the runners used as the subfloor may be cheap coconut wood, which can easily fall prey to insects.
“Termites can eat through just about anything,” Caviness says. “We have pulled out five or six really beautiful floors.”
At one villa that he worked on recently, the local red wood, mai dang, used for the decking on three bedrooms had to be totally refinished. Overseas owners who want to minimise upkeep would do better to stick with concrete or stone floors and give up on using wood at ground level.
“Between the sun and the seas and the rain, it just blisters off,” Caviness explains. “You have to treat those floors like the deck of a boat.”
Caviness has plenty of other war stories. Even on one villa that did use concrete, the pebble-wash floors had not been properly sealed, leaving them susceptible to staining. All the floors had to be resealed. Concrete dust had also not been washed away properly, and ended up clogging the drains, which had to be cleaned out.
Properties in tropical climates take a real beating from the heat, sun and – during wet season – heavy rains. So it is important to have your home designed with the climate in mind. A traditional Thai design, with its high pitched roofs and thick eaves, isn’t just for show. The sharp angle of the roof lets those massive raindrops shoot off easily during monsoon season. The deep eaves protect the interior from the rain, and also make the home cooler by keeping out the strongest sun.
Caviness likes to work with overseas architects who have Thai operations and experience. That makes the company easy to communicate with but means they know their way around local customs, ways of doing business and design, too.
Expat owners ignore local advice at their peril. “You can build a beautiful custom holiday home cheaper here than you can in most other parts of the world,” Caviness advises. “But you can really get it messed up if you’re not accustomed to the local problems, too.”
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