How to maintain residences in Thailand and abroad?

[olfu 349]

Before you commit to any life style consider trying different variants.

I retired in Florida, US with no debts so my incomes go direct deposits and so is credit cards payments. Its very convenient being in any country and pay for everything by credit card.

Yes, I travel mostly 6 month a year and prefer changing countries often.

Travel light, its cheaper to buy something than carry and airlines charge you extra. I should add being single cheaper too so I guess I am poor chap.

[donx 36]

Interesting topic. Although I spend almost all of my time in the US, my wife owns a townhouse in Krabi that her cousin who lives next door maintains for us. We thought about renting it out since we rarely use it, but we decided that we prefer just letting family and friends use it. We paid cash for it so we don't need it to produce an income. Our plan is to live there about 6 months each year when I retire. We plan on living somewhere in the US the other 6 months.

 

We will probably sell our house in the US after all our children finish school and find a smaller cheaper place for us to live. Based on many of the posts on here it sounds like getting a condo makes a lot of sense. However, my wife loves gardening and I expect her to want some place with land so we may have to see what our children plan on doing before we commit to a retirement home in the US.

[wasabi 536]

On 1/11/2021 at 10:33 AM, SCOTT FITZGERSLD said:

well, first you have to save the money to buy one property.

than, when the money is saved, you need to look for an appropriate property

and sign the purchasing  aggreements.

than, you need to save the moeny to buy the second property.

by the time you will do it, you will propably too old and tired of flying between the two

countries, and you will stay and get stucked in one of them for the rest of your life, and

that will solve your problem.

 

I have enough money to purchase real estate in locations and sizes I like in both countries with sufficient funds remaining for my wife and I to live in perpetuity. It is not a matter of saving up money or aspiring to do this it is a matter of making a decision I won't regret.

  

13 hours ago, donx said:

Interesting topic. Although I spend almost all of my time in the US, my wife owns a townhouse in Krabi that her cousin who lives next door maintains for us. We thought about renting it out since we rarely use it, but we decided that we prefer just letting family and friends use it. We paid cash for it so we don't need it to produce an income. Our plan is to live there about 6 months each year when I retire. We plan on living somewhere in the US the other 6 months.

 

We will probably sell our house in the US after all our children finish school and find a smaller cheaper place for us to live. Based on many of the posts on here it sounds like getting a condo makes a lot of sense. However, my wife loves gardening and I expect her to want some place with land so we may have to see what our children plan on doing before we commit to a retirement home in the US.

 

After considering all the replies and what I've been thinking personally I am leaning towards buying a condo in Bangkok and a house in the United States.

 

I would consider renting out the Thai condo while I am away with Airbnb (I already have someone who can manage it) on a monthly basis to comply with Thai hoteling laws, but the money earned from that would not be spectacular. Likely enough to offset the condo fee and ongoing maintenance expenses. Instead it might be more worthwhile to have someone periodically clean it and allow friends and relatives to stay while we are away. As they say everything has a cost even earning money.

 

I would like to buy a USA house in a location that is desirable year round so I am not bound by seasonality when I come and go between countries. I am a Florida resident and like the tax laws there but I haven't seen many locations I would like to own in Florida. I've been also thinking about Las Vegas, NV for tax reasons but unless one bought near The Strip which comes with high expenses it probably would be hard to rent. So even though taxation would come into the picture Maui, Hawaii or a central coast city in California are on my radar. It would be okay to pay property and income tax on any income the home generated but I would not want to get swept into paying income tax on everything else in my life. I would want to maintain my Florida residency which might be a challenge.  However that goes beyond the scope of this post.

[SCOTT FITZGERSLD 1,294]

21 hours ago, wasabi said:

I would consider renting out the Thai condo while I am away with Airbnb (I already have someone who can manage it) on a monthly basis to comply with Thai hoteling laws

 well, consider this: the condo will propably stand empty for the next year or two.

than, if you are really lucky, you can rent it for 2-3 months in a year.

the person you have to look after will propably mass things in an unimaginable way.

and the thai hoteling laws - forget about it, you will never even know what they are.