Shopping for property

I have been speaking to this japanese real estate agent for almost 3 months, finally got to meet her yesterday. She showed us around town and where to buy our daily bread, took us to 6 different project including golf community, beach condo, mountain villa from 9:30am to 4pm, it was a long day.

I like what I saw most of the time, just the fact that Thai law is different than others, as a foreigner I can own the house but not the land which the house was built on it. There is a format called Leased-Hold which I lease this land for 30 years, I am allow to renew it once for another 30 years. The technical difficulties are who know what is going to happen 30 years later?! Would I be able to find the developer to sign off the renewal of the lease? It's not a definite answer, there's certain risk involved. However, we went to a few condo on the beach and they are just too small, and Huahin law prohibits to build taller than 8 floor so you get 30 units on a floor which I just feel too crowded. But foreigner is allowed to own the condo land legally forever if it does not exceed 49% of the condo population.

One common thing I saw among all these houses are lack of storage space; they were built having a vocation home in mind, everything looks nice and orderly in the model home. Well I don't think that would be the case for us if we move in permanently. There's just no room to store anything and public storage is not popular in huahin at all.

Another problem I noticed yesterday was all I saw are new development, nothing was shown to me as re-sell unit. I guess the incentive is higher in new development, obviously the agent was thinking on behalf of how big her commission would be; not showing me something might suit my needs and requirement. Base on this consumption, I would have to look for another agent who has a better network of re-sell inventory.

It's just very easy to lose track of what we suppose to do. If I were the agent, my focus would be finding a home for the client so there is commission waiting for me, not to give the clients choices that would make my piece of cake larger because at the end of the day, there could be no-cake for me.