Condos for sale in Chiang Mai

A tower or a low-rise block

The buildings split cleanly by size. 2 state 500 units or more, the tallest at 31 floors; the rest are smaller blocks, the smallest with 41 units. A tower gives you a deeper resale market inside the building and more sales to price against. A small block gives you fewer neighbours, a juristic office you can know by name and fewer identical flats chasing the same tenant.

Completion years on the cards run from the middle of the last decade to 2025. In a building of that age, ask for the sinking-fund balance and the last two years of the juristic person’s accounts before you make an offer, because the condition of the lifts, the pool and the roof is a cost you take over with the keys.

Inside the city, or Hang Dong and San Sai

Most of these buildings are in the city district, which runs from the old walled town and its moat to Nimmanhaemin and Chang Phueak in the north-west, Chang Khlan and the Night Bazaar by the river, and the ring-road areas of Wat Ket, Pa Daet, Mae Hia and Fa Ham. Prices there follow distance from Nimman and from the river. Hang Dong, south-west toward the airport, has Kad Farang, the international schools and low-rise buildings for retirees and remote workers who want space; San Sai, north-east by the university, is flat, cheaper and about twenty minutes from the old town.

Our Chiang Mai condo guide reads the city by tenant: Nimmanhaemin for remote workers and the deepest long-stay demand, Santitham and the university belt for students and academics with lower rents and fewer empty months, the riverside for expatriates and retirees but slower to let, and Hang Dong and the outer ring as a largely local market.

Viewing a finished Chiang Mai building

Because everything here is already built, a viewing tells you most of what you need. Go at the hour you would live there: the lifts in the morning, the car park in the evening, the noise from the road at night. Look at the units for sale and for rent in the lobby or the building’s chat group, since the number of them is the competition your own flat will face.

Ask the juristic office three questions: how much foreign quota remains, what the common-area fee is per square metre this year and how it has moved, and whether any special levy for repairs has been voted. The answers come in writing, and they are worth more than the brochure the building was sold with.

Monthly tenants and the smoke season

Tenants in Chiang Mai take monthly and annual terms and pay their own utilities, and the city has no monsoon trough in demand, the condo guide notes. Short lets are open only to buildings with a hotel licence, because the Hotel Act treats a stay under 30 days as hotel business; get the building’s position in writing before you plan on them.

Plan for the smoke season too. The guide records smoke from February to April, caused by agricultural burning in the region. If you will live in the flat, decide where you will spend those months; if you will let it, ask how comparable units in the same building let between February and April.

A Chanote in your name and the quota behind it

A foreigner may hold a Chiang Mai condominium unit freehold, on a Chanote, within the 49 percent of the building’s total floor area that Thai law sets aside for non-Thai owners, as our Phuket vs Chiang Mai comparison puts it. The money must come from abroad and be recorded on a Foreign Exchange Transaction form.

Entry starts at 1,772,760 THB, and the median is 2,697,943 THB against 5,066,250 THB across 112 Phuket condominium projects. A low entry price buys a city flat for a long stay rather than a holiday let, which is how the buyers our condo guide describes, remote workers, students and retirees, actually use these buildings.

Whether a building still has foreign quota is a fact to get in writing from the juristic office. The condo guide reports that in several older buildings the allowance has long since gone, so a flat can be on the market and still not be open to you.