When an owner contacts us about listing their property, the first question is almost always the same: what price should we ask?
But when I bring buyers to see the property, price is not what they ask about first. They ask:
- Is the road in front of the house a public road?
- Is there mains water, or is it a village supply?
- Does electricity reach the plot, or does a line have to be run in?
Every buyer asks these three, whether it's a house or an empty plot. And the answers affect the price far more than most owners expect.
1. Is the road in front of the property public?
This is the question house buyers ask most, and the one that moves the price hardest.
If the access road isn't a public road, the official valuation comes in lower than it should. More importantly, it affects financing. Most buyers borrow, and some banks won't lend against a property whose access isn't public — because if they ever have to repossess and resell it, that property is hard to move.
So a house can be in good condition, in a good location, priced fairly, and the deal still dies at the bank. Not because the buyer didn't want it. Because of the status of the road outside.
Plenty of owners have no idea what that status is. They've driven in and out for ten or twenty years without a problem, so they assume it's an ordinary road — and find out otherwise only when they try to sell.
2. Water — is it available, and whose is it?
Buyers of empty land push harder on this one than house buyers do.
Some areas have no mains connection yet. The supply is a village water system, or the owner has to drill a well. Neither is a problem in itself — a great deal of land here runs that way perfectly well. But the buyer needs to know up front, because it's a cost they have to add to their budget.
Tell them at the start that the plot is on village water and they can do their sums and keep going. Let them find out later and they feel something was hidden from them — and then they either negotiate much harder or walk away.
3. Electricity — how far away is the nearest pole?
This question always comes paired with the water one, especially from buyers planning to build.
On land with no electricity yet, extending a line in is not a small job. The further the plot sits from the main road, the more it costs. Add the cost of drilling a well and, on some plots, a buyer needs to budget into the millions of baht before a single wall goes up.
That's why two plots of the same size in the same area can be priced very differently. Not because one seller is greedier — because the buyer's onward costs aren't the same.
Why owners should know all this before the listing goes up
When a buyer asks these questions on site and we can answer on the spot, the deal keeps moving that same day.
If the answer is "let me check with the owner," the momentum is gone. By the time we come back with an answer, the buyer has seen three other properties. And the worst version is finding out when the bank rejects the loan — after the price has already been agreed.
So alongside knowing the market price, an owner preparing to sell should know: where the title deed is and whether it's mortgaged, the status of the access road, where the water comes from, and whether electricity reaches the property.
None of this makes a house more expensive. It makes it sellable, which is a different thing.
If you don't know your property's status
That's normal. Most owners don't, because the information never mattered until the day they decided to sell.
When we take on a listing, we check all of it before we set a price and before anything goes online — because it determines the right asking price, which buyers to target, and whether a loan will clear.
Thinking of selling a house or land in Chiang Mai? Talk to us and we'll check whether your property is actually ready to sell.