An tidal wave of bullshit

As the rest of the world’s economies judder to a halt, Thailand is trying hard to pretend that nothing is happening. Nowhere is the self-delusion more evident than in the Pattaya housing market.

Visitors are down, exchange rates against the baht are a joke, the country has soured its image of the land of smiles by being the land of squabbling political gangs and airport occupations; and yet there are an increasing number of developers who seem convinced that we all want to buy property here.

Over the past couple of months there has been a dramatic rise in parcels of land being cleared to give the illusion that another quality development is about to start. In most cases, it just means that someone has scraped up enough cash to print some brochures and get his brother-in-law to bring his digger round to move some soil. Then if the budding entrepreneur can convince sufficient mugs investors to sign a contract, he might start to build something, thereby hopefully attracting more flies to the honeypot. At some point in the process the developer will abscond with all the cash and start the whole process again by clearing another piece of land.

There are already a number of partially completed structures with a suspiciously small amount of workers (i.e. none), but this does not seem to deter new developments. Apart from a cleared piece of land and some brochures, you need to festoon the local roads with signs.

One project which does actually seem to being built is The Ocean Pearl. The catchphrase is “escape the ordinary”, the longer version of which could be “escape the ordinary and come and live in a scruffy lane nowhere near the sea, next to an open sewer”.

The construction looks like shit, but when it is finished, according to the website, it will look magnificent and socially desirable people will sip wine on the balcony next to a body of water. As it is geographically impossible for this to be the sea, it must be an expanded open sewer.

Are there really enough idiots around to buy into all these doomed projects? Well they won’t catch me, I wisely invested all my spare cash with a nice man called Bernard Madoff.

Comments 🔗

2009-01-10 | Billy says

You are very sensible to avoid all those sharks and invest with that nice Man Mr Madoff (pronounced Made Off btw) - he has done very well by me over a number of years, especially during the recent Credit Crunch Global Meltdown thingy when he kept up payments at an annualised 7%. Feel sure he will keep this up however I have to confess that my latest quarterly check is a few days late.

2009-01-11 | Spike says

Mine too, must the Xmas rush delaying things.

2009-01-12 | todd says

guess the real profitable market to be in in printing and banners…

2009-03-07 | Spike says

From Pattaya One News 7/3/09: On Friday Night there was a protest by construction workers at the site of a new condominium development called The Ocean Pearl which is located in Soi 12 off the Thappraya Road in Jomtien. Workers demanded the construction company responsible for the development, The United Real Estate Development Company, pay outstanding salaries to the workers. The sub-contractor responsible for the workers was expecting to receive a payment of 100,000 Baht which would then be distributed to employees of the sub-contractor. However, the development company has only paid the sub-contractor 5,000 Baht with the promise of the outstanding balance to be settled soon. A protest was then organized and the Police were called who acted as mediators between the company and the workers. Eventually the company agreed to pay the sub-contractor 50,000 Baht now with a further 50,000 Baht to be paid on Saturday. The protest was called off and the payments were made as promised.

2009-03-10 | genuine j says

Did Billy and Spike’s cheques from Madoff ever arrive? If not how are their finances doing without participation in this Ponzi scheme?

2009-03-10 | Spike says

Yeah, mine arrived promptly. Taking a while to clear though.