Chiangmai's Low Construction Costs

Chiangmai has developed a lot and very quickly in the last five years. Developers are building new buildings, new landed properties, new condos, new shophouses,  new of everything. It used to be that Central Airport was the biggest and only shopping mall (of respectable size) in Chiangmai. But within the span of a few years, three other big shopping malls have been built - Promenada, Central Festival, and Maya (the smallest of the lot).

The boom had drove up construction costs but these costs are still much cheaper as compared to Singapore. An example, someone in my neighbourhood (outer ring area, not in the city) had constructed a two storey shophouse for around 1 million baht (SGD 40000). In Singapore, just renovation costs alone for a 100 square metre apartment would have easily cost you more than half of that.

Another example, just today, I decided that I did not like a fish tank I had as the only view I had of my koi fishes were from the top but the view was obscured by water plants and duckweed on the water surface (these plants were necessary as the neighbour's cats liked to come by to catch my fishes). The tank was built out of cement, about 2 x 2 metres in size.

So I put my fishes into a new tank and called up the contractor to come demolish the old one. They showed up, got their hammers and jackhammers and got to work. They demolished the whole thing in less than an hour, cleaned up the place for me, and carted away the debris to boot. All for 800 baht (SGD 32). They were happy as they got 800 baht for an hour's work (the daily wage is about 300 baht) and I was happy as I felt 800 baht was cheap considering the amount of work they had to do. In Singapore, contractors will bill you SGD 10 to SGD 15 just to drill a hole in the wall and they charge by the hole. So the same job in Singapore will easily run into hundreds of dollars.

At the same time, seeing my unpaved driveway, the guys were keen to tile it for me as well and told me that should I want to do it, the labour cost will be 120 baht (SGD 3) per square metre (raw materials such as tiles, cement, etc to be provided by me). Very attractive price but I told them I will leave it for next time.