If you are considering a home in the sun, the island of Phuket, basking in the southern Thailand sun, has a great deal to offer and is well worth your consideration.

With a less than thriving economic climate, not to mention the actual climate, in the West it is not difficult to understand why so many people are making a move overseas, either full or part time.

The Phuket Property market is booming and with such a wide range of property types available on this very special island, living the dream life, for many, is becoming a reality.

Phuket has all of the trappings of a tropical island paradise but with western infrastructure and facilities that makes it a particularly attractive place to live.

Phuket Island, once a trading port, now has a thriving economy and tourist industry and a bright future ahead of it thanks to its all year round, hot, climate, friendly people and endless entertainment opportunities. Phuket offers world class golf courses and world class SCUBA diving in its marine life filled tropical seas.

Phuket has many events going on throughout the year and joining in with them and other celebrations offers a unique way to gain a rich experience of the local culture. Popular celebrations include The Chinese New Year that brings the islands population together in colorful celebration. The Rock and Blues Festival, in February, is another very popular event where international and local blues and rock bands perform live for your entertainment. The Biking Weekend, in April, is another well attended and enjoyable event where the owners of bikes, of all shapes and sizes, arrive from all over the world to share their biking enthusiasm. Songran, also in April, is the time to celebrate the Thai New Year which is welcomed in with a colourful and enthusiastic water festival that nobody can, or would want to, escape from. Thais love sanook, the Thai word for fun, and no other festival demonstrates this more. The Chao Ley Boat Floating Festival takes place in both June and November in is celebrated by the launching of small, candle-lit boats into to ocean to take away of bad luck and honor ancestors.

Other festivals include the Vegetarian Festival in late September, the Andaman Sea Festival in November and, of course, The Phuket King’s Cup Regatta which is arguably Asia’s biggest and most popular regatta. The Local Life Festival, in December, organized by the Old Phuket foundation, is held to restore significance to the historical parts of Phuket that is loved by both its ex-pat and Thai population.

Foreigners wanting to invest in Chiang Mai land and property will normally find excellent value on land and house prices, especially when compared with the costs in their homeland. In addition to price savings, the city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand is rated as one of the kingdom’s most enjoyable and ‘foreigner-friendly’ communities to settle down in. Its real estate and land and prices are much cheaper than the Thai capital and the southern destinations, making it lucrative when purchasing a house or land in Chiang Mai.

For foreigners without Thai relatives, the leasehold is in general applied to foreigner ‘acquisition’ of real estate, and more specifically, the plot of land the structure is built on. The old scheme of investing in Chiang Mai property should be avoided whereby foreigners would establish a ‘paper’ business when purchasing the land the house is to be constructed on. Thai officials are now serious at checking such businesses’ legitimacy and implications could be possible, should a firm be proven to be false.

While pieces of land beyond the ever growing city limits provide the best value for money, land plots within the city centre – especially around Nimminhemin Road, the riverside and Night Bazaar areas – have increased considerably in line with Chiang Mai’s flourishing tourist industry and the economy’s common increase. This land might be relatively costly, but area trends predict that it will remain if not increase in price as the scarcity of land in these locations continues to grow.

The prices of land in Chiang Mai vary according to demand and supply as well as to the particular locations’ specific attributes. Price tickets can range from around 30,000 baht per four square metres in the downtown area, which will then decrease on a sliding scale to approximately 7,500 baht in the suburban locations which are still positioned within a 20-minute drive of the city centre.

When purchasing land in Chiang Mai, there are three different kinds of title deeds. The most solid and accurate are Chanotes since they’ve been demarcated making use of GPS and normally come with inner urban real estate. Nor Gor is another much used deed on land in Chiang Mai, which aren’t that accurate but allow the holders full entitlement to the land or houses they’re buying. There are other title deeds, such as Nor Gor Saam. However, these should be avoided due to the lack of security.