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As promised , the native Eng version of "My Real Estate Journey (part1)
Hopefully it is useful for you.
YakiHonne (nprofile…pqve) #longformcontent
quoting
naddr1qq…zkal27th January 2017, marks a significant day in my life for two reasons. It is my son's birthday and the day my family and I moved into our first home in Nonthaburi. This house represents the first mortgage I’ve ever taken. If I don’t overthink it, my regular income is enough to cover the mortgage payments, allowing us to own the house in about 20 years. However, I wasn't keen on being in debt for that long, so I started exploring additional income opportunities beyond my regular job. This event sparked my journey into learning new financial strategies.
“Being in debt (for the house) ignited my drive to seek additional income”
I had the opportunity to study various investment fields, including stock market trading, forex , commodities speculation, mutual funds, bonds, Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies. It took me several years to understand and only to survive in these markets, but I still hadn't achieved my financial goals. During that period in Bangkok, there was a boom in condo development along the BTS Skytrain lines in PhayaThai and Sukhumvit. The bustling buying and selling scene led many to succeed in real estate investments. Meanwhile, the Purple skytrain line in Nonthaburi (MRT purple line) officially opened, becoming the first line to connect Nonthaburi with Bangkok. New condos were being built all along the Purple Line, attracting many real estate investors.
"Rush to buy condos along the Purple Line in Nonthaburi to succeed like owning condos along the BTS in Bangkok" or "Buy a condo in Nonthaburi for convenient and fast access to work and the city center." However, the truth is that Nonthaburi already has a comprehensive public transportation system, including buses, minivans, motorcycle taxis, and the Chao Phraya Express Boat.
Public transportation in Nonthaburi is already comprehensive, convenient, and efficient.
Travel within Nonthaburi is excellent, and commuting to and from Bangkok is not that difficult either. The cost of transportation is much cheaper than taking the Skytrain. I couldn't help but wonder if these newly built condos were truly necessary. Is there really going to be as much demand as predicted? Is it really a worthwhile investment? As I write this in August 2024, I believe anyone who keeps up with investment news and the real estate market knows the reality of the situation.
My Perspective on Real Estate Investment
From my own studies, real estate investment can be broadly categorized into two main types:
Flipping This is exactly what it sounds like – buying with the intention of selling later for a profit, hoping to gain from the future value increase (capital gain).
Holding This involves purchasing and holding onto the property, generating monthly rental income to create cash flow.
Holding is a safer investment strategy. It may not yield spectacular or thrilling returns, but it has the advantage of providing steady income in any economic climate. Housing is one of the basic necessities for humans, unless we decide to live in caves or on trees. However, the major obstacle to entering the real estate sector, as many know, is having sufficient capital. Starting with a few million baht to own a condo unit is common. If one doesn't have enough cash, they'll need to take out a bank loan. At that time, my family wasn't prepared to venture into this sector. I understood that it was an interesting investment, but it just wasn’t the right time for us. But let's be clear, real estate doesn't just mean condos. It also includes
- Condominiums
- Townhouses
- Town homes
- Detached houses
- Commercial buildings
- Land
- Warehouses
- Apartments and rental rooms
- Hotels
- Resorts
Real estate = immovable assets that you can't carry with you
Family Crisis and Owning My First Condo
As I mentioned earlier, "Being in debt (for the house) fueled my drive to find additional income," but it turned out to be a double-edged sword that ultimately harmed me. I engaged in speculative trading in the futures market and ended up with a portfolio that exploded, resulting in a loss of around 1,500,000 baht.
This stemmed from the "new trader trap" – overestimating my understanding of trading and believing I had a firm grasp on the market. I wonder if others have had similar experiences. Let me tell you my trader journey
Learning to Trade on My Own and Failing I studied trading from YouTube, watching 3–4 videos, and thought I had it all figured out. It seemed so simple. But when I started trading for real, I faced losses.
Searching for the Ultimate Holy Grail Trading System I scoured both Thai and international forums, tried out free and paid systems, but ended up with losses.
Enrolling in Courses I took both online courses and one-on-one lessons with experts. I studied with two mentors who are now consistently profitable, having left their day jobs to support their families and send their children to international schools through trading income. Their success sounded impressive and admirable, but due to my trading methods and time constraints, I couldn’t replicate their results and ended up with losses. However, the losses were minimal since I followed a structured system.
Hiring a Programmer to Write a Trading Bot, but Not Being Thorough From my first mentor, I learned how to create and backtest a trading system systematically , making me a systematic trader. This method required monitoring the 15-minute timeframe, which was quite disruptive to my daily life. During family outings or even while driving, I had to manage trades, which often led to awkward situations. Realizing this wasn’t working, I hired a freelancer from “Fastwork” to code a trading bot for me.
“Fastwork” is a Thai online platform for hiring freelance for your specific needs. A famous “CK Cheong” is a CEO of this platform.
The bot worked well, but the freelancer advised me to "Don’t use it on a live account yet. Test it on a demo account first to ensure it’s reliable, as your trading system is extremely complex."
I tested the bot on a demo account for 1–2 weeks and saw it performing well, so I moved it to a live account. Here’s where my mistake was: during demo testing, the bot always won without any losses.
My trading system was a grid trading strategy with very narrow take profit and stop loss points. For 10 trades, losing occurred once or twice, but each loss cost 15%. Nothing comes for free, also with a system with a high win rate of 90–95% can still suffer from significant losses when the 5–10% losing streak hits. My mentor referred to this as "inverted martingale," which can be mitigated with good and extremely disciplined money management.
Three months after starting the bot on a live account, it faced a losing streak. The bot didn’t execute stop loss orders, allowing losses to accumulate. When I checked, my portfolio, valued at nearly one million baht, had lost 50–60%. I consulted the freelancer, who discovered a coding error in the stop loss command. Consequently, the portfolio suffered heavy damage.
Gambling Since trading on my own was challenging, I tried to find a shortcut. The result? Losses. If you’ve ever heard of one sport arbitrage that scumbled to dust , I was one of the victim
All of these slammed me during 2017–2018
The outcome was a strained relationship. My wife was upset not just about the trading losses but also because I had kept everything to myself and didn’t involve her in the process. She was more frustrated with my secrecy and lack of communication than the financial losses themselves.
She even mentioned that if we continued living together, there was a high chance she might ask for a divorce due to her anger. There was a period when she took our 2 years old boy and went on a trip, cutting off contact with me to clear her mind. Eventually, we did manage to talk things over, but the damage had been done.
My wife suggested that we live separately, which I accepted. I chose to pack my things up and stray away from the house. The main reason was to provide a stable home environment for her and our child, ensuring their safety. As for me, I was willing to be on my own, accepting full responsibility for the mess I had created. It was the best solution given the circumstances.
It’s kind of strange, but it turns out that a couple is sitting down to find a rental room for me close to my workplace. That way, I won’t have to deal with long commutes. They’re starting to get an idea of the rental prices, but they also discovered that there are new condos nearby, with rental prices not much different from regular rooms. So, they decided to check them out.
“I intended to rent a condo, but ended up becoming the owner of one instead”
The condo I ended up with is in the Zeen Condo project, located in Soi Ngamwongwan 31. It’s a 6th-floor corner unit facing away from the community alley, with no tall buildings blocking the view. It’s well-ventilated, quiet, and measures 28.xx square meters. The unit became available after falling through with two previous buyers. I’ll share more about the thought process and decision-making behind taking on additional debt and the implications of that decision in the next update. Until next time Take care
