Pattaya property agents have no shortage of listings as “for sale” and “for rent” signs dot many of the store and shophouse windows downtown.
Nikom, the owner of numerous apartment buildings, houses and businesses in Pattaya, said he and his partners have put up many of the shophouses for sale but gotten no takers.
He has 40 rooms for rent, but only ten currently have tenants, as the bargirls, hotel workers and tour guides who lived in his low-rent rooms have left Pattaya for the provinces.
Likewise, all of the five rental houses he owns stand empty. He used to let them to foreigners at 30,000 baht a month, but renters all have returned home overseas.
Mae Deden doesn’t have a storefront anymore. She’s now selling coffee and grilled chicken out of the front of the Soi Khopai home she owns.
Mae said she used to earn up to 800 baht a day. Now she takes in at best 300 baht a day. But she no longer has a rent payment for a shop, so she has survived.
