A happy retirement doesn’t depend on the size of the house or owning a huge mansion or condo. When you can be happy by yourself.
Said Khun Pallop who is the owner of a textile exporter to Japan for over 40 years. He decided to retire at 67 during the COVID-19 pandemic to spend time with his wife and his 3 children. Khun Pallop shares his experience on how he invested in the property to live happily retired with his family.
Privacy needed
My wife always said that ‘a house is everything’. It’s a happiness for everyone in the family, especially when you are not unable to commute elsewhere, almost every activity happens in the house ranging from taking care of family members, the garden, factory and also taking care of my employees.
When a house has all the facilities, I rarely want to go outside, especially for me who is already retired. I have my television which I can watch all day long, exercise equipment, and musical instruments in my house as well. As of now, my daughter is also working on turning the attic into her private zone. These fulfilments and the private zone are so meaningful to me.
Even though the house is important for everyone, the meaning given to the house might vary among individuals. It demonstrates that the moment we reach the retirement age, the more meaningful the house is as we are spending almost 24 hours every single day in the house.
"The older you are, the more you want to have your private zone."
This had us thinking because normally people would assume that older people in their retirement age might want to spend more time with their family so they would not feel lonely. However, the truth is they still want their private zone to do things they love and balance out their personal and family life.
Favourite hobbies and favourite corner
The private zone confirms that the house for retirement age needs to have enough space for all the activities.
My wife’s lifestyle before and after retirement has changed. She worked very hard in every process of the job. However, after retirement, she became more chilled, taking care of the plants and cooking.
For me, even though my lifestyle has changed a little, I have got more activities and hobbies to do at home such as exercising, watching movies all day, playing guitar and piano, and singing karaoke with my wife at night.
We asked Khun Pallop if he had any house renovation to support the retirement.
Khun Pallop said that he only renovated the deck to be his private zone to do things by himself.
25-year plan
At first, we planned to live in a townhouse even after we retired, but after years of working, we planned to buy a single-detached house because we thought that the house for our retirement needs to be perfect and better than what we had. That was when we started searching for a single-detached house with enough space to take a walk and plant some plants and also for other activities that the townhouse could not deliver. When we had our own business, that was when we looked around for the perfect house and it took us 25 years to find one.
Few people have long-term planning before they buy a house. Normally people would buy a house after considering the price and their current lifestyle, which might not suit the lifestyle in their retirement age. Just like Khun Pallop who buys a new house to fulfil his long-term lifestyle.
“The most important thing for retirees is whether you are in a condominium, house, or huge mansion. If you can’t find happiness within yourself, you will not be happy.
Some people might think that they need an enormous house to fulfil their retirement age’s needs, but it’s not necessarily. The house only needs to have enough private zones. Take family members’ lifestyle into account, the house needs to fulfil that and encourage them to live happily together even if we cannot go out because of the COVID-19, our happiness is still there.
Find the dream house online
“When we were looking for a house, we searched through many villages and found one that matched our needs. We came for a second tour and decided to buy it right away.”
Baby boomers normally feel a lot more familiar with offline retailers such as pamphlets, billboards, getting information from an acquittance, and even going to the actual locations. However, nowadays, an online platform is so much easier to reach and ease searching for the dream property.
“I have heard about DDproperty from YouTube ads. DDproperty has reviews on properties, but most of them are single-detached houses and condominiums. Also, because I love learning about home related content, I was introduced to DDproperty.”Searching for the dream house through project information, documents, and the official website of the projects is not the only way. Like Khun Pallop, he chose to learn about the houses through YouTube, which is his most familiar online platform to help him decide the best property for himself and his family.“DDproperty suits younger generations more than baby boomers. Most of the time, I would ask my kids to help search for the information and compare the information from each website since I’m not very good at it. The latest house we bought in Hua Hin, my daughter, helped with searching for the price and locations on DDproperty.”Online resources save a lot of time and efficiently help with decision making because of their useful basic information and reviews from real users available.DDproperty offered reports about the real estate market, consumers survey about the market, and news updated regularly to help with the decision making.
3 criteria that made our minds
“Factors that made us buy this house are 1, the location, Rama 2, which is near my office and near seafood markets. We love seafood, so that is nice for us. The location also made it easier to commute to Cha-Am and Hua Hin. 2, price.”
Every generation has ‘price’ as the first criteria. However, when buying a house for retirement, price is not the first one on the list, but these 3 factors.
1) The right location – it needs to be near work locations and also easier to commute for a holiday.
2) The right price – when we decide to choose the location, we will roughly know the price range so we can compare and identify if the places are cheap, appropriate or too expensive.
3) The right features that fulfil the needs – such as the design, safety, and facilities.
Invest in property for retirement?
For people who want to buy a house for retirement, not only do you need to know your lifestyle and the family members’ lifestyle, but also the location and price need to be appropriate. You need to know what your private zone looks like and build it now as when you get older, you would spend more time at home and enjoy doing things by yourself. So when that time comes, you will find inner happiness by being with yourself.
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