Renting a Pool Villa in Thailand: A Real Cost Breakdown

If you’ve seen the video where I toured a friend’s villa in Bang Saray, you know the drill: I had to say “this isn’t an ad” the moment I walked in, because the numbers genuinely don’t sound believable. But I’ve got the actual bills, and the camera was rolling the whole time. This guide walks through the rent, the real electricity and water bills, and — just as important — what this example does and doesn’t prove.

Upfront: this isn’t market research, it’s one real example. Rent in Thailand swings wildly by location, size, and whether a pool is involved at all. But one real number beats zero real numbers.

Where the Villa Is and What It’s Like

The villa sits in Bang Saray, part of Sattahip district in Chonburi province, in a villa compound up the road from where I live on upper Sukhumvit. From the outside it looks like an ordinary Thai house, but the backyard has a private pool the owner had built himself — not a standard feature, added after the fact.

It’s a 3-bedroom layout: a master bedroom with its own bathroom, plus two smaller bedrooms sharing a second bathroom. Every bedroom opens directly onto the pool. Air conditioning plus ceiling fans in every room. There’s also an outdoor kitchen/gazebo area and a carport out front.

The Rent: 40,000 THB a Month

This villa rents for 40,000 THB a month — around 56,000 TRY at the exchange rate when we filmed (rates move, so check the current one yourself before drawing conclusions). For comparison: look up what that much money gets you for a 2-bedroom apartment in Istanbul right now. The gap might surprise you.

But don’t generalize from this. A smaller, pool-less place in the same area can go for a lot less; a pool villa in a touristy stretch or central Bangkok can cost several times more. This is one real lease, not “the average villa price.”

The Bills: Electricity and Water

Rent is half the story — the bills are what people actually ask about. Here’s what’s on the real invoices:

Electricity and water unit rates can vary by area and provider — some private compounds run their own electricity distribution at rates different from the government tariff — so these two bills are also a single example, not a national average.

How to Find a Place Like This

Villas like this one rarely show up on the big international listing sites — they move through local networks. What actually works in practice:

• Facebook groups: regional expat/property groups like “Pattaya Property” or “Chonburi Rentals” — owners often post directly, cutting out the agent commission.
• Local listing sites: Thailand-specific platforms like DDproperty and Hipflat carry far more local inventory than the international sites.
• A referral from someone already living there: this villa is exactly how my friends found theirs — spending a few months building local connections is usually how you land the best price and the most trustworthy landlord.

What This Example Proves — and What It Doesn’t

The point of this isn’t “watch this and move here.” Your visa status, your job, your family, your ties — those are real constraints, not things to wave away after watching a video. If visas are the piece you’re stuck on, my ED visa guide or my first-7-days plan are good next reads.

But here’s the other side of it: the wall most of us build in our heads — “this isn’t possible for me” — tends to be a lot thicker than the wall that’s actually there. If I’d told my friends two years ago they’d be living like this, they wouldn’t have believed me. Now they have coffee by the pool every morning.