Relocation services in Thailand for expats and companies
A move to Thailand is decided in pieces: a district, a school place, a lease drafted in a language most newcomers do not read, a car, a bank account. Asia Relocation Thailand runs those pieces as one file, from an office in Bangkok, with a single coordinator answering for the whole of it.
Relocation and moving are two different trades, and the confusion between them costs arrivals more time than anything else. Moving is about household goods. Relocation is everything that has to exist before those goods have somewhere to go: a district that matches the commute, a school that still has a place in the right year group, a lease whose clauses you have actually read, a temporary roof for the weeks in between, and the small administrative steps that only announce themselves once you have a Thai address. That work is what the industry calls destination services, and it is what this page is about.
Asia Relocation Thailand takes it on as a single file. One coordinator plans the sequence, books the viewings, sits in on the paperwork, and stays reachable once you are in. Our consultants work in English, French and Thai — which matters less for conversation than for the two moments where ground is quietly lost: reading a lease drafted in Thai, and dealing with a landlord or an admissions office directly rather than through someone passing messages along.
The honest version of this service is that some of it is fast and some of it is not, and knowing which is which is most of the value. Finding and moving into a suitable rental in Bangkok takes one to three weeks on average once the brief is clear. A school place in a sought-after year group is not on that clock at all — it depends on a waiting list we do not control. So we sequence the decisions rather than run them in parallel: the city, then the school, then the home, because a lease signed before a school place is confirmed is a lease you may live with for a year. Where a date depends on a landlord, a building or an admissions office, we say so before you plan around it.
Relocation also rarely arrives alone. A lease is signed against a visa status, and a delivery date is set against a move-in date. Our Thailand visa & immigration team and our moving team sit inside the same country team, so the three calendars are planned together instead of being reconciled after one of them has already slipped.
Eight destination services, and when each one has to start
Take the whole programme or a single piece of it. Each service is scoped and priced up front, and each is delivered by a consultant who lives here — what follows is how each one works in Thailand specifically, with the procedure in full on its own page.
Home Search
Thai owners ask for a document pack and one to two months' deposit before a key changes hands, and the clauses that decide the next year are rarely the ones translated for you. We shortlist against budget, commute and family, view with you, negotiate, and read the lease line by line before it is signed.
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Temporary Housing
A proper address while the permanent one is still being decided — serviced apartments, extended-stay hotels, short lets, with the booking handled for you. It is also the service that reaches furthest across Thailand: Hua Hin and Samui as well as the four markets we work in daily.
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Office Search
Co-working, a serviced floor or a conventional lease, matched to headcount, budget and the compliance constraints that come with a Thai entity. We compare what is genuinely available, negotiate the terms, and flag the ones your finance team will ask about a year from now.
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School Search
Thailand's international sector is not confined to the capital: ten international and bilingual schools sit on our working list for Chiang Mai alone. We build the shortlist from your child's record and the curriculum you need to keep going, arrange the accompanied visits, and see the application through to enrolment.
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City Orientation
Best run before the home search rather than after it. A guided day through the districts on your shortlist — transport, clinics, markets, what an ordinary week actually costs — so the lease you eventually sign is one you chose rather than one you accepted.
Cross-Cultural Training
How a Thai workplace and a Thai street actually operate, including the conventions nobody explains because everyone already knows them. The accompanying partner meets them first and usually needs the briefing sooner than the assignee does.
Language Training
Thai for the household, English where the household needs it, taught by tutors we have worked with before and scheduled around office hours and the school run rather than against them.
Car Leasing
Buying a car in Thailand means registration, insurance, and a resale at the worst possible moment — the end of a posting. A lease carries all three for you, on a term set to match the assignment.
Four kinds of arrival, and what each one decides first
The services are the same. The order in which they are used is not, and getting that order wrong is expensive. Here is how the four profiles we work with most often actually sequence a move.
Families
For a family, the school is the fixed point and the home moves around it. We start from the child's academic record, language level and curriculum, work out which schools are realistic, and only then look at districts within a tolerable run of the gate. Families who reverse that order tend to sign a lease first and spend the next year commuting across the city twice a day.
Career movers
A single assignee or a couple without school-age children has one hard constraint — the office — and far more freedom on everything else. The trade-off is between rent, commute and the kind of neighbourhood you want to come home to, and it is best made on the ground rather than from a listings site. Orientation before the search saves more time here than anywhere else.
HR and mobility teams
What a mobility manager needs from us is a policy respected, a budget held, and progress reported before it has to be chased. We work to the policy you give us, flag the case where the market will not meet it rather than quietly overspending, and report at agreed points. If your programme spans more than one country in the region, our regional overview sets out how that is coordinated.
Diplomatic, NGO and international organisations
Postings with a fixed term and a fixed budget are a different exercise: the lease has to end when the mission ends, the school has to accept a mid-year entry, and the paperwork has to survive an audit. We are used to working with school-age dependants under those constraints, and to documenting the choices we recommended and why.
Bangkok first — and the cities assignments actually go to
Our consultants live in Thailand, which is why the advice is about this street rather than this country. Home search, school search and settling-in support run across four markets, and temporary housing reaches further still — Hua Hin and Samui included — for arrivals whose permanent base is not settled yet.
Bangkok
Where most corporate assignments land, and where the choice of district settles both the commute and the school run for the length of the posting. Sukhumvit, Silom, Sathorn, Thonglor, Ari and Ekkamai each behave differently on price, stock and the kind of building on offer, and families often end up looking north towards Nichada Thani in Nonthaburi for school proximity. We know how the market moves in Sathorn, along Sukhumvit and in Ari.
Chiang Mai
Relocation services in Chiang Mai are a steady part of our work, and the city is easy to underestimate. It carries a full international and bilingual school landscape of its own — ten establishments are on our working list, from Prem Tinsulanonda and Chiang Mai International School to Lanna International School and Nakornpayap International — which means a family can be placed here without treating it as a compromise. We arrange accompanied school visits in Chiang Mai as well as in Bangkok, and run home search on request.
Phuket
Destination services for expat families in Phuket follow the island's own rhythm rather than the capital's: rental stock swings with the season, owners are often individuals rather than management companies, and a property that looks available in one month is let for six in another. That is precisely why the search is worth running with someone here. We cover the market for arrivals who work remotely, split their time, or are posted to a business with an island base.
Pattaya
Settling-in support in Pattaya serves a population most relocation pages ignore: staff posted to the industrial corridor along the Eastern Seaboard, within commuting distance of plants and logistics sites rather than of a city-centre tower. The housing question there is not the same one asked in Bangkok, and neither is the school question. Home search and settling-in are covered for arrivals assigned to the area.
Local, accountable, and priced before we start
Resident, not remote
The team lives in Bangkok and works the market week by week. That is what lets us tell you which building has a reputation for withholding deposits and which landlord will actually renegotiate — knowledge that has no source other than being here.
One coordinator, end to end
The same person from the first quote to the end of the settling-in window, across every service you take. No handover between departments, and no repeating your circumstances to someone new each time the file moves on a step.
Three languages at the table
English, French and Thai. It matters at the lease, where the binding text is Thai, and at the admissions interview, where a question asked directly gets a fuller answer than one relayed through an intermediary.
Fixed-scope pricing
You approve the services and the cost before we start. Deposits, rent and third-party fees are stated separately because they belong to someone else and move on their own schedule — we do not fold them into an open-ended hourly total.
Aftercare that is scoped, not vague
Utilities, internet, building management, the registration questions that only appear once you have an address. The settling-in window has a stated length, agreed with the scope, so you know when it ends rather than discovering it.
Realistic answers, including no
If a budget will not reach the district you have in mind, or a year group is full, we say it at the plan stage rather than after the search has run for three weeks. Trust is built by consistency and by managing expectations honestly, not by agreeing early.
From first call to settled, in four steps
Discovery call
Arrival date, household, budget, employer constraints and what the assignment actually requires. We come back with the sequence we would follow and, where two services overlap, with the one we would drop.
Scoped plan and quote
A written scope, service by service, with our fee and the third-party costs listed separately. Anything that depends on a landlord, a building or an admissions office is named as such, with the risk stated rather than buried.
Execution on the ground
Orientation, viewings, negotiations, school visits, applications, lease review and signature. Your coordinator runs it and reports as steps move — including the steps that are waiting on someone who is not us.
Move-in and settling in
Utilities, internet, building management, the first weeks of practical questions. The window has an agreed length, and we tell you what remains open when it closes.
Relocation FAQ
When should we start, and what has to be decided before we arrive?
Can we take only part of the programme, or is it all or nothing?
Who do we deal with day to day, and in which languages?
How much of the timeline is actually in your control?
Do you work outside Bangkok?
What does a household need in hand before a lease or a school place can be confirmed?
How does relocation sit alongside the visa and the household goods?
What happens after move-in, and where does your involvement end?
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Read →Tell us the arrival date, and we will work backwards from it
Family or company, one assignee or a whole programme: send us the date, the household and the constraints you already know about. We come back with the sequence we would follow, a fixed scope, and a plain statement of which parts depend on someone other than us.
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