Ten Moves for Overseas Postings and Returns — What Helped Most, and a Real Estate Agent in Bangkok

In short: what helps most when moving for a posting or a return home is not the property itself. It is having someone arrange things ahead of you, so that you can start living the day you arrive. Counting a company-sponsored study abroad, I have moved ten times. Once, and only once, something happened that I have never forgotten.

Ten moves, and honestly most of them were miserable

Moving abroad, or moving home, is a different animal from an ordinary move. Belongings split between sea and air freight and arrive on different days. You handle paperwork in another language. The power is not connected when you arrive. There is no bed. There is no saucepan. This is normal.

Neither the posting nor the return is scheduled at your convenience. The company decides. There is never enough time.

I will be honest: for most of those ten moves, I got through them thinking "this is the worst."

In Bangkok, my life began before my belongings did

Once, it was completely different. That was my posting to Bangkok.

For reasons outside my control, I had to start working the moment I arrived. There was no time to look for a home, and no time to buy even a single pot.

The people who helped me were Heiwado, a real estate agency in Bangkok run by a Thai wife and her Japanese husband.

Furniture. Bed sheets. Dishes. Even the toilet paper. All of it was arranged through email alone.

I arrived from the airport, walked into the room, and life was ready to begin that same day.

Four days later, a coup

The city stopped. Offices and shops were closed. Nothing about the home could be done at all.

If that room had still been empty, I shudder to think what would have happened. Because everything had been arranged ahead of me, I could put my attention where it was needed: the work.

Preparing a home looks, in ordinary times, like something that can wait. But sometimes, just as you decide to deal with it later, later disappears. Those four days have stayed with me ever since.

And the help did not stop there

The relationship did not end with the transaction. They taught me how things worked in Thailand, and gave me advice when I was hiring staff. I remain genuinely grateful to that couple.

That experience became the way we work

When Yotsuba Real Estate helps someone who is still overseas, I always think of that room in Bangkok.

• We go and look on your behalf when you cannot. If something concerns you, we send additional video and photographs
• If you ask us "what is it really like," we answer straight — the good and the not so good
• More questions come after the contract is signed than before. We think that is how it should be

There is a way of doing this work where you introduce a property, take the commission, and that is the end of it. But the kindness I received was not of that kind. So I would like to do it the way it was done for me.

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This is a personal recollection by our representative. We have no capital relationship, business partnership, or referral fee arrangement with the company mentioned.