One of the fastest and cheapest way to have your own house in Thailand is by building a so called Knock-Down house.
Prices for Knock-Down houses start from $170 per square meter, while the average house in Thailand cost about $500 to $700 per square meter.
Knock-Down houses have a normal concrete foundation as every other house. What makes them different is that the walls are made of a steel framework with so called Shera Wood panels on the outside and Plaster on the inside of the walls.
Usually most parts are being prefabricated offside and the building process onside just takes 1- 2 weeks. From the date of signing the contract until the completion of our house, it took 9 weeks.
The PROS that Knock-Down houses have, is the low price, the fast completion and that is very easy and cheap to add more rooms to it. The CONS are the shorter lifespan of 30 years and that it is not as stable as a house build out of bricks.
Our house has 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms on 40 square meter and it did cost us $10,900 to build it (including labor, materials and registration with the local government). For additional $3,000 to $5,000 we could also pull up the walls on the ground floor, which would double the living area to 80 square meters.
The bottom line is that Knock-Down houses are a good alternative to a brick house if you have a low budget. For us it definitely made sense because we have spent more money renting a similar house over the last 2 and a half years, then for the construction of our Knock-Down house.