Bangkok: When Phatsakon Kaewkla returned home and discovered a crack in the walls of his 22nd floor Bangkok apartment, the horror of Phatsakon Kaewkla was shocked for hours.

The 23-year-old Thai suffered the greatest tremor in generations and suffered the greatest shock, which was unsafe, and he decided to stay away for two days until experts gave high levels clearance.

Now, sales coordinators are among many Bangkok residents who want to know whether they should look for safer housing in a city where hundreds of residential buildings were damaged by a magnitude 7.7-magnitude earthquake hit neighboring Myanmar on March 28.

The owner of the Phatsakon apartment assured him that the engineers inspected each part of the building and concluded that it was habitable.

But he was still shocked by the cracks.

“I’m a little scared. My mom told me to move out here, too.”

More than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the epicenter, the Thai capital (which has hundreds of towers and gleaming high-rise figures on its skyline) has barely experienced this tremor.

Owen Zhu, a 40-year-old Bangkok real estate consultant, told AFP that the impact on its industry is “important”.

“People seem to have realized that living in high-rise buildings can pose greater risks when it comes to earthquake resistance than two-story or low-rise buildings,” said China’s real estate experts.

He said the earthquake caused a series of inquiries from residents who hoped to relocate in the past week due to widespread “fear and anxiety”.

“Perception Gap”

Yigit Buyukergun from Türkiye was at home in Bangkok with his wife during the Quake attack. After it faded, they appeared from under the table to check for damage to the 22-story apartment.

“It’s broken everywhere, especially in the hallway. You can see all the roofs really terrible,” the 25-year-old said.

Despite Buyukergun’s security concerns, the neighborhood owners didn’t seem surprised.

They said it was “100% safe, but I don’t believe it.”

There are a large number of studio apartments rented in Bangkok’s sprawling residential projects, and a deposit of two months is required for a year.

For safety reasons, most apartments do not allow short-term rentals and only hotels under 30 days can be rented.

Zhu said tenants and property owners often disagree on the livability of geologically damaged apartments, and disputes are becoming increasingly common.

He told AFP that there is a gap in perception and judgment between the two parties.”

“The landlords think the department is safe, while the tenant thinks it is unsafe and insists on moving out and getting their deposit back”.

Raise the bar

Zhu said earthquake safety standards for buildings in Thailand were not particularly strict before the disaster, rather than something that customers seeking real estate were asked specifically.

The increase in anxiety disorders since the earthquake is a shocking collapse of a 30-storey building in Bangkok that has plagued dozens of workers, most of whom remain unexplained a week later.

City authorities are now investigating whether unqualified building materials have been used in their buildings.

Zhu said that more customers are now choosing lower-level.

For home hunters who are still considering high-rise buildings, they usually require the property to “continue or be harmed or at least not severely affected during the recent earthquake.”

He believes that property prices will rise for a long time as demand for safer buildings drives expensive earthquake resistance, adding: “Bars in the Thai real estate sector have been raised”.

But for Buyukergun, talking about improving building regulations was not enough to calm his concerns about uncontrollable factors in geology.

Although the prevalence of the earthquake in his native Türkiye made him uneasy, he did not expect to feel the same about Thailand.

“Thailand is safe,” he recalled thinking before.

“That’s why I can’t believe the earthquake.”