Property Purchase

[DWS]

Greetings all, does anyone here have experience with purchasing property in Thailand by way of a company structure. For example where a company is set up (Farang/Thai with Thai majority shareholding but split amoungst several parties) to purchase a house and land?

 

Any views on how secure this is? I have heard of possible crack downs on the legitimacy of such Thai shareholders. Is this likely to be retroactive, or more focused on new companies being formed? And how do you off-load (transfer ownership) of such a property when you want to sell it?

 

Any advise appreciated,

D.W.S.

[unit731]

Get yourself a solicitor/lawyer.

 

I do know farangs who have done this. Something about a 30 year lease and a 'dummy' corporation. There are Thai laws involved here that you may or may not be breaking.

 

A farang can own a condo.

 

I do know of one farang where the 'partner' obtained a mortage/note/loan on the property and, well, the money was gone. So a little caution may be needed.

 

Others here know much more than I.

 

Did you do a search. This question comes up from time to time.

 

And if you do end up in a condo or a house developement, READ the property owners agreement. Some place have great care taken of outside of home/condo, while others leave their houses/condos to rot. Never painting, no repairs to exterior, etc. And this leaves the value of yours to diminish.

 

You have been warned !

[The_Munchmaster]

Most farang who have purchased properties/land other than condos have done it this way, through a company. The company is set up with 51% Thai / 49% farang shareholding but the Thai (I think they're called nominee shareholders) sign something which effectively sells their shares back to the farang so that the farang actually owns 100% of the company. Something like that anyway. When I had a company in LOS it was set up that way.

 

However it's illegal and I would never take the risk of buying property this was, particularly as after the coup the powers that be stated that every land / property transaction by a company, where farangs owned part of the company, would be investigated to make sure that this scenario wasn't happening.

[OCgringo]

never spend $$$$ in LOS for property unless you can afford to walk away from it , (same goes for most 3rd world countries)

 

The rules are made for Thais and not you,

 

And the rules can change leaving you without any back-up

 

OC

[The_Munchmaster]

It's highly improbable that if you bought a condo the rules would later change to make that purchase null and void. But with land the law is clear, farangs cannot own land, and therefore to try and get around the law by buying through an illegal company set-up is highly risky.

[Barry]

It's highly improbable that if you bought a condo the rules would later change to make that purchase null and void. But with land the law is clear, farangs cannot own land, and therefore to try and get around the law by buying through an illegal company set-up is highly risky.

 

Is this specifically Westerners or any non Thai?

[Neo]

Non Thai. The reasononing behind the law is to keep foreign speculators from driving up the prices of land which in turn would make it unaffordable for Thai's.

 

Foreigners using the company arrangement to get around this are directly in the cross hairs of the government. They are performing extra blocking of such deals as well as going through existing ownership structures to root them out. So yes it is no longer a gray area, but point blank illegal and they are actively cracking down on it.

 

[Barry]

Non Thai. The reasononing behind the law is to keep foreign speculators from driving up the prices of land which in turn would make it unaffordable for Thai's.

 

That's what I thought.

 

I actually think this is a good thing and wish they did it in my own country (Australia).

[WorldFun]

Actually I think thai law just states farang can't own land or own real estate biz, so buying a house (sitting on land) might in theory be legal while obviously setting up company in order to buy land/house is NOT.

 

However I suppose the closest to 100% legal land 'ownership' is by being a real active company owner doing legal biz & then buying land as an asset to the company using it as biz 'office', investment whatever & NOT using illegal nominee shareholders, but actual shareholders to get below 50% in order to maintain thai shareholder majority making it a thai company.

 

Then again perfect legal to secure your deal you can make most of minority share holders without voting right, signing rights etc & being sole director & signer effectively owner & if keeping low profile well below 49% ownership say 39% then 99.9% one will go way under the radar of government crackdowns/investigations altogether.

 

I suppose it might depend which layer/adviser is being asked :-)

 

Ok call me stupid or optimist, but I expect my house to double in value within 5 years & I trust I'll be able to take the full capital gain / profit out of the country without any sort of problems / tax / restrictions LOL

 

Not to mention providing 'free rent' & heavy amounts of tax deductions all along.

 

LOS is really the true wall street of the east

 

:content:

[khun_khon_neua]

Non Thai. The reasononing behind the law is to keep foreign speculators from driving up the prices of land which in turn would make it unaffordable for Thai's.

 

That's what I thought.

 

I actually think this is a good thing and wish they did it in my own country (Australia).

 

While not outright forbiding foreign ownership in Australia' date=' I believe there are strict rules including no more than 50 per cent of the dwellings in any one development are sold to foreign interests.