[LivinLOS]

you can purchase a house no problem..

However owning the land the house sits on is not possible.. You can do one of three things...

You can have a nominee owner (Thai) obviously risky as you have 0 security..

You can lease the land for as max of 30 years, you can also pre pay for 2 additional 30 year leases in the origional document though the land office will only accept the 30 year max.. What happens if the Thai wanted to contest the ownership after 30 years in a court has never yet been tested.. Best thinking goes the leases SHOULD hold but this is Thailand.. You can however have a first purchase option added stating that you can buy the land for a nominal amount (pre agreed, say 100k baht) at any time farang ownership of land ever comes through.. Also should you think you are having issues you can alwas buy it and put it in a company name at a later date.. Basicaly it gives you 29 years and 11 months to make you mind up and costs no annual company declarations.. Basically this is the most legal way and bends no laws and I often reccomend it if purchasing from a developer.

Lastly is forming a corporation to own the land.. This does work but has some risks.. Firstly you cannot own the company outright so you have to have 7 thai shareholders holding a min of 51% (but they can be non voting shareholders so that you owning 10% voting shares still control the company and can fire etc the remaining Thai shareholders) but it is specifically forbidden to set up a company purely for the purposes of getting around farang land ownership, I am told it is advisable to hold no more then 35 - 39% of the company shares if the company does this.. Of course if you are also running a Thai biz it becomes less of an issue but because you are bending rules it alsways has the possibility of becoming a problem IF there is a strng anti farng government in place.. Basically it does work, it is semi legal, many many people do it.. It does however have some risks and highest running costs.