Moving to LOS

[Raggamuffin]

I'm sure this has been asked a million times before so please forgive me. I am seriously thinking about buying a house in LOS but have found out that I can only do this if I set up a business. Several real estate agents have contacted me and said that they can do this for about 15,000 Bht. I would like to know how legal is this procedure and are there any foreigners reading this who have actually done this?

Thanks a lot for your help guys

[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.

[Raggamuffin]

LivinLos

Thanks a lot for your help buddy. From what you have told me which option would you recommend?

Thanks again.

[LivinLOS]

Depends.. Buying a house of a known large developer with assets and a provided community I would be comfortable enough with the lease and first purchase clause system..

If buying my own single house plot or doing a 2 - 5 house development myself, I would go the route of using a corporate structure to bend the rules to ownership..

I guess it boils down to feeling like a corporate structure or large scale developer would still be there to work with you, and yet I would feel none of the same security purchasing from a single individual who had no interest in keeping a reputation / not ripping me off later..

Also there are issues with sales taxes etc.. When corporate owned you can simply sell the company to the next farang and avoid land tax transfer duties..

Whatever you do only take online advice with a mountain of salt and get good local legal representation, also take great care in having legitimate wills (Thai, your overseas ones are about as good as toilet paper) which specifically are catered to protecting your land and property assets for your dependants.. Some things are transferable others are not.