Selling and taking your money out: the foreign owner's exit

Selling a Thai condominium as a foreign owner is a documented sequence, not a single event: you agree a buyer, register the transfer at the Land Office, pay the charges due, and remit the proceeds abroad. Each step either produces a document or needs one, and the single most important document was issued on the day you bought. This article follows that chain from the decision to sell to the money reaching your home account.

It links rather than repeats. The deeper resale note on the investment hub sets out who can buy and how long the timeline really runs; the tax article works through exactly how each charge is computed. What this article keeps in view is the through-line most owners lose sight of — the paperwork that connects buying to getting your money out. It carries no estimate of what your unit will fetch and no view on when to sell, because we hold no resale prices for any building on this site.

In brief

• Selling is a documented chain — a Thai buyer releases the quota slot; a foreign-to-foreign sale keeps the building's quota position unchanged.
• You do not transfer your FET to your buyer; a foreign buyer must remit their own purchase funds from abroad under section 19, which narrows the pool.
• At transfer: 2% fee on the appraised value; SBT 3.3% inside five years, otherwise 0.5% stamp duty; withholding tax under section 50 (1% for a company seller).
• Thailand has no separate capital gains tax — a property gain is ordinary income; the individual withholding may be treated as final under section 48(4) (take advice).
• Repatriation goes through a commercial bank against the original inward FET, the sale documents and the tax receipts; up to the original amount is clean, the gain needs more evidence.
• The document that lets your money leave is the one your bank issued when it arrived — keep the whole chain.

Who can buy a foreign-owned unit, and what happens to the quota?

Three kinds of buyer, and the difference between them is the building's foreign-ownership quota. Foreign ownership of the aggregate unit floor area in a condominium may not exceed 49% under section 19 bis of the Condominium Act B.E. 2522 (1979), so where your unit sits inside that quota, who you sell to decides what happens to it. A Thai buyer can always buy, and doing so releases the quota position back to the building. Another foreigner keeps the building's quota position unchanged — a foreign-to-foreign transfer consumes no new headroom, because the quota slot passes with the unit. A foreigner buying a currently Thai-held unit, by contrast, needs the building to have quota headroom on transfer day.

One point is worth stating plainly, because it is a common misunderstanding: you do not hand your own foreign-ownership evidence to your buyer. A foreign buyer must bring their own purchase money into Thailand from abroad and evidence it under section 19, exactly as you did — the qualifying inward remittance is theirs to make, not something inherited from you. That is straightforward for an overseas buyer and awkward for a foreigner already living here on baht income, which quietly narrows the pool. Who can buy, and why a foreign-quota unit can be easier to sell on, is covered in full in the resale note we link below.

What is registered on the day you sell?

The sale is registered in a single appointment at the Land Office branch that holds the title for the building. Seller and buyer, or their appointed representatives, attend together; the registration officer checks the unit title deed and the parties' identity documents, confirms the price declared for registration, and — where the buyer is foreign — checks the transaction against the 49% quota before anything is entered. For a condominium the office relies on a certificate from the building's juristic person confirming that the seller owes no outstanding common-area charges and, for a foreign buyer, that the transfer keeps the building within its limit.

Once the documents are in order the charges are assessed and paid at the counter, and only then does the officer cancel the seller's name and enter the buyer's on the title. If you cannot attend in person, a power of attorney in the prescribed form lets a representative register the transfer for you — the form matters, because irregular powers of attorney are a recurring cause of failed appointments. What happens across that appointment, and what to bring, is set out in our transfer-day note.

What tax do you pay when you sell — and is there capital gains tax?

Four charges can arise at transfer, and there is no separate capital gains tax on property in Thailand. Every charge is calculated on the higher of the government appraised value or the price declared for registration, not on whatever the parties privately agreed. The transfer registration fee is 2% of the appraised value, payable to the Department of Lands and customarily shared by contract. Specific business tax of 3.3% (a 3% Revenue Code rate plus a 10% municipal surcharge) applies under Revenue Code section 91/2 where the seller has held the unit for less than five years — with exceptions, such as an individual seller having been named on the house registration for at least a year. Where it is not due, stamp duty of 0.5% applies instead; you pay one or the other, never both.

The fourth charge is withholding tax on the transfer, collected under Revenue Code section 50. For a company seller it is a flat 1% of the appraised or registered price; for an individual seller it is a progressive amount the Land Office computes from the appraised value and the number of years held. A gain on the property is not taxed under a separate capital gains regime — it is ordinary assessable income, and for an individual seller the tax withheld may be treated as final under section 48(4) rather than carried into the annual return, an election genuinely worth advice because it is not always the cheaper outcome. We do not re-derive the individual withholding formula here; the tax article we link below sets out how each charge is computed.

How do you get the sale proceeds out of Thailand?

Through a commercial bank, against the documents — and the decisive document is the one your bank issued when you bought. Under the Bank of Thailand's foreign-exchange regulations a foreigner may remit sale proceeds abroad through a Thai commercial bank, and the bank will want to see the original inward-remittance evidence from the purchase — the Foreign Exchange Transaction (FET) form issued for an inward remittance of USD 50,000 or more, or the credit advice issued below that — together with the sale and transfer documents and the receipts for the tax paid at the Land Office. The outward transfer is itself documented by the bank in turn.

In practice, remitting up to the original inward amount you brought in is procedurally clean, because the FET evidences that the money entered Thailand from abroad for this unit. The amount above it — the gain, if there is one — is not blocked, but the bank will ask for more supporting documentation and an explanation of the source, so plan for that. As on the way in, send the funds out in foreign currency and let the conversion happen at the Thai bank. It is the strongest argument for filing discipline: the document that lets your money leave is the document your bank issued when it arrived, sometimes a decade earlier.

When and at what rate you convert is your own decision. Suwanvara Property gives no foreign-exchange or investment advice, recommends no bank, transfer service or exchange rate, and takes no view on where a rate will go — that is a conversation for your own bank or a regulated foreign-exchange provider.

What documents do you keep from the day you buy?

Keep the whole evidence chain from the purchase, because the exit is only ever as smooth as the paperwork you saved years earlier. The core set a foreign seller relies on is the original FET form or credit advice from the purchase, the owner's copy of the unit title deed, the sale and purchase agreements from both the buy and the sell side, the Land Office receipts for the fees and taxes at transfer, the juristic person's debt-free letter and — where your buyer is foreign — the foreign-quota letter, and a power of attorney in the prescribed form if you cannot attend yourself.

The discipline is simple: keep the original FET with the title deed, keep a scan of everything somewhere you can reach from abroad, and give a copy to whoever would act for you if you could not. A foreign owner's exit is rarely defeated by tax or by the quota — it is defeated by a missing document from a transaction that closed long ago. Preparing that chain in advance, and confirming who pays which of the four charges in writing before transfer day, is the kind of pre-exit checking the firm can carry out under a separate engagement.

General information for foreign owners — not investment, tax or legal advice on any person's situation. Legal and tax work is a separate engagement with Suwanvara Law Firm under its own professional fee, never bundled into a brokerage fee; you remain free to appoint another adviser.

We publish developers' current asking prices, not resale prices. This article contains no estimate of what a unit will sell for and no view on when to sell or hold. Past performance is not indicative of future results, and we do not project returns, prices or appreciation.

Suwanvara Property does not provide foreign-exchange or investment advice and recommends no bank, transfer service or exchange rate. When and how you convert and remit currency is your own decision.

Tax rates, reliefs, appraised values, fee schedules and exchange-control procedures all change, and transfer fees have periodically been reduced for defined periods. Treat the figures here as the standing framework as at 25 July 2026, and confirm the current position with the Land Department, your Thai bank and us before you rely on them.

Sources

• Condominium Act B.E. 2522 (1979), section 19 and section 19 bis (checked 2026-07-25)
• Revenue Code — sections 91/2, 50 and 48(4) (checked 2026-07-25)
• Land Code and Land Department transfer-fee schedule (checked 2026-07-25)
• Bank of Thailand — foreign-exchange regulations (checked 2026-07-25)