What a foreigner can, and cannot, own in Thailand.

Under the Condominium Act B.E. 2522, a foreigner may own a condominium unit in freehold — the unit itself together with an undivided share of the common property — registered in their own name. For most foreign buyers this is the one route to true ownership, and it is the route the rest of this site is built around.

The right is capped at the level of the building. Across any single condominium, foreigners may hold no more than 49% of the total floor area of all units combined; the remaining 51% must stay in Thai hands. A unit can be registered to a foreigner only while the building is still inside that 49% — which is why a written quota confirmation from the building's juristic person, before you commit, is not a formality but the thing the whole purchase depends on.

Registration of foreign ownership also depends on how the money arrived. The purchase funds must be brought into Thailand from abroad in foreign currency and converted to baht here; the receiving bank issues a Foreign Exchange Transaction (FET) form, which the Land Department requires as evidence that the money came from outside the country.

A foreigner cannot own land, but can lease it. Under the Civil and Commercial Code, sections 537 to 571, a lease of immovable property may run for up to 30 years; a lease agreed for longer is reduced by law to 30. Any lease longer than three years must be registered against the title at the Land Office to be enforceable for its full term.

A well-drafted, registered 30-year lease secures a great deal: exclusive possession for the term, the right to build on the land and to own what you build, rights to sublet or assign where the lease grants them, and a registered interest that a later buyer of the land takes subject to. What it cannot do is become ownership, and it cannot guarantee renewal beyond the 30 years.

That is where the familiar '30 + 30 + 30' promise needs care. A promise to renew is a personal contract with the person who made it. It binds that lessor — but it is not a real right that runs with the land, so it is not automatically enforceable against the lessor's heirs or against a buyer of the land, and a fresh term has to be registered again when the first one ends. Treat a renewal as a hope supported by a contract, not as a certainty you have secured.

A Thai national may own land, including a Thai national who is married to a foreigner. Where a Thai person married to a foreigner buys land, the Land Department requires the couple to sign a joint declaration confirming that the money used is the Thai spouse's own personal property (sin suan tua) and not property jointly held by the marriage (sin somros).

That declaration is the moment at which the foreign spouse formally acknowledges no interest in the land. The land is then registered in the Thai spouse's sole name, as their personal property.

The consequence must be understood plainly before it is signed. The foreigner does not own the land and cannot own it; because the funds are declared to be the Thai spouse's personal property, the foreigner generally cannot later claim the land as a shared marital asset — including on divorce, or on the death of the Thai spouse, where succession follows Thai law and a foreigner who inherits land is in any event required to dispose of it. Where a foreign spouse wants protection around a home they have helped pay for, that protection is built lawfully — a registered lease, a usufruct or a superficies in the foreign spouse's favour — not by trying to claim the land itself.

A Thai limited company can own land, because a company is Thai when Thai nationals hold the majority of its shares. Foreign buyers are sometimes offered a structure in which such a company holds the land while the foreigner controls it through a minority shareholding and Thai 'shareholders' who never really invested. That is a nominee arrangement, and it is unlawful.

The lawful version is a company that genuinely operates a business with real substance — real capital, real activity, and real Thai shareholders who are genuine investors — and that owns land because its actual business needs it. A BOI-promoted company may, within the terms of its promotion, be granted the right to own land for the promoted activity. In every lawful case the land follows the business; the business is never a costume for the land.

Using Thai shareholders who are not genuine investors to hold land on a foreigner's behalf breaches the Land Code and the Foreign Business Act. The Land Department scrutinises land purchases by Thai companies that have foreign shareholders or foreign-married Thai shareholders, and can investigate the source and the genuineness of the Thai shareholding; the Foreign Business Act makes it an offence — for the foreigner and for the Thai nominee alike — to use a nominee so that a foreigner can do what the law reserves to Thai nationals. We do not establish or administer nominee structures, and we will decline instructions to do so.

The Treaty of Amity and Economic Relations between Thailand and the United States (1966) lets qualifying US nationals and US-majority companies own and operate a business in Thailand with national treatment — majority or full American ownership in most sectors that the Foreign Business Act would otherwise restrict. An Amity company is certified through the Department of Business Development with the support of the US Commercial Service.

Its limits matter as much as its benefits. The treaty excludes several sectors, among them communications, transport, fiduciary functions, banking involving depository functions, and the exploitation of land or other natural resources. And, decisively for a property buyer: the Treaty of Amity does not grant land ownership. An Amity company is still treated as foreign for the purpose of owning land, so it can no more own land than any other foreign-majority company.

The Treaty is therefore the right instrument for a US national who wants to run a majority-owned business in Thailand — and the wrong instrument for one who is really trying to own land.