Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing condo purchases here in Thailand by foreigners. It seems that purchases by foreigners are up rather substantially. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from Khao Sod English, that is khaosodenglish.com, the article is titled: Expert Urges Government to Raise Tax for Foreign Condo Buyers. Quoting directly: "Agency for Real Estate Affairs (AREA) points to the trend toward foreign ownership: a new post-COVID peak will be reached in 2024. It is estimated that 5,700 units will be transferred by the end of this year, surpassing the 1,000-5,000 units that will be transferred annually in 2020-2023." Quoting further: "Dr. Sophon Pornchokchai, President of the Real Estate Research and Valuation Center of the Agency for Real Estate Affairs told Prachachat Business that in the first half of 2024, foreign buyers purchased 2,885 condominiums in Bangkok and the Bangkok metropolitan area. This leads to an estimate that foreign buyers will purchase a total of 5,770 units this year, the highest since the COVID-19 pandemic." 

Overall, just as somebody who lives in Thailand and wants the Thai economy to do well, this is probably pretty good news at the end of the day. Now it's interesting, I made other videos contemporaneously with this one talking about this, that never underestimate a Government's power to start possibly attacking a "Golden Goose". Now they are talking about "oh well we need to tax foreigners on their condo purchases!" Well as we have discussed in other videos, if you do that it will tamp down demand for these condos. Foreigners will look at that and say "well do I really want to stick my money into a jurisdiction where when I'm trying to pull it out, I get bogged down with all sorts of red tape and taxation?" The long story short, Thailand has done pretty well without all of this Western Keynesian Tax and Spend kind of thinking; in fact it has done very well. I was watching a video the other day on YouTube where they were talking about how Thailand, despite all the metrics and despite what experts say is going to be the best way to run an economy or a political economy, Thailand seems to do it its own way regardless. Well one of the reasons it's able to do that is it doesn't impose just ridiculously large amounts of taxes on people associated with their property. I also think it's worth noting the first round of attack if you will, the first order of attack if you will when Marxists come for any system is to go after private property. The next thing they like to do is debauch the currency as well, so that's worth noting. 

I mean at the end of the day though, is just taxing everything in sight really the Thai way? I've lived here for nearly 20 years and it has been my experience that no, in fact that is what makes this a very vibrant economy in this country is the fact that they are not running around taxing here, there and everywhere. Yes there are taxes associated with condominiums, we've discussed that in the past. There are transfer taxes. Depending on your circumstances, there may be some form of nominal property tax and as we have discussed, depending on the timing of the purchase of a piece of property and the sale, there may be something called a Specific Business Tax but again these are fairly, in fact they are pretty reasonable. Most people that I deal with in property are like, "oh, that's all I have got to pay? Okay, I'll deal with that." If the Government starts imposing just substantial amounts of taxes on people looking to buy condos here in Thailand, I have to imagine that's going to have a negative impact on demand for condos here in the Kingdom of Thailand.