Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Thai Land Office. What specifically is that? Well, when you are dealing with Property transfers here in Thailand, property conveyancing so you are looking to buy land, even buy a condo you are going to have to go deal with the Thai Land Office, sometimes called the Land Department, and basically, how to describe this in kind of an American context, it is kind of akin to a Registrar of Deeds on one hand but they also actually convey title, which for laymen, they may not understand this but yeah the Registrar of Deeds, somebody may be able to gain title to a place and their deed is not overtly registered on the Registrar of Deeds; there are a few that ways that can happen I am not going to into that. Long story short, that is not really what the Land Office does, they actually register Title; there can never be a so-called wild title out there wandering around that somebody can't see like there could be in a Common Law Jurisdiction, for example in the United States. In Thailand No, it's all done through the Land Department. The Land Department has to sign off on whatever the conveyancing is or whatever material change to the property there is as we have discussed in other videos. There is varying levels of title in Thailand, Chanote Title being the "highest" level of title insofar as it provides Freehold Title. There is Nor Sor Sam Kor which provides a lower level of title even though you have got basically all the rights associated with ownership. But the reason for this video is we had a conveyancing case I don't know, a week, 10 days ago and I don't know how I ended up in a conversation as to what was going on because the Attorneys that were working on the case were down at the Land Office dealing with it but it just sort of came up, somebody said, this was a foreigner that said "well I've done this before in such and such a place", (I don't remember where it was.) We didn't do it this way, we did it that way, blah, blah, blah." It is like that is not how we do it in this province, was basically the crux or the conclusion of the overall discussion. It was basically "look, that's not how we do it here!" 

Again, not unlike the Immigration Offices in Thailand, different Land Offices oftentimes will have slightly different protocols associated with conveyancing in their particular jurisdiction. Now again, it's not going to be wild differences. The Law, the body of the law is fundamentally the same but yeah they do things a little differently in one office compared to the other. Does it materially change the underlying ownership of the property or anything? No, that would be a real problem but it's just different places do things slightly differently and be prepared to expect that if you are dealing with the Land Office, Immigration Office here in Thailand. I have noticed that different Departments of Land Transport, the folks that issue Thai driving licenses do things differently from office to office so not unheard of. I know it's a bit frustrating to foreigners here in Thailand but it is not unheard of and I don't think it is going to change any time soon.