Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing "buying" villas here in Thailand, and I put "buying" in quotation marks.

For those who are unaware, foreign ownership of land in Thailand is highly prohibited so foreigners cannot own land in Thailand; I made a video where I called it being "yessed" to death. Don't get “yessed” to death especially by those who have a pecuniary interest in you buying something. So again, a real estate agent or a developer who is selling something, they will tell you whatever you want to hear oftentimes and say, "oh yeah, you can own this, you can do that." One of the big ones that you will hear is "oh you can set up a company to own property." Well as we have discussed in other videos, with limited exceptions and there are some limited sets of circumstances where corporate ownership of property may be within the bounds of Thai Law regarding foreign national interest and that kind of thing, depending on the underlying facts. I have discussed that at length in other videos, but it is a narrow subset of circumstances where that is by and large the case. If you are simply coming here and you are a stand-alone foreigner if you will, you have no real relationship to Thailand and you are looking to "buy a villa”, you need to be very, very careful in that scenario because people will tell you things like, "oh you can set up a company and we will do all of this." Well it is a lot of colour of law and if it is scrutinized, as we have discussed in other videos, there have even been law firms that have been raided here in Thailand over companies being utilized to own property. And in those circumstances, the folks that were utilizing those corporate structures, they had a bad time of it. It ended up being a very negative scenario for them. 

And for this reason, I am making this video more or less, it is not exactly a warning against wanting to gain some sort of property ownership in Thailand or property rights: for example long-term leasing is a possibility, lifetime, effectively lifetime usage, lifetime leasing if you will, what I would call a Life Estate in the Common Law vernacular, at least in the United States, is a possibility as well utilizing what is called a usufruct - I believe the Europeans call it a usufruct  -but it is basically, effectively lifetime usage of a given piece of property. But the notion of buying something - even through a corporate structure - should be viewed with intense scrutiny and you should be undertaking intense due diligence to make certain that everything is in compliance with relevant Thai Law and not get "yessed" to death if you will, by people who have an interest in selling such a structure. 

So it is something to keep in mind for those who are looking to "purchase" villas here in the Kingdom of Thailand.