Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing issues pertaining to companies to own property in Thailand. This is a topic that I have talked about a fair bit this past year because we've seen a number of crackdowns on this practice. 

For those who are unaware, the default rule in Thailand, foreigners are not allowed to own land. That is just a hard and fast rule here and it's one the Thais are not really overly interested in bending particularly. 

Now, as I've discussed in other videos there are technically some exceptions to that rule, most notably it may be possible for a foreigner to be on a land title if that transaction is signed off by the Interior Minister here in Thailand. As a practical matter, that is not a frequently done thing. To the best of my knowledge it's only happened about six or eight times in total since it's been allowed to happen, and quite frankly the circumstances under which it was allowed, it happened in a rather less, let's call it it happened in a rather begrudging manner. So the thing to understand is as a practical matter, no, foreigners are not allowed to own land in Thailand. 

Now there are a lot of folks out there - ill-advised and otherwise – who will tell you, "oh, you can own a company and then use that company to own property." Well strictly speaking yes, companies can own property; there's no prohibition against that in Thailand. But these are oftentimes colour of law structures and as a result, I have literally seen cases where companies have been dissolved, and the underlying land has been seized. This is not some hypothetical thing; I'm not engaging in hyperbole, it happens. Foreigners are not allowed to own land.

Now there are narrow exceptions to this overall default rule, most notably what I call the sort of shophouse model. You may be married to a Thai and there may be circumstances under which you may be engaging in a business together, and under those circumstances you may feel it is optimal to have some sort of property ownership that may be allowable; that's a very narrow subset of circumstances though. The vast majority of companies to own properties are not an optimal set of circumstances. Again, it's all going to be driven by the facts in the case, but understand that as a default position, and I don't think this default position is going to change very much in 2026 here in the Kingdom of Thailand.