Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing nominees, corporations and issues pertaining to property ownership here in Thailand. I thought of making this video after reading a comment on another video we made recently, quoting directly: "So here in Hua Hin, there are hundreds of houses being sold and anyone who wants to "own" their property, i.e. the dirt under their home, has to set up a company with the nominees, I believe made up of primarily people in the law office that you have arranged and filed the papers at the Land Office. All of these folks are told and believe that this is the "legal" way to go about home ownership in Thailand. Now they are saying this is probably illegal. What specifically constitute a violation of these rules?" 

Well the general restrictions on foreigners owning property to begin with, as well as the provisions regarding nominees under the Foreign Business Act. And by the way, nobody from the government or anywhere else ever said that this was legal in the past; all of this has been colour of law stuff. I've been talking about this for years and years. Yes, there are narrow subsets of fact patterns where a foreign national might be on a corporation. What I call the shop house model where basically; it's usually a married couple; they have a company. They usually operate some kind of business out of the ground floor of a shop house, but they are married and they are in like a corporate structure together. That is a fact pattern where - maybe a 49/51 set up - where the company owns the property and things might be viewed as legitimate. That's one of the few - there are others maybe - but that's one of the few that I can think of off the top of my head that really passes the "smell test" with regard to this stuff. 

The law has always been clear - in over the past roughly 20 years that I've been here - regarding nominees. They are illegal; it is stipulated in the Foreign Business Act they are illegal. Meanwhile, it is illegal to utilize a corporation in order to circumvent the rules regarding restriction of foreign ownership of land in Thailand. And we've seen the cases before where people have set those up only to later find their corporation dissolved and the underlying property seized by the state. It can happen, and it does happen. I've done videos talking about newspaper reports of it happening in other jurisdictions here in Thailand: not other jurisdictions, but other provinces here in Thailand. For example Phuket we did a number of videos about that years back. We did some other videos about it happening here in Bangkok as well and Pattaya. Again it's not uncommon these days. As digitization increases, it's going to be more and more likely that they are going to see these kind of structures for what they are and all of this colour of law subterfuge is going to be dispelled and we are going to be in a situation where people are going to find themselves in real problems where they are utilizing these kind of structures to "own land". 

The thing to understand about all of this is there may be ways for foreigners to enjoy the benefits of what we would think of as land ownership, but again you need to structure things and have the correct legal instruments in order to preserve and protect those types of rights. For those who feel a bit overwhelmed by all of this, it may not be a terrible idea to contact a legal professional, gain some insight and guidance into how best to proceed.