Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking "is Hawaii a warning for property development policies here in Thailand?" I made a prior video where I was talking about a recent, I don't know what you want to call it, EXPO that Thaksin was at, where he was talking about how he wanted to create another rich guy visa which I think is pretty ridiculous at this point. I don't know how many of these so-called, I hesitate to even call it digital nomad visa, it's just a rich guy visa; "oh, if you have a bunch of money you can come here and you are very special, you don't have to go through the same thing everybody else has to go through" and he was also tacking on, "oh yeah you throw enough money at us here in Thailand, you can buy some land".

We have already been through this once. Thais do not want this; it's not in line with anything associated with standard Thai public policy. The name on the door of the country is pretty self-explanatory; Thailand, that's how we all like it around here. That said, I do understand foreigners have some consternation about that but frankly look, if you look at the history of Thailand, colonization - avoiding all of that - I totally get it. Now I don't just have the fervour of the converted, I believe it. I believed it before I became Thai, I just think it's logical. You don't want foreigners to own land in your country. That is to my mind a pretty logical way of thinking. 

Now as we have discussed in other videos, it is possible for foreign nationals to own Condominiums here in Thailand notwithstanding these other restrictions. And as we have discussed, there are various quotas associated with that, but yeah it's possible for a foreign national to gain what we would call Freehold Title in an American Common Law vernacular, or excuse me Freehold Title, that would be sort of a British Westminster Common Law vernacular, or Fee Simple Absolute in an American Common Law vernacular with regard to you can get Chanote Title, that's a title deed that you own the property for a condominium. Totally possible, completely viable, nothing outside of the realm of possibility when it comes to that. 

Now the reason for this video, I'm going to get into here in a moment. There was a comment on that video that I made regarding Thaksin's announcement, but before I get into that, I think it is worth pointing out, I am providing sort of more long-form analysis in our paid news service, that's Integrity News Service. If you are interested in that, I've got 10 episodes already in the can discussing all kinds of things especially as it pertains to the expat community here in Thailand. The last one was like 1 hour and 20 minutes long that we filmed. I went into a very deep dive about political developments, strategies for banking and dealing with your experience here in Thailand, dealing with your life here in Southeast Asia and the things that you can do to better protect yourself from the vicissitudes of different policy changes in many different countries, not just Thailand. It is Thailand centric for obvious reasons - I am based here - but it is sort of looking at it from the perspective of an expat here in Southeast Asia. If you are interested in that, please feel free to email us, [email protected]. Also worth pointing out while I am talking my book here, my better half and I have set up Pancake Palace here in downtown Bangkok. As the name implies, we have got pancakes as well as breakfast anytime. It's American style diner food, although for you Brits out there, we do have an English breakfast if you are interested in that. We've also got buffalo wings, cheeseburgers, hamburgers, chilli bowls, pork chops and even grilled cheese as well as glass bottled Coke. If you are interested in American Diner style food, the link is in the description below - we would love to see you at Pancake Palace.

That said, regarding Hawaii as an example or as a warning, if you will regarding property development in Thailand, I saw the following comment on our channel, quote: "Exactly, saying deposit a million USD and get the Rhinestone property. Please. Just look at Hawaii back when they let the foreigners own land. Look today and what happened when rich foreigners were allowed to own the prime real estate. Did it help the Hawaiian people? No. Sorry I do not think foreigners should own Thai Land, but I do agree as you said, Thailand should appreciate and embrace the good expat retirees, as they do in fact add much value to the Thai economy." 

Yeah, I agree with that. I've said that many times. This constant focus on, "oh we need super rich people". No, we just need a nice volume of middle class people that will come here and just spend their money and enjoy themselves. I think that is the kind of retiree that we really would like and need here in Thailand, and oh by the way, we have been doing that for a long time. What's broken? Nothing. Does anything need fixed? No. So why do that? But meanwhile, as pointed out here, again allowing foreign nationals come in and own land I think is a tricky, tricky - I don't even think it's tricky, it's dangerous. Again, I may have the fervour of the converted as a Thai, but I just see it as a bad road to go down. It's going to lead to a situation where, I don't mean to sound pejorative or negative, but the notion that foreigners could burrow into the country, it has many ramifications or implicit ramifications of serious threats to the sovereignty of the country. And I would say, look to the places that have allowed this. Like Hawaii. Has it really been good for the locals? If it hasn't, then I think it's safe to say that it probably wouldn't be particularly good for Thailand. 

Now again, as I said, there are many property options even for land, including long-term lease, long-term for example what I would call like lifetime leasing for lack of a better term, in the form of a usufruct - also called an usufruct in the European sort of way of saying it - where you can basically have lifetime right of usage of land. But in the event you pass, the land, the right of use, reverses back to the Thai property owner. There are many types of benefits that one can avail themselves of in Thailand to use land but as far as ownership goes, I tend to agree with the commenter. Yeah, not a good idea to allow foreign ownership of land itself here in the Kingdom of Thailand.