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Issues with Buying an Off Plan Condominium in Thailand

See transcript of the above video below:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing condominium purchasing in the Kingdom; specifically so-called off-plan condominium.

What are we talking about with respect to off-plan?  We are talking about condos that have yet to be built, or developments that have yet to be completed. They may be in varying stages of completion depending on the development that may be good or bad or otherwise.  Generally speaking, off-plan purchases tend to be more speculative in nature but they also tend to be in basic terms, cheaper than purchasing an already completed a condominium and that lower price builds in  the speculative nature of purchasing off-plan in Thailand. 

The reason I made this video is because unfortunately there are some rather unscrupulous operators here in the Kingdom that will sell so-called off plan properties with no intention of actually building the property or they have gone on for so long selling off plan property and it is it appears as though it's never going to actually be built.  Let me be clear, this is not the case for every developer. There are very, very scrupulous, very reputable developers here in the Kingdom so this should not be viewed as an indictment on the property development industry as a whole. Far from it.  Actually it's the exceptions that tend to show just how good the reputable operators actually are.

The reason I bring this up is I have seen some really blatantly, I would say nearly criminal situations involving off-plan property purchases where we had conducted due diligence and we got to the land office and the Land Office said "oh yeah they know they're on year 13 of just getting ready to break ground".  I mean it had been a substantial period of time on a given development and no work had been done.  Again, the exceptions tend to show how good the reputable operations really are, but they do exist. They're getting to be fewer and further between especially as certain law enforcement activities are coming to crack down on such issues. 

But that being said, it's still out there and for that reason, Property Due Diligence is a really good idea with respect to so-called off-plan condominium sites, off-plan developments. It may not be able to provide a hundred percent surety or certainty with respect to how it's ultimately going to play out with respect to the development, but it's a darn good indicator of whether or not the given development is reputable and whether the process of building is underway and whether or not it looks like it is going to be completed within the time frame or at least the foreseeable future within the context of that given development.