Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Condos, specifically Companies incorporated in order to own Thai Condos. I thought of making this video after reading a recent comment on our channel, quoting directly: "Someone on another video said 'just put the condo in a Company and then transfer the Company. Easy peasy.' I always love how 'someone in a video' or 'some guy on the internet' always comes up with some better way to do things, it is like. Really? I mean there should be a book of knowledge published out there that just says 'some guy on the internet'. 

In any event, what I am trying to convey in this video is 'some guy on the internet' ain't quite right, okay? Let's put it that way. Yeah, there are circumstances where you can utilize a Thai Corporate structure to own a Thai Condo and there may be reasons for doing this. For example, we have a few clients that actually own Companies and own condos and rent them as that is their business, both foreign and Thai for that matter and they want it to run through a corporate entity, they don't want to deal with it in their own name. It makes sense. However, there are some real downsides associated with Thai corporate ownership of a Thai Condo most notably you are essentially foregoing the one reason a foreigner should get a Condo in Thailand which is Freehold title in your name; you have title to your home as opposed to through some corporate entity which can be good for some reasons and it can be very bad under certain circumstances. For one thing it makes it way more difficult to get a House Book under your condo name if you are in a corporate entity. I have seen this personally play out in cases that have involved clients of ours here in the firm. The other thing is and something to keep in mind is oftentimes these incorporated entities are utilized in order to circumvent the quota within a given Condo Juristic Person pertaining to foreign ownership so what we are talking about here is pursuant to the Thai Condominium Act, foreigners can only have 49% of a given condo complex and the calculation of what 49/51 is, can get a little complex. The long story short, the easiest way to look at this is if there are a hundred units in a given condo, foreigners can own 49 of them and Thais need to own 51 of them. That's in there for a variety of different reasons most notably Thailand concerns itself with foreigners owning land and having real estate title in Thailand and they don't want foreign nationals to sort of indirectly gain title to land via the Condo Act so hence the quota. 

Well if the incorporation is designed to circumvent the quota, then you could be in a position where it in and of itself is illegal and as we have discussed in other videos on this channel, that can lead to problems, most notably dissolution and what I would call in the Common    Law tradition escheat to the state; basically they just take back the land because the Company was used as an effort to engage in subterfuge as to the ownership in order to essentially circumvent the quota. So the thing to take away from this video is again, this is all going to be circumstantially dependent. There are going to be scenarios and we have seen them, where a corporate structure maybe useful in a Thai condo complex. It doesn't come up very often but it does come up.

That said, this easy peasy 'ah, just throw it in the Company, no biggie, blah blah blah,' yeah except it is and again it's this whole 'some guy on the internet told me, therefore it must be true'. No, as a practical matter I have seen real problems arise in the past associated with corporate ownership of Condos here in the Kingdom of Thailand.