Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing leasing of condominiums. I want to be clear, we are not talking about a foreigner coming in and renting a condo, what we are talking about here is a foreigner who owns a condo and is looking to rent it to someone else. 

As we have discussed in other videos, there may be work authorization issues associated with leasing a condo to another person and that is something you need to be well aware of when you are in Thailand and looking to possibly lease your condo. Now if you are abroad, that brings up its own set of scenarios where you may have tax issues associated with that; it may be multi-jurisdictional tax issues but perhaps work authorization isn't so much the issue. 

Meanwhile, when you are dealing with leasing of condos, as a practical matter, leasing to a Thai versus leasing to a foreigner could be a very different endeavour. One of the main reasons is foreigners can kind of up and leave and just leave the country whereas Thais if you are dealing with a Thai oftentimes, you are going to have some kind of identification and they are going to have, no pun intended here, they are going to be strongly tied to Thailand because they are Thai. Sorry for all the redundancy there but that is a little bit different when you are dealing with foreigners. We have had situations before where foreigners will just break a lease, just walk away from a lease, not say anything, "pull a runner" as I call it and just wander off to some other jurisdiction. That can end up being a real issue associated with owning a condo here especially.

I have seen this a lot with guys that for example work offshore and they own a condo and they are leasing it to make a little extra money, but they are not in Thailand, they don't have work authorization issues, but the problem they end up having, especially when leasing to other foreigners who tend to be who they like to lease it to because they can speak each other's language oftentimes fluently, the problem with that if you will is those foreigners, they are more apt to run off. I am not saying they all do" I am not trying to be a doom and gloomer here. Yes, I know many, many foreigners live in Thailand, I don't want to get burned in the comments saying "not all foreigners run off on their lease obligations", I know that. What I am saying is it is a little bit easier for a foreigner to do so because they are not as strongly tied to the Kingdom of Thailand.