Transcript of the above video:

I saw a recent comment on our channel, didn't really want to quote it but I just saw it recently where somebody said: "Well you need to distinguish between land and real estate. You are not being fully clear about land." Well I've been pretty clear about it down through the years. Yeah with regard to land, foreigners are restricted from owning land. Now when I say property, again you have got to look at my background and realize I come by it honestly. I am a lawyer by training, Attorney by profession, well an American lawyer by training and an Attorney by profession but the point I am trying to make with regard to this is real estate, property, land. Okay I have always viewed real estate as land. When you say real estate, I think "real" comes from the same root word as "Royal" so Royal Estate is sort of the underlying terminology there in the entomology, the term, that tends to denote land. Now okay, fair enough I may use the word "property" a little bit too flippantly from time to time and be talking about land when I should be maybe more specific. So let's get into some specifics. 

To be clear, foreigners are restricted from owning land in Thailand; foreign nationals cannot own land in Thailand. Yes there are exemptions to that and we have noted those exemptions but they are so few and far between that the exception almost, it is almost not even relevant to the analysis on a certain level especially as a foreigner. Then you get into property versus real estate, which okay property could be movable, immovable property, a car could be property for example, but when I think real estate I do have a tendency to think land. Again leases can fall under real estate, Usufructs, certain instruments that provide rights to enjoyment but it is rights to enjoyment of underlying land, okay. 

Then we get to condos in Thailand and condos have a specific place sort of in the lexicon and in the analysis because pursuant to the Thai Condominium Act, it is possible for a foreign national to own a condo here in Thailand. So again, now as we've discussed there are certain formalities you have to go through in order to gain what's called Freehold title or what we call in an American Common Law contest we would call that Fee Simple Absolute Title. Again depending on your circumstances, it may be possible for a foreign national to avail themselves of the privileges under the Thai Condominium Act to own their condo outright here in Thailand. So again that's going to be different than looking at property in the sense of movable, immovable; is it a car, is it a house? Even a house could be property and could even be considered movable property because you can move a house. And as we have discussed in videos we've done about bifurcation of title, it is possible to move a house off of land. 

But again when I think real estate, I tend to think of land or instruments pertaining to land and then of course discussion of land itself.