Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing foreign land ownership in Thailand so this is land ownership by foreigners in Thailand. The reason for the video, we have discussed a lot recently. I did a video about a week ago where I said "hey viewers, I'd love to have some feedback. What would you like me to talk about on this channel? We're coming off of dealing with all of this shutdown stuff, frankly I don't feel like there's such an urgent need to have somebody talking about every little thing that is going on in Immigration at the moment, Thailand is pretty well reopened, things are moving pretty smoothly. So I kind of want to talk about something else," so I was kind of curious what the viewers thought." 

Now this comment, I may be with misreading it but I kind of looked askance when I read this comment and I'll explain why here in a moment. Let me read it. Quote: "Explain (with details) how so many foreigners apparently successfully hold land all over Thailand." So I always love when I am giving out free information, to be told how I need to be giving it out. So the "explain with details", it's like well I'll explain as best I can. I maybe reading that wrong, maybe that wasn't the tone. I always am kind of hesitant to ever kind of take any kind of, I never take umbrage for being perturbed by something I read in a comment because I have talked to people that have made comments on stuff and I have read it a certain way and they meant “no my tone to that meant this”. And this may be not trying to tell me how the cow is eating cabbage, they're just asking me what they want to know, but okay "explain with details how so many foreigners apparently successfully hold land all over Thailand?" Well let me tell you this as detailed as I can, they don't! They don't! They may have some structure, colour of law or otherwise that allows them some level of control over land in Thailand and as we have discussed in other videos, you need to be very careful with that because nominees are illegal in Thailand, so any sort of scrutiny by relevant authorities that would determine that there is a nominee structure at play could result in that corporation being dissolved and the land escheating back to the state, I have done videos on it, it happens, they do go after that, we have talked about it before. 

Meanwhile, and this is kind of a common one, much more common in the past and I don't mean to make light of this or anything but a lot of folks came here for years and thought that "oh well I own this piece of property with my wife", and one thing I would hear over and over again was "well we went down to the Land Office and I signed a document that said I'm also a co-owner." No in point in fact you signed a document that said you disclaimed all ownership over the property pursuant to Thai Statutory Code requiring that of a foreign spouse of a Thai National is taking ownership over Thai land because Thai land law is very strict, foreigners can't own land in Thailand except under extremely limited circumstances requiring a substantial amount of Government oversight, scrutiny and approval. So yeah, no, long story short they don't in most cases. 

Meantime, there are also long-term leases which again foreigners may either mistake or over exaggerate and embellish and say that they own and in point of fact they might not. At the same time, there is also what's known as Usufructs. Usufructs, basically kind of the equivalent of what we call a life estate in the Common Law parlance, basically life usage of property. Again not illegal, perfectly possible under Thai Law to have one owner grant a usufruct, lifetime usage of a piece of property to a foreign national, that is possible as well. So again, with regard to "how are all these foreigners owning this land?" well they are not. I mean that is just the fact of it. I am not trying to be blunt and I am not trying to sound difficult or smug or anything of that nature. The fact of it is every time I have ever done due diligence somebody saying, "oh so and so says they own this, I am looking to buy it from them." By the time we do the due diligence there is either not in any way the ownership that was initially described or it is something substantially different but yes that foreigner may have some either ownership, or rights, I shouldn't say ownership interest but rights in that property, a lease for example a usufruct, or they may for example be married to somebody that does and again these corporate structures, theoretically possible but as I have said, if they are not properly constructed and proper construction that is kind of the term of art. What exactly is proper construction? It's going to be circumstantially dependent but long story short, again even in the most properly constructed corporate structure the corporation owns the property. That foreign national is never going to be any more than 49% under any set of circumstances so from a true ownership standpoint, yeah control, there may be some level there but ownership no, it just doesn't exist under those circumstances.