Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, I am discussing yet again, my opinion on foreign land owning here in Thailand. I talked about this a little bit back in 2022, I ultimately threw my own opinion out there and I've been burned a fair bit by my opinion on foreign land ownership here in Thailand. Notwithstanding we are going to get into an excerpt here and I will go into analysis, whether there was an excerpt or not I would still stand by my opinion on it which is  I really am uneasy and I have major concerns about foreign nationals owning land in Thailand for a lot of different reasons and I have made those clear in the past, I continue to make it clear.

That said, I want to go ahead and read this excerpt from a recent article in the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thailand's 10 year Visa needs a bail out. Quoting directly, and I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail. This excerpt we are going to quote really doesn't get into the thrust of that article. A lot of good information out there in that article and I urge those watching to go read that. Quoting directly: "Portugal and Ireland have very recently cancelled their 10-year options because foreigners, especially Chinese and Russians have been using their residency permits to buy up choice properties thus fueling inflation and making it impossible for poorer citizens to get onto the housing ladder." Just as kind of an aside, I am getting kind of tired of seeing everybody just kind of pointing, "Chinese and Russians" or "Chinese" or this and that. Let's kind of stop worrying about exact nationalities. I mean there are good people and bad people from anywhere, that's just a fact. Any country you can point to on a map, there are going to be good and bad folks. What I think is more to the point in this excerpt and again I urge folks to read that article in detail, what I think is more to the point, especially here in Thailand, Thailand doesn't have a lot of land; it is not a very big country; yeah it's not as rich as some other nations; it's not as sophisticated as some other nations. That said I think it is more sophisticated and probably wealthier than it is often given credit for but where you have people that can just sort of come in with virtually unlimited funds and start warping your internal property market, that can have really drastic, oftentimes negative long-term ramifications, even short-term ramifications as noted in the excerpt quoted. So on that level I have my qualms about exposing Thailand to that kind of warping of the real estate market where it can have a tremendous negative impact on locals. The other thing is there are concerns with having non-native people own land in a given country. I think it goes to sovereignty issues at the end of the day.

Now I'm not going to get too deep into that video like this but again I often when people have asked me here knowing that I am Thai and that maybe I have sort of the fervour of the converted if you will, but when they have asked me "what do you think about Thais can own land in country X," usually the country where the foreign national here in Thailand is from, we will go ahead and say the USA, let's just say that, "well Thais can own land in America. What would happen if America said Thais can't own land there?" My response would be "maybe that is a good idea." I don't know. Maybe we should really look at that because honestly, I totally understand the Thai position on this. If you look at the history of the country, where you were dealing with Colonialism not even much over 100 years ago, it's really not over 100 years ago Thailand was still dealing with Colonial powers out here, then you had the Great Wars which that brought its own set of issues. Then we got the Cold War which brought in a lot of different factors to keep in mind and now we are sort of seeing especially with the rise of China economically especially, and nothing wrong with that per se, but again we have a lot of folks that can bring into a given market virtually unlimited resources. Again, that can have a tremendous negative impact on not only that Country's property market but it could have a tremendous impact on the national polity as a whole. So I can understand the argument especially in Thailand, in fact I am in favour of the argument against foreign nationals owning land in Thailand. Again I know foreigners are probably going to burn me on that one but it's just how I feel on the topic. It just is what it is and I'm not really going to change my mind on that. I understand the counter-arguments too I do understand and I have been a foreign national in Thailand; I get the frustration at a certain level. That said, I chose to go with condos when I got here. Condominiums remain an option for folks looking to live in Thailand in a freehold kind of situation where they have certainty with respect to the ownership of their property. I totally, totally get it wanting that certainty but I also totally get the Thai argument which is look that's a certainly we are going to reserve for Thai nationals only.