Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggest, we are discussing foreign land ownership here in Thailand. I have had a lot of people asking me my thoughts on this in the past few months most notably since they were talking about it here in Thailand. I made it clear on this channel, I am not overly in favor of non-Thai nationals being able to own land in Thailand for a variety of different reasons but people have sort of asked me what are my thoughts on this.

Well honestly, one of the big reasons is Thailand is a pretty small country and Thailand has had to fend off things like colonialism, had to fend off the Cold War, they have had to fend off a lot of folks who would have liked to have otherwise come to Thailand and quite honestly possibly conquer it or take it over or try to do something to it that probably Thailand doesn't really want done. Thailand is a sovereign nation and wishes to be treated as such and essentially left alone, left to our own devices if you will. For those who are unaware, I am a naturalized Thai citizen so I may have the fervour of the converted as they say. Yeah, for a variety of different reasons I am not overly in favor of foreign nationals being able to own land in Thailand. Now let me be clear, things like long-term leases, I would even say probably longer term leases should exist in Thailand. I think things like Usufructs are perfectly acceptable. You need to be careful with things like companies that own property because you have kind of got to look at the underlying circumstances but leaving that aside, and then finally you have got Thai Condo ownership which is possible. As we have discussed in other videos on this channel it is possible under the Thai Condominium Act for a foreign national to gain freehold title to a condo here in Thailand but again minus some exceptions, foreigners cannot own real estate in Thailand. And people ask me, they say, I have heard people sort of I guess complain to me about it, just talking to people, friends usually and I usually bring up the fact that why do we let foreign nationals buy land in our countries? In this case I am talking about my home country, or country of birth America, we let foreign nationals buy land, why?

I was reading a recent article on alt-market.us. I read this guy from time to time, very interesting blogger out there, definitely has some out-of-the-box thoughts, some of which I agree with some of which I don't, but for the most part I tend to find myself on the same frequency most of the time with this blog and I saw this excerpt and I said "wow that just kind of, didn't necessarily sum it up, but it put things into perspective for me". Quoting directly from a recent article from alt-market.us, the article is titled: Is there a way to stop inflation without crushing the economy and killing the dollar? A lot going on in that article and this excerpt I am going to quote, it's not really to the thrust of the article. For those who are interested, go check out that on your own but I thought this quote was interesting: "And how about housing? Simple, ban foreign purchases of property and only allow American citizens to buy American land. American citizens have a right to private property under the Constitution, foreign investors and Government's do not have that right." Well yeah, that kind of sums up my thinking. I have often wondered why. Okay, I can understand allowing foreign nationals to like own their home or something maybe, but even then I am a little ambivalent on that I mean I do kind of tend to agree with that excerpt that yeah if you are an American, yeah you can buy American land but if you are not, no you are restricted. Well Thailand takes that approach primarily. Yes again there are minor exceptions to that but overall it is not possible for a foreign national to buy land in Thailand and quite honestly I understand why because it can cause all kinds of warping in the organic natural domestic real estate market to begin with. Another issue is there are some nationality issues, there are some, I hesitate to say 'nationalism' issues but yeah, at the end of the day I don't think it is all that unreasonable to presume that those buying land in a given jurisdiction actually hail from that jurisdiction.