Thailand opened diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia for the first time in nearly 30 years just to get a handful more tourists in, that’s desperation.
I personally wouldn’t bet that a wider crackdown isn’t on the table unless the money I was spending wasn’t much compared to my net worth.
Even if it doesn’t come, it’s still possible to be singled out for some other reason and have the government check into why you’re owning this house for “business purposes” but it’s also registered as your living address.
Rare? Sure. Never going to happen? Wouldn’t bet on it.
If there was advanced notice you’d have a lot of homes suddenly going on the market so you’d probably have to sell at as worse a price if not worse than if you had to quickly sell.
And that’s assuming they gave something like a year’s notice or more.
Even if none of that was a factor you still have the other issues with home ownership in Thailand such as a less even distribution of asset appreciation (most homes aren’t in high demand tourist areas so are more difficult to sell) and rampant development going on just about everywhere (most people, especially Thais prefer to buy new vs an older home if both are available in the same area for around the same price).
Also, outside of those handful of hot market locations, your money is almost certainly better off return wise in some other asset class over say 10+ years and if you’re looking at around 5 years or fewer you plan to own, you’re still better off just renting as it’s likely you won’t see any economic benefit plus have the hassle of trying to sell it for at least what you paid plus any upgrades and furniture you added.
If you really want to own land or a house in your name and plan to live in Thailand long term your best bet security wise is to put in the time and effort to get Thai citizenship.
You’ll also save yourself the cost and hassles of immigration in the long term and won’t have any issues working or running a business in Thailand if that’s something you care about.
You can put the property in a company name but even if this is set up perfectly you’re never 100% safe and it’s never actually yours.
Also, unless you buy in a very in demand area, you’ll find it difficult to sell later and will probably have to sell it at a loss to get rid of it unless you can afford to wait a long time to find a buyer at the price you want.
All that being said, odds are good that if a company is set up ideally to protect you from having your Thai “partners” from selling out from under you (ideally you’d have multiple partners who are never told who the other partners are) and you end up with a company setting this all up who doesn’t decide to stab you in the back with some faked power of attorney letting them steal the property from you (good luck suing them later or getting the police to help), you can own a home in a company name without issue.
But you’re gambling the government won’t crack down on people doing this and you getting caught.
And the government has cracked down on this multiple times in the past.
As they get more desperate for income as the Covid tourism rebound turns out to be a flop for years, you never know what they’ll resort to in order to get more money.
You don’t need Thai staff unless you need a work permit and it’s not a BOI company.
However, it’s not legal to operate a company just to hold property you’re living in.
You’ll have to pay income tax and social security tax on what’s considered a reasonable amount of rent for each property even if you don’t rent it to anyone.
If the government decides to do a broad crackdown on foreigners using companies to hold property that they live in and not actually renting it out or using it for some other business or for some reason they decide to single you out, you can be forced to sell the property quickly which almost guarantees you’ll have to sell it at a loss.
Goes way beyond what brand of household products you use.
These private party and government data aggregators have dossiers on people that would make the Stasi green with envy.
It’s not just keeping track of what you buy, what you own, where you go, who you associate with, your politics, all the skeletons in your closet but also it’s being able to flip a switch and make your assets disappear.
Maybe you have job or business that puts you in a position where someone up the food chain decides you need to be controlled.
Or maybe you’re just a low level nobody who happens to have a job that can get you access to a high value target.
Or maybe you decide to speak out publicly against some corrupt people and actually make some ripples in the pond.
In the past you could make the argument that you simply weren’t important enough for anyone to bother going after you.
But now being targeted can be done automatically by computer systems at mass scale.
Look at the social credit system the Chinese built.
Oh and that’s just what you have to worry about from governments.
Doesn’t even get into what organized crime hacker groups can do when they gain access to this data which is often poorly secured.
Is there any rental increases in the lease or any terms about increases for lease renewal?
Do you have in the lease the first right of refusal when renewing?
Are they asking for any key money?
Leasing is a big sticking point with running a business.
Often they’ll give you just a 3 year with the option to renew and leave it open ended.
Then every 3 years they Jack up the rent on you and if you were profitable all of a sudden you’re not anymore or a big chunk of it is gone to the rent increase, to say nothing of having to pay key money again (which they could also decide to raise on you).
Get the longest lease you can. All the successful Thai owners of bars, gogos, restaurants and hotels I know won’t settle for anything less than 9 years, many push hard for 10-15 with any rent increases spelled out in advance.
Last thing you want is to rent out a place, spend a bunch of time and money fixing it up and getting it profitable just to have the landlord show up a year later and tell you that because you made it so much nicer, he just has to charge you more rent.
They will always find an excuse to raise the rent on you.
I’ve seen Thai and especially Chinese building owners who would rather let a property sit empty for years than keep a paying tenant who isn’t paying what they delusionally think their property is worth.
Also, a lot of property owners are doing temporary Covid pricing and fully expect to raise rates significantly over the next couple of years.
So make sure you’ve got a good, long term rent fixed in.
Don’t get ripped off by key money, it’s basically just a way to make the rent seem lower when it’s not while also getting money from you now because they think it’s likely your business will fail and you’ll walk away leaving them with only your deposit to keep while they wait for who knows how long to find a new tenant.
It’s pretty typical especially now with the status quo of immigration rules in constant flux.
Anything that isn’t a simple 1 day turnaround at a local immigration office is taking weeks if not a month now. Work, marriage, especially education visas.
And if you need anything done by an office up country then yeah, they’re not exactly fast about things plus having to mail things around.
A lot of things changed when the new immigration boss took his position last year.
