The director general of the Land Department has reiterated that foreigners using Thai nominees to buy land anywhere in the country will have their land title deeds revoked if caught – even if the nominee in question is a lawfully wedded spouse.

Land Department Director Anuwat Meteewiboonwut made the comments during a recent stop in Phuket as part of a nationwide inspection tour of 30 provinces.

The tour is aimed at improving public services by land officials in three areas: dress, conduct when dealing with the public and working harder to eliminate a backlog of work.

Many members of the public have complained that it takes up to a year to complete a transaction that should only take one day, he said.

Mr Anuwat, a former governor of both Phang Nga and Samut Prakan provinces, said he was satisfied on the first two points, but rated the general level of success among land officials nationwide at speeding up their work rate at “only 30%”.

The next round of inspection tours will come in July, after which time personnel changes will be considered if service does not improve, he said.

“We have to keep pressure on them, otherwise the work will not get done,” he said.

As for foreigners seeking to buy homes in Phuket, they can do so through the Condominium Act, which allows foreign ownership of up to 49% of any project, he said.

Foreigners cannot use a Thai spouse as a nominee to buy property in Thailand, however.

“If the Thai spouse has enough money to buy the house that is fine, but if the Thai has no money and uses money given to him or her by a foreigner to acquire property, that is against the law. If we check and find out later that a Thai person has been using money from a foreigner to buy land anywhere in Thailand, we will revoke title deeds,” he said.

Mr Anuwat said the provisions of [Ministry of Interior] ministerial order 43 makes it difficult to issue land documents quickly, as it requires action from a number of different agencies. Desire for land on the island has also led to encroachment problems here, he said.

As a key market for property companies, Phuket is a constant source of problems and complaints to the director general’s office, he admitted.

“We will try to resolve these problems and develop our personnel continuously in order to provide high quality services. Fortunately the governor of Phuket used to work in the Land Department, so he understands the procedures and can help co-ordinate all the agencies involved,” he said.

This comes even in a time of world economic recession and with the Thai economy in a downward spiral. It is very unclear of the thinking of the current government officials but it seems quite bizarre when married couples have always been allowed to purchase a home and have the land titled at the land office and there has been promotion in the past by law firms, setting up companies to buy property for foreigners with supposed safety and the titles lawfully registered at the land office, and now they talk of title revocation for even a lawfully wedded couple that has purchased a home if the money came  from the foreign spouse. This seems to cut close to a human rights violation, denying married couples of seeking a home to live in or even helping their children to get a home or start a business.  

So far there has been no word of this being attempted by the Land Department, but it would surely bring countless lawsuits against the government along with very bad press from international news agencies which would completely devastate any further foreign investment in Thailand.

If foreigners are considering retiring in and purchasing property in South East Asia, they might just want to consider Malaysia. Now in Malaysia, one can get a visa to live much more easily then in Thailand and also be allowed to purchase a home in your own name. Many foreigners that were living in Thailand are now relocating to Malaysia as it is more stable with government, visa regulations, and home ownership.
Thailand will come around with forward thinking on these issues some day, but unfortunately not before doing great financial damage to their economy from backwards thinking and laws, along with unwise comments from officials.

The bottom line would be, if you are a foreigner or Thai-foreign couple, don’t attempt to purchase property in Thailand under any conditions! They don’t want you to unless you consider a condo, and then they only allow 49% of the condos in a building to be sold to foreigners. Now there is a strange law that hurts their economy more and really hurts developers on the 49% rule. That is effect means that if a condominium has 100 units, then only 49 of them can be sold to foreigners.  Then if Thai nationals don’t purchase the other 51, the developer has to sit on them or try to rent out.  If things don’t change then there will probably be many developers and Real Estate companies going out of business.

From Bangkok Post: Xenophobic nonsense from the Land Dept

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