How to Buy a Condo in Thailand

Settle how you will own it before you look at anything

The question that shapes every other decision is how the property will be held, because it determines which buildings are even open to you. A unit can be owned outright in your own name, and for a foreign buyer that is possible only where the building still has room under the Condominium Act’s limit on how much of its saleable floor area may be held freehold by foreign owners. Where there is none left, what gets offered instead is usually a long lease, sometimes with renewal wording attached, or a structure involving a Thai company. Those are materially different things to own, to finance and to sell again in ten years, and the choice belongs at the start rather than after you have fallen for a particular apartment.

For any building you get serious about, ask for the juristic person’s written confirmation of where that building currently stands on foreign ownership, dated. Not the developer’s sales office, not the agent’s recollection, not what somebody was told the year before last — the position shifts every time a unit changes hands. Being casual about this is the single most common reason a purchase falls apart after money has already been paid.

Then work out the cost of owning it rather than only the cost of buying it. There are the amounts payable at the Land Office on the day, calculated by the office against its own appraised value for the unit and split between the parties by negotiation rather than by any rule. There is the common area fee, charged by the juristic person against the area of your unit, every year, for as long as you hold it. On a new unit there is a one-off contribution to the sinking fund. There are utility deposits, furniture if it is not included, and in an older building the real possibility of a special levy when major works come round. Get the current numbers from the juristic person and from the branch rather than from any published estimate.

Be honest, too, about what the unit is for. A home and an investment are different purchases and frequently different buildings, because the features that make a unit easy to let — a compact layout, a short walk to the line, a project the rental market already knows — are not the ones that make it pleasant to live in. Buildings also differ in what their registered regulations permit. Some prohibit short-term letting outright, some restrict animals, some limit what you may do to the interior, and all of it binds you once your name is on the deed.

New from a developer, or a resale

These two routes buy different risks, and it is worth choosing between them deliberately rather than drifting into whichever an agent shows you first.

Buying off-plan means paying for something that does not exist yet, in instalments, under a contract the seller wrote. What protects you is the developer’s record and the contract, in that order. Look at what else they have finished, then go and stand in one of those buildings several years on and see how it has aged and how it is run — that is the honest advertisement, and nobody will offer it to you. Read what the contract says about the completion date, what happens when it slips, what specification is actually promised as opposed to displayed, and what becomes of your money if the project stops. Ask to see that the project is properly registered and permitted to sell, and work from the registered floor area rather than the marketing one.

Treat the show unit as a marketing product, because that is what it is. It is often fitted out to a different standard from the one being sold, sometimes furnished with pieces scaled a little small so the room reads larger, and almost always presented without the second tower that will be standing beside it when you move in. Ask which items in front of you are included, in writing, item by item.

A resale has the opposite profile. You can stand in the actual room at the actual hour, and see the building as it is genuinely run rather than as it was rendered. The lobby, the corridors, the state of the pool plant and the noticeboard tell you more about the next decade than any brochure will. What you inherit is real — the arrears position, the quality of the management, the neighbours, whatever the building has been failing to fix — and all of it can be inspected before you commit, which is exactly what off-plan cannot offer.

What to actually do in a twenty-minute viewing

You will get a short visit, an agent talking, and a strong pull towards forming an opinion about the kitchen finishes. Spend the time on the things that cannot be changed instead. Anything you can replace for money is not what the viewing is for.

Go at the hour you would really be there. A unit on a main road is a different property at eight in the morning. One near a bar street is a different property on a Saturday night. A west-facing living room is a different room at four in the afternoon, when the glass has had the sun on it all day and the air conditioning is losing. If a unit is only ever offered to you in a convenient mid-morning slot, ask for another time and notice how that request is received.

Then run the checks nobody in the room is going to run for you. Open the taps and the shower and watch the pressure. Switch on every air conditioning unit, listen to it, and look for staining on the ceiling around it. Smell the drains in the bathroom and the kitchen. Open a window and stand there for a minute with everybody quiet. Look out of every window and ask what the empty plot next door is zoned for and whether anything has been approved on it — a view is the most expensive thing in the building and the easiest to lose without compensation.

Give at least a quarter of your time to the building rather than the apartment. Wait for the lift at the hour everyone leaves for work. Walk one flight of the fire stairs and see whether they are clear or being used as storage. Look at the corridor carpet and the ceiling tiles, because a management that is not repairing what everyone can see is not repairing what nobody can see either. Read the noticeboard in the lobby, which is the building’s medical record: fee changes, works, closures, disputes, and the tone in which residents are addressed. Ask the security staff how long they have worked there.

Ask two ownership questions before you leave, because both are routinely assumed and neither is reliably true. Is the parking space attached to this unit on the title, or is it allocated by the juristic person and reassigned when the unit changes hands? And what is the registered floor area, as opposed to the area in the advertisement — balconies and wall lines are counted differently by different people, and the registered figure is what your annual fee will be calculated against for as long as you own it.

Finally, view more than one. Three units in the same band in the same week will teach you more about value than a month of reading listings, and comparison is the only thing that reliably tells you an asking price is wrong.

The offer, and what a reservation deposit actually buys

Offers go through the agent, and they should be made in writing even when the conversation happens on the phone. A verbal number gets relayed, softened and misremembered by the time it reaches the owner; a written one with your conditions attached becomes the document everybody works from afterwards.

Say more than the price. Set out what is included — the furniture, the white goods, the curtains, the parking space, the key cards — because each of those is argued over later by two people who each assumed the other agreed. Say when you intend to complete and at which Land Office branch. Say plainly what your offer depends on.

The reservation deposit is customary and negotiated; no law fixes it. Its size matters far less than what the paperwork says about it. Before any money moves, get in writing what happens to that deposit in each of the situations that genuinely occur: the building turns out to have no foreign ownership capacity available; a title search shows a mortgage, a registered lease or another encumbrance the seller cannot clear in time; the seller cannot obtain a debt-free certificate from the juristic person because of arrears; the seller simply changes their mind and stops answering. A reservation form silent on all of that is not a reservation, it is a donation with a receipt.

Pay it to a company and never into an individual’s personal account, and take a receipt that names the unit, the price agreed and the period the reservation runs for. Where the sum is significant, ask about it being held by a lawyer instead of by the agency. Any professional brokerage treats that as a normal conversation, and the reaction to the question is itself worth reading.

Due diligence is about the building, not just the unit

The gap between reservation and contract is where you find out what you are actually buying. It is the part buyers skip when they are in a hurry and the only part that cannot be repaired afterwards. Instruct a Thai property lawyer of your own — not the developer’s, not one introduced by the seller, and not the agency’s in-house arrangement if the agency is being paid by the other side.

On the unit, the starting documents are the title deed and a current search at the Land Office branch that holds it. That confirms who is registered as the owner, which is not always the person you have been negotiating with, and shows anything registered against the unit: a mortgage, a long lease, a usufruct, a court order. A mortgage is entirely normal and gets redeemed out of the price on the day, but it has to be arranged with the lender in advance, and finding out late is what pushes a completion into next month.

Check that the name on the deed matches the seller’s identification exactly. Marriages, name changes and inherited units leave gaps that take weeks to document properly. If the seller is married, ask about spousal consent. If the seller is a company, ask who is authorised to sign on its behalf and see the document that says so rather than being told.

On the building, ask the juristic person for considerably more than the debt-free certificate. Ask what this unit owes today. Ask what the building as a whole is owed by its members, because a block with widespread arrears is a block that will eventually levy the owners who do pay, and you are about to become one of them. Ask what sits in the sinking fund and what major works are anticipated — lifts, waterproofing, the facade, the chillers. Ask for the last annual general meeting minutes and the budget, which will tell you in plain language whether the building is at war with itself.

Ask for the registered regulations and read them rather than skimming. They decide whether you may let the unit at all, whether short lets are banned, whether an animal is allowed, what you may alter inside and what you must not touch, and how parking is administered. Buyers discover these afterwards and are bound by them regardless.

And if you are buying freehold as a foreign national, have the building’s foreign ownership position confirmed in writing by the juristic person, dated close to your intended transfer. Every other item on this list can be negotiated around or priced. That one cannot.

Getting your money into Thailand in a form that works

A foreign buyer taking freehold has to satisfy the Land Office that the purchase money came into Thailand from abroad in foreign currency and was converted here into baht by a Thai bank, in the buyer’s own name. The evidence is issued by the receiving bank. This is a registration requirement rather than a formality, and it is checked at the counter on the day, when nothing can be fixed.

That turns several ordinary-looking decisions into expensive mistakes. Converting to baht before you send it, so that what arrives is already baht and the paperwork cannot say what it needs to say. Sending from an account in a company’s name, or a parent’s, or a spouse’s, when the deed will read differently. Breaking the payment into several small transfers to save on charges, then discovering the bank will not aggregate them onto the document the way you had assumed. Sending it without ever telling the bank what it is for, so the stated purpose on the paperwork is silent about the purchase of a condominium unit.

Do it the other way round. Speak to the receiving bank in Thailand before the first transfer goes out, tell them what the money is for and which document you will need at registration, and send in the exact name that will appear on the title deed, spelled as it is in your passport. Keep every advice and every receipt in one place. Ask your own bank at home about its limits and its own reporting as well: a large outbound payment held for review at their end during the week of your completion is a genuine and entirely avoidable disaster.

The requirements here belong to the receiving bank under Bank of Thailand rules and to the Land Office branch that will register the transfer, and those are the only two places worth taking an answer from. Confirm the current form of the document, and the point at which it becomes necessary, with the bank and with the branch — not from a forum, and not from an article, including this one.

The sale and purchase agreement

The reservation is replaced by a sale and purchase agreement, and that is the document which governs the deal from then on. Have your own lawyer draft or review it, and give them enough time to argue about it, because every change becomes impossible the moment it is signed.

• The parties named exactly as they appear on the title deed and on their identification documents
• The unit identified by its title number and registered floor area, not by a marketing name
• An inventory of everything included in the price, listed item by item rather than as “fully furnished”
• The price, the payment schedule, and what each payment is being made for
• The completion date, and the Land Office branch where registration will take place
• Which side bears each of the amounts payable at transfer, written out, with no reference to custom
• What happens if the seller cannot deliver clear title, or the building cannot provide the ownership basis you contracted for
• What happens if either side is late, and precisely what the other one can do about it
• Who holds the deposit until completion, and on what terms it is released to the seller

Two clauses buyers regret not reading

Where the agreement exists in Thai and in English, one version prevails and the contract says which. Read that clause before you read anything else. If the Thai text governs — and it commonly does — have it translated by somebody working for you rather than relying on the English column that was supplied alongside it, because the two are not always saying the same thing.

And do not sign up to a completion date you cannot meet because your money is still moving between banks. The date in that box is enforceable, the penalty for missing it is whatever the contract says it is, and international transfers do not care about your appointment. Build the delay in before you sign rather than asking for an extension afterwards from a seller who now has the whip hand.

One more thing worth agreeing in writing at this stage: what happens if you cannot attend the Land Office in person. Buying remotely is routine, but it depends on a power of attorney prepared and signed on the Land Department’s own form and, where it is executed abroad, certified in the way the branch will accept. That takes weeks rather than days, and it is the sort of thing that surfaces at the worst moment if nobody raised it early.

Transfer day, from the buyer’s side of the table

Ownership passes at the Land Office branch that holds the title for the building. It cannot be done at a lawyer’s office, at your bank, or at whichever branch happens to be nearer, and both parties attend in person or through an attorney holding a properly executed power of attorney.

Arrive with your documents in a folder rather than on a phone: your passport, the bank’s evidence of funds remitted from abroad if you are taking freehold as a foreigner, the signed agreement, and receipts for everything paid so far. The seller is bringing the title deed, the house registration book issued for the unit, their identification, a debt-free certificate from the juristic person dated close to the day, and the letter confirming the building’s foreign ownership position. Anything missing, expired, or in a name that does not match the deed will stop the appointment, and the next available slot may be days away.

Payment is normally made by cashier’s cheque rather than by transfer. Agree the number of cheques, the exact payee names and the amounts several days ahead, because the bank needs notice to issue them and one of them may be redeeming the seller’s mortgage. Get this part wrong and everybody sits in the office while somebody drives across town to a branch.

The amounts payable at registration are calculated by the office on the day, from its own appraised value for the unit and from the seller’s circumstances, rather than from the price you negotiated. Neither side can derive them from the headline figure, which is exactly why the split has to be settled in the contract and the numbers requested from the branch in advance. Ask your lawyer or agent to obtain them beforehand so that nobody is renegotiating at the counter with a queue building behind them.

The officer checks the documents, the money changes hands, and the deed is endorsed with your name and handed over. If you are buying with a Thai mortgage, the lender registers its interest at the same appointment and keeps the deed until the loan is repaid. Photograph everything you sign before you leave the building, and store the originals somewhere other than the apartment you have just bought.

The first week after the deed is endorsed

Registration is the end of the purchase and the start of a short administrative list that is easy to leave undone and tedious to unpick later. None of it takes long if it is done straight away.

• Register as owner with the juristic person and get the fee account into your name, so the bills reach you rather than the previous owner
• Collect key cards, parking access and a copy of the building rules, and ask when the common area fee is billed and what it covers
• Move the electricity and water accounts out of the seller’s name and find out what deposits are held against them
• Confirm the house registration book for the unit is in your hands, and ask your lawyer what applies to you as a foreign owner
• Ask the juristic person what it requires before any renovation, and what hours contractors are permitted to work
• If you intend to let the unit, check the building’s rules on tenancies and what the manager needs from you before anybody moves in
• Keep the deed, the agreement, the bank’s foreign currency evidence and every Land Office receipt together in one place

Why the folder matters more than it looks

That last item is worth taking seriously on the day you buy rather than on the day you sell. The document trail you assemble now — the deed, the endorsed receipts, the bank evidence of the money you brought in, the juristic person’s letters — is precisely what a future buyer’s lawyer will ask to see, and what your own bank will want if you ever remit the proceeds back out again.

The owners who sell smoothly in Thailand are almost always the ones who kept the folder. The ones whose sales stall for weeks are usually looking for a document issued years ago by an office that has since changed its filing, on behalf of a name that has since changed on a passport. Buying well and selling well are the same administrative habit, separated by however long you stay.