Property Acquisition by Foreigners in Thailand
 
There are 3 choices for foreigner to buy or to acquire property in Thailand. The first one is to buy land, secondly, to lease land and the other is to buy a condominium unit. Differences of 3 choices in term of how-to, advantages and disadvantages, can be summarized as follow:

Land purchasing (freehold)
Generally, it should be known that the provision of existing Land Code of Thailand does not provide the ability for foreigners to buy land. Therefore they are advised to legalize themselves by setting up a Thai Company of which 49% of the share holders can be by foreigners and at least 51% has to be held by Thai proxies in order to buy land.

Consideration on advantages and disadvantages of setting up a company to buy land:

Advantages
The foreign buyers are able to get ownership of land through their company therefore they can sell or freely utilize their land to any purposes. This is suitable for business purposes such as land speculation, land development, housing project, hotel, resort etc.

Disadvantages
(a) The risk you are taking is that of any
uncontrollable resolutions, from a shareholder's meeting g as only hold the minority amount of shares = 49% whilst they hold the majority 51% shares

(b) Having the tasks and costs of taking proper care of book keeping, yearly statements balance sheets, and tax, otherwise it may be risky if inspected by the corporate house officials and/or revenue department officials or even money laundering offices. For this reason, to buy land through setting up a company for purpose of private living (and not for business) is not really a comfortable task to consider and might be expensive.

Legal advice to overcome the mentioned
disadvantages (risks)
(a) To eliminate risks of uncontrollable resolutions of a shareholder-meeting, recommended by competent law firm- to fully control their company against Thai proxies-shareholders, can be done by setting up company-articles in favor of the foreigner. Such as super majority vote (more than 51% to vote) or minority vote (51% forbidden to vote) making a resolution of shareholder-meeting to control everything.

  Handling Housing Projects
 
Many times I have been questioned by foreign clients, who want to develop pieces of land for a new housing project, about how to arrange and legalize such a project while complying with Thai law. In term of legal work, this can be roughly summarized as the following activities:

After a feasibility study to find the ROI of the developer and checking all supported provisions of the laws and regulations concerning to the project. Legal processes must be considered to plan for the project such as:

1.Company set up
To set up a company finding a proper solution to secure the investor.

2.Financial planning
To legalize financial funds provided on project through out financial scheme such as; share issuance, private loan or loan from financial institute or selling a company’s monetary instruments, in one way or another.

3.Tax planning / Accounting System
To provide a proper Tax-plan, Accounting-System, and Auditor corresponding to business plan.
4. Land purchasing
To provide proper terms and conditions of land purchasing contract dealing with many different pieces of land and its owners

5. Official Surveying application
To make an application for re-surveying and unifying the purchased pieces of land into one title deed

6.Official land plot dividing and new title deed
Issuance
To make an application for land plot dividing and issuance of divided title deed of each plot, common area, and roads to follow the project’s master plan.