donx

I'd love a direct flight from DC to Bangkok, but only if it takes no more than 14 hours. My wife doesn't like extremely long flights, but she also hates multiple stops, so I always have to find the best/cheapest one-stop flights without too much of a layover. We will be travelling on Qatar Airways (our first time) at the end of July with a stop in Doha for 3 hours. Total travel time including the layover is 23 hours.

The land and layout of the house plan look nice. I'll keep you in mind when we start seriously making plans to live in Krabi.

My theory is that there is more to the story than you are being presented with. At least this is my assumption. Here is one theory: the equity in the property to be sold is not enough to cover the purchase of the property the wife and cousin want to purchase. Find out how much the mortgage is, how much they expect to sell the property for, and how much the property they want to purchase is going to cost. Another possibility is that the mortgage isn't really a mortgage but is in fact a debt owed to a someone they borrowed money from. You can call this someone a loan shark, but it is very common in Thailand for neighbors to loan money to a property owner and to hold onto the land title deed until the loan is paid off. I know this because my sister-in-law does this often and sometimes she ends up with the property when the owner is unable to pay off the loan. If this is the case, then your wife may feel that she needs to pay off the loan before she can sell the property. Find out who the mortgage is with - is it a bank or an individual?

I realize you plan on building these houses one at a time so the price you expect to set for each house is likely to increase over time. Nevertheless, roughly how much do you expect to sell the houses for? According to your initial post, it appears that each house will have close to 1 rai of land. Who do you expect your customers to be? I ask because my wife (Thai) and I plan on living in Krabi when I retire in the next 5 years and she wants to build a house with mountain views. Most of the villas I've seen for sale are built on relatively small plots of land. Your venture appears not to follow that approach which is refreshing.

Although I don't live there since we live in the US, my wife owns a townhouse in Ao Nang that is in a relatively quiet area not far from Noppharat Thara beach which is part of a national park. We rent it out on Airbnb and guests comment about it not being too close, but not too far from Ao Nang beach with plenty of local food options available. Remember that Ao Nang includes a larger area than just Ao Nang beach. There are many less touristy areas within what is called Ao Nang, Krabi. My wife and I plan on buying a piece of land near the mountains in Krabi and building a house there for us to live when we retire.

I think you can have documents such as this signed and notarized at a Thai consulate for a fee. My wife is having three documents signed that her lawyer emailed her to sign for a fee of $15 per signature page at the Thai consulate in Washington DC. The consulate will stamp the documents. I don't know how my wife intends to submit the signed and stamped documents yet.

If the owner doesn't renew the lease, then the owner can take possession of the house you built unless you are able to remove the house from the owner's land.

My wife did the same type of agreement years ago on a piece of land. Since she wasn't going to be in Thailand for a few months, her sister acted on her behalf setting up a purchase agreement with a deposit stating that my wife had until the end of July to complete the purchase. A small deposit of something like 5% or 10% of the price for the land was included with the purchase agreement. It turned out that the owners actually hoped the sale would not go through because they either had a better offer or felt they could get a better price by the time my wife purchased the land. I don't think my sister-in-law used a lawyer to create or review the purchase agreement. Perhaps the sellers were the ones that drafted the agreement.

Who told you this? Your bank? Your local land department?

My understanding, although I could be wrong, is that it doesn't matter whose bank account the money was transferred to so long as the funds for the purchase of a condo come from overseas. Additionally, you should be able to show that the money originated from an overseas bank account in your name. As you see from other responses, some people have transferred the funds to the builder or to an agent or lawyer. Transferring to your wife's account makes the most sense to me in your situation, in my opinion.

If you are married to a Thai, then she can have a bank account if she doesn't already have one. Send the money to her bank account. Very easy unless you don't trust your wife.

Where can I find a $10 onward ticket? Where does such a ticket take me? I'm a US citizen and some destinations such as Laos require that I obtain a visa as well as a ticket that costs at least $100. And I'm travelling with my family of 4.

Kasikorn won't accept changing my wife's contact information from her defuncted Thai phone number to her US phone number. We can change it to some other Thai phone number, but only if she appears in person at her Kasikorn bank branch. And then we will have the same issue if my wife changes her phone number again. She has to keep her old phone in order to use the Kasikorn App because the account App is associated with the phone's IMEI number, or perhaps it is the phone's EID number. This all wouldn't be a problem if we lived in Thailand, but we don't and she only visits once a year or so.

I use Wise to transfer small amounts from the US to Thailand, usually $3000 or less. These transfers are usually received almost immediately into my wife's Thai bank account (Kasikorn). When I need to transfer large amounts for the purpose of purchasing real estate, for example $50,000, then I use a swift bank transfer. These take longer and my bank fee for this transaction is $50. My last swift transfer took a very long time, but I blame this on Kasikorn bank because they needed a confirmation from my wife to accept the transfer, but we didn't know this was required (it wasn't in the past as far as I am aware) for over 2 weeks when my US bank called me and said she needed to contact Kasikorn bank. Our bank provided us with two Thai phone numbers for my wife to contact Kasikorn bank. I think this is a new requirement because there have been so many fraudulent bank transactions recently. It's strange and not very reliable since my wife never had to provide any proof to the bank of who she was such as her Thai ID number. She could have been anyone that sounded like a female, spoke Thai, and knew the account number and amount in US dollars being transferred. It could be that Kasikorn tried to contact my wife with the phone number associated with her bank account. The problem is that her account is associated with a Thai phone number that is no longer active (at least not active for her). Kasikorn won't allow associating her bank account with a foreign phone number, and since we live in the US, she only obtains a Thai phone number while she's visiting for a month or so each year. In the past when I used swift bank transfers, my wife would be in Thailand waiting for the money to arrive. Perhaps she contacted Kasikorn about those transfers asking about the status of the transfer and therefore they already knew the transfer was legitimate.

This is also true in the United States. I bought my house there in 2016 and because the bank assessed the value of the property $10,000 less than the asking price (which I was willing to pay), the seller was forced to either sell it to me for $10,000 less or find another buyer.

Is your marriage registered in Thailand like @FarangRimPing? My wife retains her single status on her Thai ID and kept her maiden name. We were married in the US and never registered our marriage in Thailand and thus I have never been asked to sign any documents every time she purchases or transfers Thai real estate to herself.

Do you know who owns the vacant land that your girlfriend thought she was buying? It's not clear from the above discussion if that plot is owned by the man occupying the plot she bought or not. If he owns that adjacent plot of land, do you think you could convince him to swap properties?

For some perspective, my wife has a townhouse she has owned for several years, but had remained mostly unused until last January when she decided to list it on Airbnb. She immediately received several bookings until April. She did receive one booking in July, but other than that, it has remained vacant since March. She has an 11 night booking in December, so we expect bookings will increase as the high season approaches. Her townhouse is within walking distance of a beach in Krabi. It also accommodates up to 8 guests. Keep all this in mind if you decide to dip your toes into running an Airbnb.

Why can't the 49% shares be willed?

You can always ask for a discounted rate of an Airbnb, especially if you book for several weeks. My wife had a family stay at her Airbnb townhouse for 21 days. They asked for a discounted rate which my wife accepted.

My wife didn't received such an email from Airbnb. I'm guessing she didn't receive it because her Airbnb is a townhouse, not a condo. Are you renting a condo on Airbnb?

Since my wife has an agreement with Airbnb and they are including VAT as a charge against her profits, wouldn't this information be similar to the situation you posted where she will need to pay taxes on her rental income?

This topic is of interest to me as well since my wife is in a similar situation to the OP. We don't live in Thailand and my wife has never paid tax in Thailand even when she was living there many years ago. However, she now receives rental income for her townhouse that is available to rent through Airbnb. I asked her about taxes and she said she has a friend that works in the government (revenue department?) that can explain what she needs to do. Airbnb collects VAT but I'm sure she will need to start paying personal income tax on top of the VAT. Perhaps she should establish a Thai company so she can deduct expenses to reduce her tax liability.

He means the use of a Thai company to circumvent laws prohibiting foreign ownership is illegal. He recommends only purchasing a condo that does not need to be owned by a Thai company. The condos owned by Thai companies most likely already had/have a 49% foreigner ownership.

There won't be a term used in listings in this case. Why would anyone advertising to foreigners willingly let them know they can't own it directly? If you are interested in a specific condo or condo building, you need to check with the condo management what the percentage of foreign ownership is. If the seller is Thai, you need to research this yourself. If the seller is a Thai company, either research if it can be owned directly by you as a foreigner or walk away.