I've been asking the same question, especially for the higher-priced developments. Spouse and I have a getaway condo in Bangkok and, driving back to Pattaya, we see billboard after billboard advertising new housing projects in the 20 to 30MB range and up. We are fairly well-off but could not afford to pay 30MB, nor would we want to spend that much. My spouse's Thai brother returned last year from living in the US and he bought, for cash, a new single-family home in a nice Bangkok project in the suburbs for around 7MB, unfurnished but it had a kitchen and he negotiated aircons. The project has about 100 homes in the 7MB to around 9 MB range and is mostly sold out. I think in that range Thai buyers can be found, although it can take awhile. His project has been open for a number of years and still has a few homes for sale. We are actually shopping for a Bangkok house in the suburbs so we have been checking out some of the projects. Most seem very pricey for what you get--which is usually a bare-bones empty house with no kitchen, no drapes, no aircon, no appliances, no electronics, no furniture, and no built-ins except maybe the bath vanities. Finishing them could run another couple million. The new projects we have recently visited in Bangkok, with houses in the 12MB to 20MB range, including one doing a spashy Saturday open house with lots of billboards advertising it, have had none or only a few customers--and the only foreigner I've seen was me. The answer is clearer in Pattaya. It was foreigners who were buying the majority of all the expensive housing that has been built here both before and in the years since covid. And, is still being built--although that may come to a crashing halt. One new housing project that we lived at, around 30 houses, had all foreign buyers except I think one or two. Yesterday, we visited two new housing projects on the Darkside of Pattaya. One had bare-bones homes of around 12 to 15MB, the other around 15 to over 20MB. Saturday is usually a busy time for house hunting--we were the only ones at each project. I asked the sales girl, with the company crackdown, how is a foreigner going to buy one of her houses? She sputttered a bit and mentioned doing a 30-year lease. I was curious, so I asked Google about it. I used the example of a foreigner buying a 20 million baht new house from a developer. Google's answer: To buy a 20-million-Baht house in Thailand under a 30-year lease scheme, a foreigner signs a 30-year Land Leasehold Agreement for the land plot (the maximum legal duration under Section 540 of the Thai Civil and Commercial Code) while concurrently acquiring 100% legal ownership of the physical house structure in their personal name via a Right of Superficies. The transaction requires mandatory registration at the local Land Office, incurring an official 1% lease registration fee and 0.1% stamp duty based on the contract value, alongside a 2% building transfer fee on the appraised value of the house. Because the Thai Supreme Court strictly rules that prepaid future renewal clauses (such as 30+30+30 years) are legally void and unenforceable on day one, the lease automatically expires at year 30. At expiration, you do not automatically lose the house you own, but you must negotiate a fresh 30-year registration with the developer, accept a contractual buyout of the structure from the landowner, or—if no agreement is reached—demolish the building at your own expense to restore the vacant land. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] Okaaay. I don't think I will be doing one of those. The developer of the project we lived at, who has done probably a dozen or more projects on the Darkside in recent years, with homes in the projects getting progressively more expensive, sold almost exclusively to foreign buyers. She has scaled back, with foreign buyers disappearing due to the company crackdown. Likely others will, as well, with, perhaps, some pivoting to building more inexpensive homes, geared to the lower incomes of many Thai buyers. We recently sold a home, fairly easily, to a Thai buyer. The price? Under 6MB.
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