Buying Over 1 Rai Still Possible ?

[churchill]

Have a collegue trying to buy around 4 Rai - The land office ( Koh Samui ) have said that any company with foreign shareholders even if less than 49% cannot buy over 1 Rai ?

[quiksilva]

Land offices' interpretation and application of the law can be questionable and indeed over zealous at times. Koh Samui has certainly had its fair share of problems over the last 6 months so it does not come as much of a surprise to see this sort of thing happening there.

BOI promoted companies can buy up to 1 Rai for an MD's house & 40 Million Baht investment allows a farang to buy up to 1 Rai of residential land. So it sounds like they are taking the cues from those regulations and implying all that one needs for a residence is 1 Rai and anything more than that might be construed as possibly being brought for land trading which is a protected (List 1) industry.

In today's climate they are of course extremely suspicious that the land will in fact be used / controlled by that foreigner so they are being especially hard on every transaction where a foreigner owns even a small portion of the firm involved, even more so where it is likely that the firm could be carrying out business in a protected industry.

Not much can be done about this. Basically the advice boils down to don't use the company route to acquire land, as there are plenty of other options that are available for personal residences and many threads in this forum that go into great detail about them.

If matey is trying to get into development on the island he's timed it very poorly indeed and is probably best off not going ahead anyway. If not that's a rather large house!!

Edited March 13, 2007 by quiksilva

[Arkady]

The Land Dept has made up this law but I agree with Quicksilva that this not a good time to try to buy any land through a company. 4 rai is asking for trouble.