Hello. I successfully "owned" a condo as a leasehold (30-year contract) for about 7 years for now. Few days ago I got a message that the company owning the condo is being dissolved and I need to trasnfer my condo somewhere. I can't own it because the condominium already reached 49% foreing ownership limit. I'm pretty confused what to do now. Lawer that takes care of dissolution said that I should set up a company to own condo or find some Thai to own the condo. As far as I understood, setting up a company to own a condo is not clearly legal and I need to find 3 Thais for this as well. Do you have any advices, may be there're some other options?

Leasehold isn't ownership, it's renting. As the lawyer says you could make a Thai company and buy the condo, if it is for sale.

 

Not sure what you mean by the company that owns the condo is being disolved and you need to transfer your condo, it's not yours to transfer. It would be up to the current company directirs to sell or transfer the condo, not you.

If you have a 30 year lease registered on the chanote, that goes with the property and any new owner would in theory need to honor that lease agreement. 

If the company is selling it's assets and closing down then one of the current directors may end up owning the property. Or anyone may be the new owner.

 

Its sounds like they may be trying to get you to break your lease so they can sell it. As possibly hard to sell with a 30 lease in place.

 

You could maybe buy the existing company and own the property that way, without setting up a new company.

 

Otherwise find another condo block that has foriegners quota and buy in that block

Get your own lawyer before you do anything since they cannot just cancel a long term lease , whether it be a company or an individual 

On 12/16/2019 at 9:06 PM, Peterw42 said:

Leasehold isn't ownership, it's renting. As the lawyer says you could make a Thai company and buy the condo, if it is for sale.

 

Not sure what you mean by the company that owns the condo is being disolved and you need to transfer your condo, it's not yours to transfer. It would be up to the current company directirs to sell or transfer the condo, not you.

If you have a 30 year lease registered on the chanote, that goes with the property and any new owner would in theory need to honor that lease agreement. 

If the company is selling it's assets and closing down then one of the current directors may end up owning the property. Or anyone may be the new owner.

 

Its sounds like they may be trying to get you to break your lease so they can sell it. As possibly hard to sell with a 30 lease in place.

 

You could maybe buy the existing company and own the property that way, without setting up a new company.

 

Otherwise find another condo block that has foriegners quota and buy in that block

 

Sounds more like he bought a condo from a developer that is going out of business and the developer was holding it on his behalf till now.

Sounds also like they want to actually honor that he's the "real owner" - with the problem that there's no foreign ownership left tho.... i guess that was also the reason they held the condo on his behalf.

 

A weird transaction for sure and not by the book, op should tell the whole story....

 

There's only 2 things u can do, find a thai or setup a thai RE company to hold it, or well sell it off - depending on how much it's worth selling it might be the lesser evil...

On 12/16/2019 at 6:49 PM, alex2b said:

As far as I understood, setting up a company to own a condo is not clearly legal and I need to find 3 Thais for this as well.

 

Not really, you need 2 thais as shareholder and you. The company can rent the condo to you, that's their legitimate business then. 1 thai shareholder with 1% can be a lawyer or accounting person, that's acceptable as not beeing nominee structure, for whatever stupid reason.

 

Then you need another Thai that is NOT A NOMINEE, not a RANDOM THAI from the street, someone that has actual interest and gets paid from the company, could be your wife/gf or a thai friend but not a random weirdo u find on the internet. But overall, running a company just for that if it's a cheap condo is meeeh, accounting costs etc, taxes etc aren't worth it.

 

What you can also do is sell it for cheap with the lease intact, then u stay there until the lease expires and the new owner has control afterwards. May be possible to find a thai willing to buy it for cheap to give it to his kids later. I would assume with the lease attached its worth maybe 20-40% of the value.