Repatriation of property sales proceeds - any info / experience appreciated.

[Marjf]

We have built two villas over fifteen years.  The sales proceeds of first villa are rolled into current one.  Because both were new builds there were staged payments, some for land via lawyers and some for building costs via developers.    We are thinking about selling (yes I know the market is pants) and just want to get our balls in a row.    I have heard that I may have difficulty repatriating our funds and want to face this head on before putting the house on the market. 

 

Because I'm not the best on keeping records we will have to do a lot of work to track the full amounts transferred from overseas years ago so would prefer to avoid this unless absolutely necessary.   Anyone with experience of this or ideas as to best way of going about things who can contribute will earn my gratitude. 

[jackdd]

Assuming that your wife/GF is Thai, afaik there is no limit to the money that she can send abroad, so she can just send it out.

Another option would be to carry it in cash, but you would have to declare it when entering the other country, and they might want to see evidence where the money is coming from, so make sure to carry some evidence in form of sales contract, etc.

[chrisandsu]

Yep that’s correct. I sold a house and  my wife sent the money back no problems . I’d send it in staggered amounts though . 

[Marjf]

Gentlemen!  Where did I say I was a man?  And where did I say I have a Thai wife?   I'm the female (maybe a bit alpha!) in this relationship and we are both Brits ????    I'm guessing this changes things ....?

[chrisandsu]

7 minutes ago, Marjf said:

Gentlemen!  Where did I say I was a man?  And where did I say I have a Thai wife?   I'm the female (maybe a bit alpha!) in this relationship and we are both Brits ????    I'm guessing this changes things ....?

Not really . Just send it back using something like xe trade . I don’t know what the threshold is in Britain for money coming from abroad . Just send back just below that amount and you will be fine . 

[jackdd]

3 hours ago, Marjf said:

Gentlemen!  Where did I say I was a man?  And where did I say I have a Thai wife?   I'm the female (maybe a bit alpha!) in this relationship and we are both Brits ????    I'm guessing this changes things ....?

Because most people on this website are men, and if they say we, especially regarding property, it usually involves a Thai wife/GF, so it was just a reasonable assumption by me ????

 

Taking cash is always an option, but because both of you are foreigners, the property is/was probably in the name of a company, and thus you don't have a sales contract with any of your names as the seller, right? In this case I would contact UK customs beforehand and ask what kind of evidence is acceptable to them, to show that the money is legal and you don't have a problem when declaring it at customs.

 

Is one of you working with a work permit? Afaik then it's also possible to send money out of Thailand.

You can also look at "deemoney", I don't have personal experience with them though, and don't know if there might be limits.

[brianthainess]

On 11/16/2021 at 8:41 AM, Marjf said:

Gentlemen!  Where did I say I was a man?  And where did I say I have a Thai wife?   I'm the female (maybe a bit alpha!) in this relationship and we are both Brits ????    I'm guessing this changes things ....?

So who 'owns' the property ?

[Guderian]

On 11/15/2021 at 12:02 PM, Marjf said:

Because I'm not the best on keeping records we will have to do a lot of work to track the full amounts transferred from overseas years ago so would prefer to avoid this unless absolutely necessary. 

Why? When you transfer money from overseas into a Thai account it has a specific code so it's easy to trace it. Just go to your bank and tell them you want to send the money you brought here from the UK back home and can they please check their records and let you know exactly how much that is? The people here just adore their endless paperwork, make them use it for your benefit for once, lol.

[denis911]

 

How much can I transfer? You can send up to 800,000 THB per day. Customers can only send 690,000 THB per month via the DeeMoney Mobile application, but there is no limit if sending via any of our DeeMoney branches. DeeMoney is licensed under the

 

“International Money Remittance Service Non-Bank License (MT125590013)” and
“Money Exchange and E-Payment Licenses (MC125590070)” by the Bank of Thailand, issued in 2017.

I use to send money to my UK bank each month for 2.5 years , never had a problem, quickest was same day and longest was 4 days due to a bank holiday.

[Marjf]

Thanks all.   As most of the money transferred was directly from UK to developer or lawyers most of the cash has no Thai bank tracing available.  First lawyer not in existence nor are either developer in the same guise so makes life a bit trickier.   It is a big beachside house so chunky amount.   Where there's a will there's a way but it just sounds like it will have to be an incremental process rather than a straightforward one. 

[jack71]

9 minutes ago, Marjf said:

Thanks all.   As most of the money transferred was directly from UK to developer or lawyers most of the cash has no Thai bank tracing available.  First lawyer not in existence nor are either developer in the same guise so makes life a bit trickier.   It is a big beachside house so chunky amount.   Where there's a will there's a way but it just sounds like it will have to be an incremental process rather than a straightforward one. 

If the sale proceeds are funded to your thai bank account the easiest way to do it is as follows:

- open an account at bitkub or any thai exchange and pass KYC verification. Satang is easier. Actually bitkub is too hard to get verified to be honest. 

- link your thai bank account to the crypto account

- send your funds to your account at the crypto exchange

- buy bitcoin

- Open an account at a crypto exchange in the Uk

- send the bitcoin from your thai crypto wallet to your UK crypto wallet

- sell the bitcoin

- fund to your uk bank account

 

It will not cost much to send the bitcoin and extremely safe as long as you copy and paste the correct address. 

 

Forget any other way. Bitcoin is the future of money

[LukKrueng]

On 11/16/2021 at 8:41 AM, Marjf said:

Gentlemen!  Where did I say I was a man?  And where did I say I have a Thai wife?   I'm the female (maybe a bit alpha!) in this relationship and we are both Brits ????    I'm guessing this changes things ....?

Not really. Just dump the brit and marry a Thai guy. Problem solved ???? 

[crazykopite]

I presume you built these properties by way of a company set up if this is the case you could sell by including the company meaning a simple exchange of directors and ask the new buyers for £s $ or €s rather than Thai baht it’s not that easy to get money out of Thailand there is a hell of a lot of paperwork involved maybe speak with Dee Money ive never used them but they claim that they can transfer monies overseas . I’m in a similar situation I want to sell my property by way of company but don’t want Thai baht and like yourself this is the second property I built I had separate companies for both properties 

[keithcresswell]

When I sold my house I went into a kasikorn branch that had an international section and sent the money direct to my UK building society. It arrived in seconds. I was not asked to prove the money had originally come from the UK. That was nearly 3 years ago so I don't know if anything has changed since.

[KhaoYai]

6 hours ago, LukKrueng said:

Not really. Just dump the brit and marry a Thai guy. Problem solved ???? 

You are assuming her partner is male.

[LukKrueng]

46 minutes ago, KhaoYai said:

You are assuming her partner is male.

No, I'm not. I wrote dump the brit.

But in order to get legally married in Thailand she must marry a guy

[Destiny1990]

Sending it in is easier.

[lkn]

On 11/17/2021 at 4:49 AM, jack71 said:

It will not cost much to send the bitcoin

Correct me if I am wrong, but Bitkub charges you 0.25% in commission to buy the bitcoins, and the BTC price when you are paying with THB tend to be at least a few percentage points higher (because more people wants to sell THB than buy THB), commission on Coinbase (converting crypto to fiat) is 0.5-2%, and there is additional cost to withdraw.

 

So you’re probably looking at losing 3-6% of the total amount by going via Bitcoin.

[lkn]

On 11/17/2021 at 4:36 AM, Marjf said:

As most of the money transferred was directly from UK to developer or lawyers most of the cash has no Thai bank tracing available

I would go ask your bank what they need. It sounds like you technically didn’t import foreign currency into the country (as it was not sent to an account in your name) and you probably have no title deed.

 

The bank will know, what kind of documentation they need to assist you in sending these money abroad. But I fear that you will have a hard time fulfilling their requirements, in which case, I guess you need to go look into the alternative money transmitters like DeeMoney.

Edited November 20, 2021 by lkn

[jack71]

On 11/21/2021 at 2:16 AM, lkn said:

Correct me if I am wrong, but Bitkub charges you 0.25% in commission to buy the bitcoins, and the BTC price when you are paying with THB tend to be at least a few percentage points higher (because more people wants to sell THB than buy THB), commission on Coinbase (converting crypto to fiat) is 0.5-2%, and there is additional cost to withdraw.

 

So you’re probably looking at losing 3-6% of the total amount by going via Bitcoin.

The spreads on bitkub are not so bad in line with other exchanges. Its a hugely volatile asset. OP could buy it one week and then it goes up 20% in value. Or it goes the other way. Its all part of the risk or reward. Cheap transaction fees though when moving the money from one wallet to another.