House/living In Vietnan & Cambodia

[thaidrew]

Does anyone know what the rules are governing purchase of land/house in Cambodia and Vietnam, similar to here in LOS or a totally different ball game? Given that it is becoming nearly impossible to purchase land/house in Thailand. As I understand it the only way for a farang to buy a house in Thailand is now in the name of a Thai national, since it has never been legal to buy in ones own name, and the rules on companies now prohibit the establishment of a company for the purpose of enabling land purchase. Please correct me if I am wrong but I would be interested to know what the law says in neighbouring countries, the same, or impossible?

There seems to be a change of direction regarding farangs now, from encouragement over the last 20 years or so, to uneasy toleration. Perhaps that is due to the differing governmental attitudes or just natural progression when the rest of the world's attitude to terrorism and money laundering has become more exposed, whatever the ideaology there definately seems to be a general tightening of the rules, from visa changes, to work permit supervision, to company structure etc. It is not so much a major revamp as a slow but sure restriction of what was acceptable before is now viewed as semi legal or downright illegal.

I am sure that most people want to abide by the rules, but it would seem that the position now is that it is near impossible to do so in many situations, from buying a house through a company, to working as a writer from the comfort of your residence and using the internet to research and forward the finished article to your publisher. There are many more instances that are somewhat of a grey area and it would seem that there is little alternative but to work in breach of the law, hence my query regarding the situation in other Asian countries, albeit perhaps not as attractive as LOS.