90 Year Lease Is Just A Con

[BEENTHEREDONETHAT]

The solution is too buy a condo. No hassle and all very legal.

Not everyone likes to live in a condo and all recommendations in that direction have absolutely no meaning to those, who already have a house.

I would not argue with not everyone wants to live in a condo. But for those who have not made a decision it is worth considering.

[MysteryPlane]

Buy a Condo, safe as house's.

[PatinBKk]

Buy a Condo, safe as house's.

But just make sure it is in your Thai partners name.....

[MysteryPlane]

Normally I only log on to Thai Visa as a source of excellent information but I felt compelled to sign up and contribute to try to warn potential buyers about my house buying experience and the problems my husband and I have since encountered.

We bought our house about 3 years ago intending to live 6 months in Hua Hin and 6 months back home, however our financial circumstances have changed for the worse so we put our house up for sale. It was on the market for about 10 months and our personal financial situation steadily worsened so in order to get it sold we drastically reduced the asking price, selling it for much less than we bought it for. This tactic seemed to have worked because soon after we dropped the price we found a buyer, or so we thought!

We bought our house using what we thought was a 90 year lease, 30 years x 30 years x 30 years. We have now found out after a lot of hassle, visits to the land office and consultations with a competent lawyer from Bangkok that this 30 year so-called extension contracts carry no legal weight whatsoever. That means we only have 27 years left from our original 30 years! What's worse is, we need to get permission from our current landlady who is the real owner of the land. She has to cancel our existing lease and create a new one for our buyer to sign and re register a new lease at the land office. Considering our landlady has been charged with paying for gunmen to gun down one of her tenants we hesitated to ask her to do this for us, but there is no point pursuing this any further now as our buyer has understandably been scared off!

You may be wondering why we didn't consult a lawyer before buying our house? Well the answer to that is we did! Before we 'bought' our house we used a very prominent lawyer from Hua Hin who actually helped write up the lease papers! We even used a Real Estate agent who came highly recommened on a local forum. How were we to know that our amicable agent was unqualified, had no previous real estate experience and was an ex used car salesman! Our developer turned out to be a thug and bully on the run from selling drugs in the UK and the lawyer we used supported the whole con very convincingly.

We will try to put this all down to bad experience and move on and we realise now we may never be able to sell our house as the details have now sunk in that we don't actually own it and can only live there for another 27 years when our lease expires and please don't insult our intelligence by stating we own the house, but not the land, because that's not much good considering we can hardly move the bricks and mortar to another plot of land we rent can we! These real estate boys don't half come out with absolute nonsense and we feel very foolish for falling for it all.

We would be interested to know if anyone else has had a similar experience trying to sell their house by selling on one of these fake 90 year leases? Our lawyer tells us selling property on the pretense of 90 year leases is illegal and we could win a case if we were to sue. The trouble is, court cases can take a long time in Thailand and who should we sue, the friendly agent who lied to us telling us it's perfectly legal to have lease extensions, the developer's wife or the bent lawyer?

To avoid further heartache we advise anyone considering buying a house by using a lease agreement to remember this:

1. A lease cannot exceed 30 years and is simply extinguished after 30 years without notice. Legal information like: 'the lease agreement can include two further 30-year renewals, which gives a 90 year lease, making it effectively ownership' is NOT correct and is generally unscrupulously suggested by people in the property trade, sales, building or legal offices.

2. A clause in the lease, 'it is hereby agreed that there shall be no further payments due for any renewals as the price shall cover the entire lease term however long it may be' is in a court legally meaningless.

3. The landowner of your house who has leased to you can sell the land whenever he or she likes.

4. In order to sell the house the landowner needs to cancel your lease and create a new one for the buyer. This means you need permission from your landlord to sell your house.

We also suggest you consult an impartial lawyer from Bangkok (not Hua Hin). Remember the foreign so-called lawyers from Hua Hin are not qualified to practice law in Thailand and are making a good living from the property market so it's not in their interests to tell you the truth. Our Thai Bangkok lawyer has predicted there will be a huge amount of litigation in Hua Hin over the coming years when people realise they have been misrepresented and can't sell their houses that they thought belonged to them.

Sorry if this has upset some people who have already bought their houses using a lease but you are bound to find out sooner rather than later when others try to sell their houses!

I feel for you. The rule in thailand is trust no one. The laws change regularly thats why all the smart falangs rent. Renting here is a much smaller fraction of the purchase price than it is in the west. Here you want to be mobile. You might get bored with the area,have a fight with a neighbour... etc. Anyways don't pannick 27 years is along time. Where in Hun Hin is it?and the $?

The rule in Thailand, trust no one, you must be great company. All the smart falang's rent, you mean all the farang's with little money that need to work illegaly in Thailand therefor have little option but to rent.

Where in Hua Hin is it and what price, being nosey? Whats it got to do with you, you cannot buy it you have no money, if you want to rent it is out of your price range.

Edited April 19, 2009 by MysteryPlane