Buying Condos At Auctions

[eljeque]

I would like to bid on a condo in a 10-year old building.

The 49% for foreign ownership is already taken.

If I am the winning bidder, can I reassign the rights to a company-name or a Thai name.

The juristic person of the condo is known not to be an accomodating person, so if he has any say in it (I do not know if he does) he would hinder the transaction.

If I bid on it, and the juristic person does not want to give tome or my assignee the "by-port" , where would I stand.

I have been told that the property could sit in limbo forever, but I do not see how Thai law would not address this situation.

Any ideas or references would help.

thanks

[scorecard]

I would like to bid on a condo in a 10-year old building.

The 49% for foreign ownership is already taken.

If I am the winning bidder, can I reassign the rights to a company-name or a Thai name.

The juristic person of the condo is known not to be an accomodating person, so if he has any say in it (I do not know if he does) he would hinder the transaction.

If I bid on it, and the juristic person does not want to give tome or my assignee the "by-port" , where would I stand.

I have been told that the property could sit in limbo forever, but I do not see how Thai law would not address this situation.

Any ideas or references would help.

Perhaps you should be careful about the method you outlined.

If a bid is placed in a certain name and it wins, then this name surely is now seen as the 'operative' name. Transferring to other names might well be seen by the laws of any country as quite improper, or collusion, or fraud.

You also mention that the juristic person is 'accommodating'. I can assure you that the Thai laws which dictate that buildings classed as 'condominiums' must have a juristic person are very detailed, and the duties, reponsibilities, authorties to act, etc., of the juristic person are very specific and very detailed. Additionally the law provides serious punishment for the juristic person for any transgression of the law.

What I'm ultimately getting to is that the juristic person cannot adjust or flex things. He/she must strictly abide by the law.

I was for a time on the committee of our building and I'm aware that the minutes of the committee meeetings / actions taken by the committee at large and the juristic person have been audited several times by the appropriate government agency, and they have strongly highlighted even tiny items which transgress the laws and regulations, and they seriously highlighted tiny process errors in various pieces of documentation.

I'm also aware that the juristic person in our building is (because of his knowledge of the appropriate laws and the audit history in our building) very careful of what he says, does, documents, etc.

Several times owners have asked him to help them circumvent or fake the required documentation to sell etc., and he has strongly, but politely, said absolutely NO.

In our case, and the same would apply in any condo building, our juristic person also says he would never flex anything because it will be documented and it could easily bounce back. I don't know about other buildings, but in our building all documentation is readily available at any times for all owners to view.

The office staff see everything and in fact prepare 99% of the documentation which goes into the buildings records.

In many buildings the office staff are always looking for an opportunity to get a commission / fee., or whatever. When I joined our committe there was a mass change of committee members. We were suspicious that there were 'hidden agreements' with a number of service providors to our building.

In fact we cancelled and renegotiated a number of contracts (lift servicing etc, etc.), and saved well over a million Baht of expenses per year. We also discovered that one of our receptionists had organized a personal rake off of monthly rental payments. We also discovered that small contracts organized by one of the technicians for building work included massive personal rake odds.

We now have a hard and fast rule that all negotiations must be conducted directly with two committee members and the building staff are not allowed to be present at such meetings.

In many buildings the experienced office staff know the appropriate laws and regulations very well. Flex something once and you've now opened up the situation where other owners or the office staff will use it against you. Blackmail might be a word to think about.

[eljeque]

Thank you very much for all of your time and effort.

One note said was that the juristic person was NOT accomodating, so that is even more reason to avoid the situation.

Sounds like you have a good building.

[PattayaParent]

Perhaps you should be careful about the method you outlined.

If a bid is placed in a certain name and it wins, then this name surely is now seen as the 'operative' name. Transferring to other names might well be seen by the laws of any country as quite improper, or collusion, or fraud.

Bids are placed daily at auction by agents acting on behalf of others woh wish to remain anonymous so how would this be any different?