Does anyone have experience buying land on Koh Phangan? I live in Chiang Mai and have heard there's lots of mafia there that can make life difficult. I really like the island though and am wondering if it would be a good investment which I can also use as a project to build a nice holiday home. I hear there's an airport so am assuming property prices will go up. Please share your experience. Much appreciated! 

Are you Thai?

 

Except in the most exceptional of circumstances a non-Thai person cannot own land in Thailand.

I have been on phangan for 17 years and have 3 pieces of land on my thai company here.  There is no mafia here but some powerful land rich families. Locals are nice but hard to trust business wise. Land leases here are a joke 3 years only is the norm so if your gonna invest in anything best to buy. Just use a good lawyer from samui to take care of the due diligence. New building codes allow up to 300 sq meters residential. Larger has to be detached.  If your buying with a farang directed company a thai will have to take over as director date of transfer and you can go back in later.  Subdivision takes a while.  If you want a high seaview expect no water so deep water well 300-350,000.

stay away from baan tai unless you like to sleep to thumping bass.

Are we talking about the land that you really cannot own or the land that people think they own under some convoluted quasi legal format? 

Walk away!!!!!

Too many dodgy "sellers" of supposedly legit land here

2 hours ago, Taco said:

If your buying with a farang directed company a thai will have to take over as director date of transfer and you can go back in later

 

Every day something new.

 

If the company is set up to the advantage of the foreign owner, then only the foreigner has signing rights. It is a legal entity in Thailand, nobody can legally insist that a Thai has to sign the contract.

 

Plus changing all the documents is going to provide a wad of cash to some lawyer.

 

 

13 hours ago, Pebbles33 said:

Does anyone have experience buying land on Koh Phangan? I live in Chiang Mai and have heard there's lots of mafia there that can make life difficult. I really like the island though and am wondering if it would be a good investment which I can also use as a project to build a nice holiday home. I hear there's an airport so am assuming property prices will go up. Please share your experience. Much appreciated! 

The book "How to Buy Land and Build a House in Thailand" (Paiboon ISBN 1-887521-71-2) is about the autor, Philip Bryce's house at Koh Pangan. The book is a very good guideline if you wish to obtain land and build a house, and especially on an island as Phangan.

 

I live opposite, at Koh Samui, which is more developed, but not that different. In answer to your questions, from my view:

 

The "mafia"-stories for all three major islands in the archipelago, Phangan, Samui and Tao, was widely common before, but for especially Samui it's past, and Phangan also, I believe. But there are influential and today rich families at all three islands. Many foreigners obtain land at Phangan; either with a company-model, or in the name of a Thai partner, or even in a Thai child's name.

 

As an investment, I think that days are past at the moment. Prices has gone way up – at least for attractive plots, that had investment value – and the high annually price-increases seen before, has the later years been followed by discounts on many asking prices; if the asking price was too high at beginning, I shall not judge. Price levels at Phangan seem same, or even higher, as Samui, and here the land prices has not changed much during the past decade, apart from maybe some extremely special land plots. I would think very carefully about alternative investments, before buying land at Koh Phangan for that purpose only; however buying for a place to live is a different story, and then don't look too much on it as investment.

 

If I compare to my Samui experience, the only land prices that have gone remarkable up over the past decade are wild luxury land+house, attractive for mainly Asian investors (we often talk 100 million baht and up), or huge attractive located plots, that can be sub-divided and developed (again talking about investments in 100-million baht level). Before the saying was, that anything around or over 70 million baht can be sold easily, but that seem not the case at the moment. The affordable properties seem more hard to sell; for example land plots priced around 2-4 million baht 10-years ago, are still for sale for 2-4 million baht. Of course there are exceptions, cases that has been traded with some level of profit; but there are more affordable land+house for sale, than 10-years ago.

 

The Koh Phangan airport project has stopped, the reports was that they ran out of money. The last we heard is, that it's been completely given up. The project however was a small landing strip for perhaps up to an ATR-42 plane in right wind and weather conditions; but with the possible runway length lightly longer than 1,000 meters, it would rather be smaller planes. Personally I don't believe an airport like that will change the price level much, compared to commute from Samui.

 

Look at Koh Phangan as an excellent opportunity for a private house, if you find the right location for a price you can accept; and be happy if you can get the same amount of money for your house and land, the day you wish to sell – you have then lived in pretty much "paradise" for the interest of your investment; if you gain a little, it's like winning the lottery...

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Super info. Thanks for the input, Per.


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Hello, do you know what is the cheapest small land to build a house at walking distance to beach (500m to 1km maximum) that a Thai could buy ? And where we should look ? I am more interested by north and north-east of Koh Phangan.

Thanks.

I have a small piece for sale on the road center of haad salad.  chanote, deep water well and septic in already.  Sea view 1.5 million.  pm me for more details if interested.

Anything you need to know: https://www.samuiforsale.com/

Read it until you know more then your lawyer. :)

 

If you have 500 million capital are you able to buy 1 rai land in your own name 

On 2/6/2017 at 1:00 PM, khunPer said:

The book "How to Buy Land and Build a House in Thailand" (Paiboon ISBN 1-887521-71-2) is about the autor, Philip Bryce's house at Koh Pangan. The book is a very good guideline if you wish to obtain land and build a house, and especially on an island as Phangan.

 

Thanks, i wrote that book, Philip Bryce is my pen name,

 

One thing to watch out for in KPN is the cost of labor and building materials is crazy compared to the rest of the country because of the boat. So be careful about your construction budget.

 

2 hours ago, steve2112 said:

Thanks, i wrote that book, Philip Bryce is my pen name,

 

One thing to watch out for in KPN is the cost of labor and building materials is crazy compared to the rest of the country because of the boat. So be careful about your construction budget.

Then I will be happy thank you for very good information for a novice "house-builder" doing a self-drawn project in Thailand – on neighboring Samui – your book was a great help, and the dream-house-in-paradise a success...????