Burger,
Not only would there be the company registration and maintenance costs but in addition the costs of cutting and transferring the land and any taxes due as a result of both transfers.
It is true, the Developers’ exposure to these costs could be reduced by either sharing the costs or passing all of them onto the other party as a condition of the sale, but either way these additional costs, which may even not be necessary, are not minimal.
Whether a Thai can buy from a company or not is not the issue, the whole idea of a pre-emptive company to facilitate the sale to foreigners not only provides further evidence of attempts to circumvent the law but could be construed to be discriminatory since all plots are allocated to their own pre-emptive company.
Irrespective of whether a foreign buyer may not have to visit the Land Office, (further evidence of circumvention as noted by Hogus), the problem of Nominated Thai Shareholders still remains. The only change is that the Developer has transferred the problem to the buyer along with the shares of the pre-emptive company. While at the same time the foreign buyer is now surrounded by land that includes common facilities and access to his property that belongs to another company over which he has no jurisdiction?
Do you know of an actual project in Thailand established this way or is it something you just over heard in the bar?
Malcolm,
Firstly, lets not confuse the set-up of a development/common areas etc with this, it is only whether the buyer goes to the land office to transfer land into his new company, or whether he takes over an already set-up new’ish company.
The cost of setting up a company and land transfer are carried out anyway on a development sale to a foreigner, only here the developer is paying for the company (25,000 Baht), not the buyer.
Re: A Thai buyer, the companies can be set-up at any time, ie: after a buyer is found. If it's a Thai buyer, the developers do not need to set up the company, they sell off the main project company.
Yes it still has nominated Thai shareholders, I wasn't implying it was a solution to that.
'Common areas' belonging to the project management company is normal, there is some kind of management contract that covers the usage etc.
I don't really want to debate all the finite points on here, I was just pointing out that this already occurs.
You wrote this yesterday:
The project land is never subdivided into individual house plots but remains whole whether that is made up of one or more Chanotes.
The Chanotes are in the name of the "Company" and remain an infinite asset of the company. At completion, a buyer, will be allocated the proportional number of shares within the company allocated to the house he is buying.
In short one project, one company, multiple share holders.
To sell your house, sell your shares.
So if you are saying no sub-dividing, therefore no seperate land papers (chanotes), then why are farangs going to land offices to transfer land papers into their wives/companies name ??
If you build an extension and a swimming pool and your house is now worth a million Baht more, do you get more shares ??
I don't understand.
Burger
