Letter from the land department

[Lev]

Thanks to "karenjuice" for sending this to us:

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We will try and get it translated as soon as we can, if anyone can assist please post here.

[pasathai]

more or less, If you are a forigner and trying to buy land in thailand
you have to have a thai person buy it , they ( gov) wants to know what you are going to do with the land, where you got the money, what you plan to do with it and other miniscule details.

imho, better trust the person buying the land for you

[buksida]

The letter basically highlights the fact that they will be investigating all Thai held shares in part foreign owned companies used to purchase land.

They will investigate the salaries and bank accounts of all Thai shareholders and the money they used to purchase the shares.

There is also an example whereby a 500,000 baht company purchases property to the value of 10,000,000 baht. This can no longer be done and the purchase must be closer to the value of the company.

There is also a section on the company borrowing money from the bank, they will investigate all trading the company has done and its current cashflow.

Basically nothing new then.

No where in that letter does it state that part foreign owned companies can purchase upto a rai of land without subdivision and be excempt from these investigations.

[hogus]

Does this mean, the so-called "magic"-letter is nothing else as a summary of already published facts?

Now I can understand, why some real-estate agents haven't hastened very much to translate and publish this letter.

Would be interesting to know, why these people made "big show" one week ago, as if this would be a free-letter for the acquisition of land & house???
Seems, some of these gentlemen are in so big trouble, that every means is justified!?

Magic is gone - integrity, too, right?...I can't believe it!

[Guess]

I will print this off and try three different sources of translation.

It is unlikely that there will be anything new. I believe everything that has happened so far has to be just enforcement of certain existing laws for at the least the duration of the international fraud investigation.

The authorities can at any time they wish (just like UK Customs and Exceise ind IR and the US IRS) investigate any business activity without impedence or notice.

The whole basis of the company registration process is to give some idea to the authorities the scale of the business to enable them to make taxations at the correct level. So a one millioin baht company that owns a 50million baht house is clearly well outside of that declaration and is acting illegally. This has always been the case it is just that it has been ignored because until now the procedds have been fed back into the Thai economy. When itwas discoivered that international crokks were using such sytems and also bypassing the Thai taxation system to the tune of billions of baht then something had to be done.

My understanding is that notices of intent have been issued recently to avoid panic within the honest farang community and land and house transactions should return to the tedious norm in due course. We all know though that in Thailand that can be manana.

Anyway we will learn more when these papers are translated.

BTW I had a local Thai guy come to see me yesterday to ask me what was going on with land transfers as he could not get any sense from the authorities. So it is not just the farang that are being given the mushroom treatment.

[Burger]

Buksi,

I have one translation (from a solicitor) in my hand, it's hand-written at the moment though, they're typing it up in morning.
Plus a seperate one is due first thing in morning.
Maybe I can meet up with Dr Dave or someone to give copies ?

There are lots of onerous/near impossible requests for shareholder information etc etc.
The good thing for us all though is it starts with the statement:

You (the land office) are to investigate any company that is purchasing land for the intention of making real estate business in the following areas: For sale, lease, hotel and resort.

Therefore the whole thing applies to those businesses and not a company purchasing land for their office.

Good news all round for us.

Burger

[buksida]

No worries, come round to the office tomorrow and we'll get it scanned it.

Would be good to have an official translation, I just glanced over it and pulled out the juicy bits.

It did overall seem to be aimed at big developers and companies.

[Lev]

Thanks to "Burger" for providing this translation.

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[James61]

Yes, good man Burger.

[johnrxx99]

Lev - it appears this thread has gone some way to lay to rest the notion that a farang can at reasonable risk buy a "freehold" by use of a minority shareholding in a Thai company.

Please do me a favour and make this a sticky.

[Wanderlust]

Lev - it appears this thread has gone some way to lay to rest the notion that a farang can at reasonable risk buy a "freehold" by use of a minority shareholding in a Thai company.

Please do me a favour and make this a sticky.

I don't believe that I have seen anyone on this forum ever state that a foriegner could buy the freehold of land, as that is the whole point of the Thai Law, with just the one exception, when you invest 40 million baht in a government scheme. I would hope that everyone who has bought, is buying or thinking of buying was aware of this, even before all the current furore. What this thread, and others have now done is to actually clarify and apparently formally allow the 'company route' as an acceptable, and more importantly legal way for foriegners to purchase a property and live here, as long as the company has been set up in the correct way, with genuine Thai shareholders, and not as a 'shell' company. The only questions I have ever had in my mind regarding this procedure has been the risk of doing this as regards trusting the Thai shareholders, and the potential hassle of running an active company, along with the tax implications. If someone else is happy with that scenario and level of risk then good luck to them, but it's not for me.

[Lev]

johnrxx99,
Due to your continual attacks towards HHAD and your reluctance to post anything constructive to support your argument I have no choice but to ban you.