Common buyer mistakes

The expensive ones happen before any contract is read, at the level of what is being bought. Believing “30+30+30 = 90 years”: only the first registered 30-year term is a protected right; the renewals are personal promises that do not bind a new landowner, the lessor's heirs or a bankruptcy trustee - our leasehold guide takes this apart. Confusing a condominium with an apartment building: without Condominium Act registration there are no unit titles and no foreign freehold, only a lease from the building's single owner, whatever the marketing says.

And the gravest: nominee structures. A dormant 51/49 company whose Thai shareholders paid nothing, a Thai friend fronting a land purchase, blank-signed share transfers in a drawer - all illegal, all increasingly enforced against, all capable of ending in a void transaction, forced sale and criminal exposure on both sides. The honest alternatives - freehold condo within quota, or a transparent registered lease - exist precisely so that nobody needs these.

Four recur. An unregistered lease: a 30-year contract that never reached the Land Office protects its tenant for exactly three years. A botched transfer: money sent in baht, or from someone else's account, or labelled “personal transfer” - each can block the foreign-quota registration outright, because the name and purpose on the bank paperwork are part of the legal structure (the FET guide has the rules). Quota left unchecked until closing day: the 49% is counted per building, by area, and is confirmed in writing before the deposit or discovered, painfully, after it.

The fourth is the villa buyer's special: a building permit in the wrong name. In a lease structure the permit - the de facto proof of house ownership - must end up in the buyer's name before construction completes; a house whose permit names the developer or landowner is legally their house, and fixing it later costs more than vigilance would have.

They start with money handed over naked: reservation fees and deposits paid in cash, undocumented, with no written statement of what the payment is for or when it returns - indefensible in any later dispute. They continue with one-way drafting accepted as fate: area clauses that surcharge but never refund, forfeiture clauses that keep everything on any cancellation, penalties that bind one side only. Thai courts can trim such terms, but negotiating them out beforehand is faster than litigating them after - the contracts guide shows what fair versions look like.

Two more from the signing table. Reviewing only the English column of a bilingual contract, when divergences resolve in favour of the Thai text your lawyer never read. And the costliest five seconds in Thai real estate: signing a handover acceptance “without remarks” while the remarks exist - defect disputes are won at the snag list or not at all.

Death, mostly - their own. A lease without a succession clause and a usufruct of any kind end at the holder's death; condo heirs must independently qualify under the Condominium Act and face a one-year disposal deadline if they cannot. None of this is fixable from beyond; all of it is drafted around at signing, as the inheritance guide sets out. The pattern deserves repeating: in Thailand, succession is engineered at purchase or not at all.

Two quieter omissions round out the list. Treating taxes as fixed: who pays what at the Land Office is negotiable within limits, the seller's five-year and corporate status swings the bill by percentage points, and none of it belongs to the closing-day surprise budget - the taxes guide has the numbers. And assuming a purchase brings the right to live here: property ownership grants no visa and no residency, and the stay must be planned as its own, separate project. When the structure, the paperwork, the contract and the planning are all clean, what remains is the pleasant part - choosing the property itself, which is what our catalogue and area guides are for.