Money transfer and the FET form

Because foreign condo ownership and imported capital are linked by statute. The Condominium Act permits a foreigner to register a unit only where the purchase funds were remitted into Thailand from abroad in foreign currency and exchanged into baht here - the policy being that foreign freehold should bring foreign money with it. The receiving bank documents this, and the Land Department checks the documentation against the price before registering the transfer.

The corollary catches people with Thai financial lives: baht you already hold onshore, or a baht loan from a Thai bank, generally does not qualify for a foreign-quota purchase. If your money is in Thailand and your plan is a freehold condo, the route usually runs through moving funds out and remitting them back properly - a question to resolve with the bank before reserving, not at closing.

A one-page certificate from a licensed Thai bank recording five facts: the foreign-currency amount received, the baht amount after conversion, the sender's name, the recipient's name, and the purpose of the transfer. Many in the market still call it by its former name, Tor Tor 3. As of this guide's review, banks issue the full FET form for qualifying inbound transfers above roughly USD 50,000; below that, a credit advice or confirmation letter serves the same function and is accepted by the Land Department provided it carries the same details.

Three practical rules. The stated purpose should explicitly reference the condominium purchase - “personal transfer” causes problems both at registration and years later at repatriation. The combined documentation must cover at least the full contract price, so splitting a large sum across several wires is fine only if every wire gets its document. And request the paperwork from the bank right after each conversion; assembling it on registration day is how closings slip.

Foreign currency, your own name, explicit purpose, small margin. Send the wire in your home currency and let the conversion to baht happen inside Thailand - a transfer that arrives pre-converted defeats the entire mechanism. Send it from an account in your own name, ideally to your own Thai account; the future registered owner's name must appear on the transfer, and a mismatch here is the single most common fatal mistake in foreign condo deals. State the purpose as the purchase of the unit, and send slightly more than the price so bank fees and exchange-rate movement cannot leave your documentation short.

Third-party money - a spouse's account, your own company - is risky enough to treat as prohibited unless your lawyer has specifically structured it: the registration can be refused when the documented sender is not the buyer. When paying a developer directly from abroad, the bank documentation lands on the developer's side; it must still name you, and the developer's obligation to obtain it and hand it over belongs in the sale agreement as an explicit clause.

Yes. Money that entered Thailand documented leaves Thailand documented: after a sale, the bank remits your proceeds abroad against the paper trail - typically the original FET or credit advice from your purchase, the sale and purchase agreement, the Land Office tax receipts and the title documents, with your passport.

Which reveals the FET's second job: it is not only the key that opens registration, it is the exit ticket years later. Keep the original for the entire period you own the unit, with copies in more than one place. Sellers who lost it face a slower, documentation-hungry path to getting their own money out - solvable, usually, but the kind of friction a single sheet of paper was designed to prevent.

Formally, no - the FET requirement gates foreign freehold condo registration, and a registered lease or a villa structure completes without it. That is the letter of the rule, and sellers of leasehold product sometimes present it as one less thing to think about.

Treat it instead as one less protection, and rebuild it voluntarily: wire the funds from abroad in your own name with a clear purpose, and keep the bank documents exactly as a condo buyer would. The paperwork proves the origin of your money - useful in any later dispute, relevant to spousal-property questions, and the basis for remitting funds out again when the lease is assigned or the structure unwinds. The cost of doing this properly is one conversation with the bank; the cost of not doing it surfaces years later, when the conversation is harder.