Buying a Condo in Thailand as a Foreigner.

The short version: condos are the exception foreigners can actually use

Buying a condo in Thailand is the one form of property ownership that works cleanly for foreigners. The Land Code blocks foreigners from owning land, but the Condominium Act carves out an exception: you can own a condominium unit freehold, in your own name, with a real title deed.

Two conditions sit at the centre of every foreign condo purchase. First, foreigners as a group can hold no more than 49% of the saleable floor area of any condominium building. Second, your purchase money must arrive in Thailand from abroad in foreign currency, with bank paperwork to prove it.

Get those two things right, and the rest of the process looks much like buying an apartment anywhere: reserve, check, contract, pay, transfer. Get either wrong and the Land Office will refuse to register the unit in your name. That is why many buyers have condo title transfer lawyers handle the quota check, the money trail, and the transfer day itself.

This guide covers the condo-specific rules. For the bigger picture across land, leases, and ownership structures, see the guide to whether foreigners can buy property in Thailand.

The 49% foreign quota, explained

Under the Condominium Act, foreign owners together cannot hold more than 49% of the total saleable floor area of a condominium building. Thai owners must always hold the majority.

The quota belongs to the building, not to you. A popular building in a foreigner-heavy market can be at or close to its 49% ceiling, which means no further foreign freehold purchases can be registered there, no matter how qualified you are as a buyer.

Three practical points follow from this:

• Check the quota before you pay anything. The condominium juristic person (the building's management body) confirms the current foreign percentage in writing, and the Land Office requires that letter at transfer.
• A "foreign quota" unit usually costs more. In buildings near the ceiling, units that can still be registered to a foreigner often carry a premium over identical Thai-quota units.
• Resales need the same check. Buying from a foreign owner usually keeps the quota position unchanged, but buying a Thai-owned unit as a foreigner uses up quota, so availability has to be confirmed again at the time of your transfer.

The money rule: foreign currency in, FET evidence out

The condition that catches the most buyers is the remittance rule. To register a condo freehold in a foreigner's name, the purchase funds must be brought into Thailand from abroad in foreign currency, then converted to baht by a Thai bank.

The bank records that inbound transfer on a Foreign Exchange Transaction form, usually called the FET form, or issues a credit advice for smaller transfers. This document is your proof at the Land Office that the money came from outside Thailand. Banks commonly issue the FET form for transfers above a threshold (the figure has varied over time, so confirm the current requirement with your bank), with credit advices and bank letters covering smaller amounts.

A few details matter more than they look:

• Send foreign currency, not baht. The conversion to baht should happen at the Thai receiving bank. Ask your bank to record the purpose, for example "to purchase a condominium unit", and the buyer's name on the transfer.
• The names need to line up. The Land Office expects the remittance evidence to match the buyer named on the title. If a spouse or relative sends the money, fix the documentation before transfer day, not at the counter.
• Money already in Thailand usually does not count. Baht earned or held locally generally cannot fund a foreign freehold purchase, with narrow exceptions for certain categories of residents. If your money is already onshore, get advice before you commit.

A lawyer or the receiving bank can confirm the exact paperwork in advance. Sorting it out retroactively is possible in some cases but slow, and it can delay or derail a transfer.

How buying a condo works, step by step

A typical foreign condo purchase runs like this:

1. Reserve the unit. You pay a reservation fee, typically a modest amount that takes the unit off the market while contracts are prepared. Read the reservation form before signing: some make the fee non-refundable even if checks turn up problems.
2. Run due diligence. Before signing the sale contract, the unit and the building get checked: the title deed, the seller's right to sell, mortgages or other encumbrances, unpaid common fees, the building's foreign quota, and (for new builds) the developer's licence and land title. This is what property due diligence lawyers do, and on a condo it is usually a fast, fixed-fee exercise.
3. Sign the sale and purchase agreement. The contract sets the price, the payment schedule, the transfer date, who pays which transfer costs, and what happens if either side pulls out. A deposit of around 10% is common at signing.
4. Remit the funds from abroad. Transfer the purchase money in foreign currency to Thailand, collect the FET form or credit advice from the receiving bank, and obtain the foreign-quota letter and debt-free letter (confirming no unpaid common fees) from the juristic person.
5. Transfer at the Land Office. Buyer and seller, or their lawyers acting under power of attorney, appear at the local Land Office. Fees and taxes are paid, the balance changes hands, and the office registers the transfer and reissues the condo title deed in your name. Ownership passes that day.

For a resale with clean paperwork, the whole sequence commonly runs a few weeks from reservation to transfer. Off-plan purchases follow a different rhythm, with staged payments over the construction period and transfer at completion, and they carry their own risks around developer delay and contract terms.

What the transfer costs

The recurring costs at the Land Office are predictable, and they are calculated on the official appraised value, the contract price, or a mix, depending on the item:

• Transfer fee: 2% of the appraised value.
• Stamp duty or specific business tax: 0.5% stamp duty, or 3.3% specific business tax instead, which typically applies when the seller has held the property for less than five years.
• Withholding tax: 1% for a company seller; for individual sellers it is calculated on a progressive schedule based on the appraised value and years of ownership.

Who pays what is not fixed by law in most respects. Splitting the transfer fee 50/50 and leaving seller-side taxes with the seller is common, but it is purely a matter of contract, so the allocation belongs in the sale agreement in plain numbers. The government occasionally runs temporary fee reductions for some transactions, so confirm the current rates with the Land Office or the Revenue Department close to your transfer date. The maths and the labels are covered in more depth in the guide to property transfer fees and taxes.

What you actually own, and the deed that proves it

A condo bought this way is freehold. You own the unit itself, plus a share of the building's common property, for as long as you choose to keep it. You can sell it, rent it out, leave it in a will, and register it as security, all subject to ordinary Thai law.

Ownership is evidenced by a condominium title deed issued by the Land Office, showing the unit, its floor area, and the registered owner. It is the condo equivalent of the Chanote land title, and it is the document a buyer's lawyer inspects first. How Thai title documents work, and why the type of title matters so much for anything other than condos, is covered in the guide to Thailand title deeds.

One ongoing obligation comes with the deed: common area fees. The juristic person charges every owner a monthly rate per square metre for maintenance of the building. Unpaid fees follow the unit, which is exactly why the debt-free letter is checked at transfer.

Where foreigners buy, and why the building matters more than the city

Bangkok and Phuket are the two largest condo markets for foreign buyers, and the legal rules are identical nationwide. What changes from building to building is quota availability, the financial health of the juristic person, and the quality of the developer. Those are building-level questions, and they are the ones worth paying a professional to answer. If your purchase is in one of those markets, Phuket condo transfer lawyers and Bangkok property lawyers deal with these checks daily.

Get the transfer right

The condo route works, and thousands of foreigners use it every year. The failures are almost never about the law being unclear. They come from a missed quota check, remittance paperwork in the wrong name, or a contract that left the cost split vague.

When you are ready, compare condo title transfer lawyers and property due diligence firms on Justenda, message a few directly, and get a fixed quote for the checks and the transfer before you pay a deposit.

A note on what this guide is

This is general information to help you understand how foreigners buy condos in Thailand, not legal advice, and rates and requirements change. Confirm the current rules with the Department of Lands, the Revenue Department, or a qualified Thai lawyer before you rely on them for a purchase.