A brochure offers a ninety year leasehold. Thai law registers thirty. That gap is the most consequential thing in Phuket property, and in March 2025 a Supreme Court decision made it considerably less negotiable.
What follows is a description of the public record, dated and referenced, so that an owner can ask better questions of their own lawyer. This is an operator’s summary of how the structures work in practice. A Thai lawyer signs off the structure itself.
Separate the property from the paperwork
Four structures, four different things
What the public record says each one is, and where each one is weakest.
Condominium freehold
Condominium Act, section 19
What it gives you
Genuine freehold title in a foreign name, registered at the Land Office. The cleanest form of ownership available to a foreigner in Thailand.
The part to read twice
Foreign ownership across a building is capped at 49% of saleable floor area. If the foreign quota in a building is full, the unit cannot be transferred into a foreign name however much is paid for it.
Registered lease
Civil and Commercial Code, sections 538 and 540
What it gives you
A registered right to occupy land and a house for a fixed term, recorded on the title deed. Enforceable, transparent and the usual route for a villa.
The part to read twice
The maximum enforceable registered term is thirty years. Contracts promising sixty or ninety years by automatic renewal do not have statutory backing, and in March 2025 the Supreme Court invalidated consecutive thirty plus thirty plus thirty renewal structures.
Usufruct
Civil and Commercial Code, sections 1417 to 1428
What it gives you
A registered right to use a property and take its income, for life or for a fixed term. Often combined with a superficies, sections 1410 to 1416, to hold the building itself.
The part to read twice
It is personal to the holder and ends on death, which makes succession planning the whole conversation. It is a right of use, not ownership.
Thai company
Land Code, with the Foreign Business Act
What it gives you
A Thai majority company can hold land, and where the company is a genuine operating business with real Thai shareholders this is lawful and common.
The part to read twice
Where the Thai shareholders are nominees holding shares on a foreigner’s behalf, the structure is illegal under both the Land Code and the Foreign Business Act, and this is the structure currently being enforced against.
Compiled by us from published summaries of Thai property law current to 2026, read 24 September 2026. This is a description of the public record and not legal advice. Any actual structure should be reviewed by Thai counsel who is not being paid by the seller.
The starting point: no foreigner owns land in Thailand
Section 86 of the Land Code prohibits foreign land ownership outright, and sections 111 to 113 attach criminal penalties of up to two years imprisonment and fines of up to ฿20,000. Every structure in this market exists to work within that prohibition rather than around it, and the difference between working within it and working around it is the entire subject.
Condominiums are the exception, under section 19 of the Condominium Act, which permits genuine foreign freehold up to 49 percent of a building’s saleable floor area. That is why the Phuket condominium market is 83 percent of the island’s residential supply and villas are 17 percent. It is not a taste preference. It is the only asset a foreigner can hold outright.
The March 2025 ruling almost nobody mentions
The standard villa leasehold in Phuket has been sold for two decades as thirty plus thirty plus thirty. A thirty year registered term, followed by two contractual renewals, presented to the buyer as ninety years of security.
In March 2025 the Supreme Court invalidated consecutive thirty plus thirty plus thirty renewal structures, making perpetual renewal arrangements unenforceable. The maximum enforceable registered term remains thirty years under sections 538 and 540 of the Civil and Commercial Code.
Read plainly: the renewals in a ninety year leasehold are a contractual promise from a counterparty, not a registered right. If that counterparty still exists in year thirty-one and still wants to renew, the promise works. If it does not, the promise is worth what the courts say it is worth, and in March 2025 the courts said something quite specific.
A ninety year leasehold is thirty registered years and sixty years of somebody’s intention. In March 2025 the Supreme Court said which of the two is enforceable.
Nominee companies, and why 2026 is different
The other standard route to a Phuket villa has been a Thai company: a company with Thai majority shareholding holds the land, and the foreign buyer controls the company. Where the Thai shareholders are genuine participants in a real business, this is lawful. Where they hold shares on the foreigner’s behalf as nominees, it is illegal under both the Land Code and the Foreign Business Act.
That distinction used to be treated as academic. It is not being treated that way now.
Nominee enforcement, 2025 to 2026
This is no longer theoretical
Reported figures from the Thai authorities’ nominee company investigations.
46,000+
companies identified
Thai companies identified as suspected nominee structures
852
prosecuted
Cases taken forward to prosecution
฿15.1bn
estimated damages
The figure attributed to the practice in the investigations
฿1,000,000
and up to 3 years
Maximum fine and imprisonment under the Foreign Business Act
Reported figures from Thai nominee company enforcement during 2025 and 2026, read 24 September 2026. The Land Code carries separate penalties of up to two years imprisonment and fines up to ฿20,000. We are reporting published enforcement data, not offering an opinion on any particular structure.
An owner in a company structure should be able to answer three questions without consulting anybody. Do the Thai shareholders hold their shares beneficially, with their own money at risk? Does the company file accounts, hold meetings and conduct an actual business? And if the answer to either is no, what is the plan?
The question is not whether your structure is common. Forty-six thousand companies were common. The question is whether it is lawful.
The two reforms that did not happen
Two proposals were discussed extensively through 2024 and 2025 and have appeared in a great deal of sales material as though they were settled.
- A ninety-nine year leasehold. Widely discussed, and still a draft. It had not been enacted as of mid 2026.
- Raising the condominium foreign quota from 49 to 75 percent. Floated as a measure to attract foreign capital, and not implemented. The 49 percent cap under section 19 was still in force as at June 2026.
Neither is a reason to avoid this market. Both are a reason to discount any projection that assumes them. A purchase priced on the basis of a reform that has not passed is a purchase priced on a press release.
Now the yield half of the question
Ownership structure and yield are usually discussed as separate subjects. They are the same subject, because the same body of law that decides what you can own also decides how you can let it.
Under the Hotel Act B.E. 2547, a commercial stay of fewer than thirty nights is treated as a hotel business. There are three lawful ways to let on that basis: a hotel licence, which many larger and branded properties here hold; registration as a non-hotel under the 2008 ministerial regulation, broadly up to four rooms and twenty guests; or letting at thirty nights and above, which needs neither. Enforcement, which has tightened since 2025 with immigration, revenue and municipal records cross-checked, is aimed at properties in none of the three.
So a yield projection built on nightly letting is only as good as the authorisation behind it. If the property holds a licence or a registration, the projection stands. If it holds neither, the projection is describing an activity nobody has authorised, and the brochure will not tell you which case you are in. A yield built on stays of thirty nights and longer needs no authorisation at all, and as it happens produces a better net figure because it collapses turnover cost. We have set out that arithmetic separately.
The structure decides what you own. The Hotel Act decides which authorisation you need to earn from it. Ask which one the property has before you read the yield.
Separate the property from the paperwork
This is the framework we would use, and it is deliberately unglamorous. Assess the property on its own merits, as if the legal structure did not exist. Then assess the structure separately, as if the property did not exist. Only then put the two together.
- On the property. Location, aspect, build quality, condition, access, what it costs to run and what it will realistically let for under a lawful letting model.
- On the paperwork. What is registered at the Land Office, in whose name, for how long, and what happens at the end of the registered term. Not what the brochure promises. What is registered.
- On the counterparty. Who is on the other side of every renewal promise, and would you be comfortable relying on them in twenty-eight years.
- On your own advisers. Thai counsel who is not introduced by, related to, or paid by the seller. This is the single cheapest risk reduction available in this market and it is routinely skipped.
Where we sit
We are a management company, not a law firm and not an agency, and we do not take a position on which structure an owner should use. What we will do is tell an owner plainly when the letting model implied by their yield projection does not match the structure they have bought, because that mismatch is the most common and most expensive problem we see.
We would rather lose a management instruction than manage a property on a basis that puts the owner at risk. That is a duller sales pitch than most of this market offers and it is the reason our owners stay.
Sources. Prohibition on foreign land ownership under Land Code section 86 with penalties under sections 111 to 113 of up to two years imprisonment and fines to ฿20,000; the 49% foreign quota on condominium saleable floor area under Condominium Act section 19, unchanged as at February 2026; the thirty year maximum enforceable registered lease under Civil and Commercial Code sections 538 and 540; the Supreme Court decision of March 2025 invalidating consecutive thirty plus thirty plus thirty renewal structures; usufruct under Civil and Commercial Code sections 1417 to 1428 and superficies under sections 1410 to 1416; the illegality of nominee shareholding under the Land Code and the Foreign Business Act with penalties to three years imprisonment and ฿1,000,000; and reported enforcement of more than 46,000 identified companies, 852 prosecutions and ฿15.1 billion in estimated damages during 2025 and 2026: published summaries of Thai property law current to 2026, read 24 September 2026. The status of the ninety-nine year leasehold proposal as an unenacted draft as at mid 2026, and the 75% condominium quota proposal as not implemented with the 49% cap in force as at June 2026: published legal commentary, 2026, read 24 September 2026. The thirty night threshold, hotel licence requirement, 2008 ministerial exemption and tightening of enforcement since 2025: Hotel Act B.E. 2547 and the 2008 ministerial regulation as summarised by Thai property law commentators, 2026, read 24 September 2026. Nothing on this page is legal advice and no lawyer has reviewed it. The framework and the operating observations are ours.
