Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing longer leasing or long-term leasing herein Thailand with regard to Thai Property, Thai real estate, land specifically. For those who are unaware, there are specific restrictions on foreigners being able to own land in Thailand. It is pretty well codified in Thailand's Law that land ownership is pretty much exclusively restricted to Thai Nationals. Now there are very small exceptions to this as we have noted in other videos, there are exceptions that have only been exercised 8 times in the last 20 odd years resulting from some changes that came about to the Law in the aftermath of the 1997 financial crisis and the IMF rules that were imposed on Thailand thereafter. So long story short, land ownership is restricted pretty much to Thais for anybody who isn't aware. 

Now that said, there has been sort of, it's almost controversial politically at this point, regarding proposed legislation to allow foreigners to own, it seems to be one rai of land and it’s got to be a purchase over a million dollars, so 40 million Baht in value and they are talking about allowing foreign Land Ownership although it was talked about as kind of a foregone conclusion, it clearly isn't. It's still being debated within the Parliament and they have still got to deal with this at a Government level. I am not sure where this is going to end up. I have made my position known on this; as I have said before I'm somewhere between ambivalent and against. I don't really love this in its current incarnation, just full disclosure, I think it ultimately could do more disservice to Thailand than service to Thailand's interests, this proposal. 

That said, back to the issue of long-term leasing. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: An age-old dilemma. I urge those who are watching this video go check out that article for yourself. " She, (and in this case 'she' they are referring to Aliwassa Pathnadabutr, Chairwoman of Property Consultants CBRE Thailand), quote: "She said an alternative is to allow longer Land Lease terms of up to 50 or 70 years, in common with many neighboring countries. This might be a more palatable solution than allowing freehold ownership of land." Yeah I have said this for quite some time. I thought we were going to get 50 year leases, they were talking about that a couple of years ago and they seemed pretty serious about it. I think 50-year leases would be much more in line with Thailand's national interest, 70 years even. Leasing I think would be much more in line with Thailand's National interest and I also think it would give foreign nationals here much more certainty with respect to their interest in Thai Property whereas they have been talking about this foreign land ownership, possible Bill and the amendment, what it would look like and it has been very vague, it has been very opaque but what is clear is that it is not going to go on forever. It is going to be very limited in terms of geographically where it can be whereas I think a leasing structure, the Civil and Commercial Code, the jurisprudence on Leasing has been around decades if not centuries here in Thailand and that jurisprudence is much more fleshed out compared to just coming up with something on the fly that kind of radically changes overall policy here in Thailand regarding land ownership. I think probably leasing is something to look at not only from the Government's standpoint wanting to maintain the best interests of Thailand but also frankly from the foreigner’s standpoint, because I think it provides a far greater degree of certainty than all these kind of plans and schemes that everybody has been bandying about here the past few weeks.