Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing unforeseen issues associated with property conveyancing here in Thailand, so sale and purchase of property and why due diligence is important. 

Look, at the end of the day, obviously there's a promotional nature to these videos we make and one of the services we offer here at our firm is assistance in purchasing property and selling property and due diligence associated therewith. And people ask, well what does that entail? Well one of the big things it entails that nobody seems to really appreciate, is the person “selling” a piece of property, may not own it. It's not unheard of. It is more unheard of now in 2025 than it was 17 years ago when I first started dealing with legal matters here in Thailand albeit exclusively in an American capacity, but I did hear from other practitioners these horror stories about yeah somebody sold a guy a piece of property or rented a guy a piece of property. He didn't own it.

I am going to go ahead and find a graphic for this book; there's a book called the Telephone Booth Indians. It was written in the '30s. I'll go ahead and put it up on screen. In this book, it actually explains this kind of scam as it used to occur back in like the '20s and '30s in America. Basically what would happen is they were called "Telephone Booth Indians" and I know it's kind of a pejorative term, that they sat in these telephone booths like Indians. Basically what they would do, what these folks would do is they would go out and put signage on abandoned buildings that they didn't own, and they would put a number to call and that number would be a telephone booth. And then they would just sit in the telephone booth in these bus stations and train stations, and wait for somebody to call and then pretend like they owned the property and then pretended to sell it or rent it to somebody. They would take the money, and they would run off and that would be how that worked  

Quick aside here. I want to do a shameless plug if folks don't mind. My better half and I have recently opened a restaurant here in Thailand. It's called Pancake Palace. It is dedicated to American diner food. We're going to go ahead and put some photos up. We've got chilli, we have got pancakes obviously. We have got breakfast anytime. It's truly the American diner experience here and again shameless plug, but I want to let people know because obviously we are trying to promote it, but I do think that there is a bit of a dearth of American diner food here in Bangkok and folks might want to avail themselves of that. 

That said, let's get back to talking about the Telephone Booth Indians with regard to due diligence here in Thailand. Again I know that sounds like a stretch that, oh folks could pretend to own a piece of property and not really own it. I've seen it. I have personally seen it in my experience here in Bangkok both in the law firm and horror stories sitting around the bars in my younger days and just talking to the old timers. It can happen. It's not as frequent as it once was but it can happen. 

Meanwhile, other issues associated with due diligence include like the physical plan associated with a piece of property. I have talked to a lot of folks here recently that rented or purchased a piece of property and they didn't do a walk through, they didn't send somebody around basically an appraiser to a given piece of property to look it all over and make sure that piping was in order, the walls were in order, the structure was in order. 

So again, all of this stuff and then on top of it, you are going to need somebody to go ahead and assist with the actual conveyancing, the actual sale of the property itself, the transfer of title which occurs at the Thai Land Office. All of these things are things that need to be taken into consideration when looking to purchase property here in the Kingdom of Thailand.