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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Property Title Searches here in Thailand. For those who are unaware, Property Title Searches is generally done in the context of a conveyancing or a property transfer. Basically, if you are looking at buying a piece of property it is a really good idea in my opinion to have the due diligence done especially done by a legal professional who knows what they are doing with respect to a Property Title Search in a given jurisdiction.

With respect to Thailand this can be especially important because especially foreign nationals they can find themselves falling into some serious pit falls if they don't deal with someone who knows how to deal with Land Office. The Land Office, not unlike what is called the Registrar of Deeds back in most US jurisdictions, the Land Office basically keeps a record of property developments, property titles, mortgages, leases on those properties any kind of encumbrance. So it is a good idea to do that to do a search not only to find if there are any encumbrances, for example outstanding mortgages for example on the property but also to ascertain if the person claiming ownership actually owns the property. This is especially the case when you are dealing with real estate contracts. We have other videos on this channel discussing that but to just briefly go over it here, if the if the entity or person that you are signing a real estate contract with is not actually the person that is on what is called the Chanote Title, the Title Deed, the freehold title deed presumably in this case, then you may want to figure out why that is the case. Why aren't you signing a real estate contract with the person that actually owns the Title?  

This all came to the forefront of my mind when I was reading a recent article from the Phuket news that is the phuketnews.com. The article is titled: Real Estate Market in Phuket: Pros and Cons. A very good article. A lot of insight in that article. I urge those watching this video to go check out that article for themselves we are going to quote just an excerpt here. There is a lot here, a lot of information, a lot of good insight, I urge folks watching this to check that out. Quoting directly: "It is extremely important to always make a title search on the property or land you want to purchase. This title search is a comprehensive examination and will lay out the history of the property. This is important as you want to be informed about any mortgages, leases, creditor right of ownership or other charges against the property before even considering." Yeah that is definitely good insight provided in this article. You do want to go ahead and do a property search as well as other types of due diligence when obtaining or attempting to obtain property title here in Thailand. 

Again one thing that is not even directly mentioned in here probably because a lot of folks just presume, of course somebody that is saying they own a piece of property owns that piece of property, but in point of fact that may not necessarily be the case. I can remember there is a book out there called The Telephone Booth Indians. It is very good book. Actually it is excerpts from newspaper articles in the 1930s and in this one chapter they talk about the Telephone Booth Indians. The Telephone Booth Indians basically they would go around in New York City and they would put "For Sale" signs on vacant property; property that wasn't theirs and then they put a phone number on that property. Then they would just sit in a phone booth all day long in various office buildings in New York and if somebody called, they would basically pretend that they owned that property and they would get them to put down some sort of deposit or some sort of money or maybe even sell the thing out right and that person would believe that they were buying property but in fact they were not or they were gaining some sort of depository right against anyone else buying property, when in fact they were not doing so.

I am not saying that is going on in Thailand. I am not saying that is a particularly common occurrence but it is not unheard of and it's one of the main reasons for a Property Title Search to occur and why it is probably a good idea to have a legal professional undertake such a search in order to mitigate any possible problems for oneself in getting property conveyed to them here in the Kingdom of Thailand.