Can you hold property through a Thai company?

Key Takeaways

• Foreigners cannot generally own land in Thailand, so buying it through a Thai company looks like the obvious workaround. It is also the most heavily marketed structure covered anywhere in this guide.
• A company formed only to hold a house, with no genuine business behind it, is precisely the nominee arrangement the Foreign Business Act prohibits. The enforcement build-out through 2026, covered in the beneficial ownership question and what changed in 2026, is designed to catch exactly this pattern.
• BOI promotion carries a real land-ownership permit, but only for a business that actually qualifies. It has never been a route to acquiring a personal residence, and BOI promotion is where you check whether your business qualifies at all.
• Leasehold, condominium freehold within the foreign quota, and usufruct do not require a company at all, and each has a real limit worth knowing before you sign anything. Leases cap at 30 years and the popular “30 plus 30 plus 30” renewal promise was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2025. The condominium quota is 49 percent of a building’s floor area, not 49 percent of its units. A usufruct caps at 30 years only for a company; an individual can hold one for life.

In Detail

Why the question comes up

Land Code Section 86 states that an alien may acquire land only under a treaty granting that right, and Thailand currently has no such treaty in force with any country.¹ In practice that means foreigners, and foreign-majority companies, cannot own land in Thailand outright. That restriction is the reason the Investment Promotion Act needed to carve out a specific land-ownership permit for BOI-promoted companies in the first place.² A Singapore owner who wants a house, a warehouse, or a plot near the business runs into this early, and the workaround gets suggested almost immediately: register a Thai company, put a Thai partner on the share register at 51 percent, and let the company buy the land.

Asking the question is not the mistake. It is a reasonable response to a real restriction, and the structure is sold widely enough that most people who ask about it are not being careless. The mistake is in the answer that structure actually gives.

Why it is a trap

A company that exists only to hold one property, with no trading activity, no revenue, and no reason to employ anyone, is not a business with a Thai partner. It is a Thai name on a share register standing in for the foreigner who actually paid for and controls the asset. That is the definition of a nominee arrangement, and it is a criminal offence under the Foreign Business Act, not a grey area.³

the beneficial ownership question and what changed in 2026 cover the 2026 enforcement build-out in full, so this chapter will not repeat the detail. The short version: DBD Order 2/2569 requires bank statements from every Thai shareholder proving they funded their own stake,⁴⁵ and DBD Order 4/2568 flags any registered address already shared by five or more companies for extra scrutiny.⁶ A property-holding shell is a poor fit for either test. There is usually no income to show a bank trail against, and these structures are commonly set up in batches through the same lawyer or agent, at the same registered address, for one client after another.

A structure that regulators quietly tolerated for years is now the specific target of a documented campaign, not a theoretical risk. What was once a paperwork exercise is now the exact profile the 2026 checks were built to surface.

A company that owns its premises is not the same thing

None of this touches a company that runs a real business and happens to own the building it operates from. A restaurant group that buys its own kitchen premises, a manufacturer that owns its factory land, a clinic that owns its building: these are ordinary commercial decisions by a company with staff, revenue, and a purpose that has nothing to do with the property itself. The property is incidental to the business.

That is the test worth putting to any structure you are offered: does the business explain the property, or does the property explain the business? If the honest answer is the second one, you have the structure this chapter is warning about, whatever it is called on the incorporation paperwork.

BOI land rights, where the business actually qualifies

A BOI-promoted company can be granted permission to own land under Section 27 of the Investment Promotion Act, a specific non-tax incentive that overrides the Land Code restriction for that company.² It sits inside Group B promotion alongside the other non-tax privileges.² BOI promotion covers what BOI promotion requires and who qualifies.

The permit is tied to land the promoted business actually uses: an office, a factory, a warehouse. It is granted because a real, approved project needs it, not because a foreigner wants somewhere to live. If your business does not qualify for promotion on its own commercial merits, this route is not open to you, and building a company around the hope of qualifying later is the same trap in a different order.

The other two ownership exceptions, and why they rarely apply

BOI promotion is not the only statutory route to foreign land ownership, only the one most relevant to an SME. Two others exist. Land Code Section 96 bis lets a foreigner who brings in at least 40 million baht of qualifying investment, held for at least three years, acquire up to one rai (1,600 square metres) of land for residential use in specified areas, with Ministerial approval. It is reported as rarely used given the cost and conditions attached to it. Separately, Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand Act Section 44 lets a foreign business operating inside an IEAT industrial estate own land within that estate, subject to IEAT Board approval, and it must generally dispose of the land within three years of ceasing that business.⁷

Ordinary BOI promotion, on its own, does not grant land ownership outside Section 27. Nothing in the registry supports a broader BOI land-ownership right beyond these three named routes.

Alternatives that do not need a shell

Three routes let a foreigner secure the use of property in Thailand without a Thai partner standing in for them, and none of the three requires owning the land.

Leasehold. A foreigner can lease land or a building directly, in their own name, without a company at all. Civil and Commercial Code Section 540 caps a lease of immovable property at 30 years; a longer term agreed in the contract is simply reduced to 30 by operation of law. A lease longer than three years must be registered with the Land Department to be enforceable beyond three years.⁸ Here is the correction that matters most in this chapter: property marketing to foreigners routinely sells a “30 plus 30 plus 30” structure, a 90-year hold built on a renewal clause written into the original lease. A 2025 Thai Supreme Court ruling struck that down. A pre-agreed clause promising automatic consecutive 30-year renewals is not enforceable beyond the first 30 years. Each renewal has to be a genuinely new lease, freely negotiated and registered again when the time comes, not locked in at signing.⁹ Treat any 90-year figure quoted to you as a sales pitch, not a legal guarantee, until you have seen it hold up against this ruling.

Condominium freehold, within the foreign quota. The Condominium Act allows foreigners to own units outright, subject to a quota reserved for foreign ownership, set by Section 19 at 49 percent.¹⁰ The detail most published sources get wrong, including a fair number of sales listings, is what that 49 percent measures. It is 49 percent of the building’s aggregate saleable floor area, not 49 percent of the number of units.¹⁰ A building can look available or unavailable to a foreign buyer depending on unit sizes even at the same headline occupancy, so confirm the live floor-area figure for a specific building with the juristic person or a Thai lawyer rather than trusting a sales listing’s arithmetic.

Usufruct. A usufruct gives a named person the right to use a property and receive its income, without transferring title, under Civil and Commercial Code Sections 1417 to 1428. It must be registered with the Land Department to bind third parties.¹¹ The 30-year maximum commonly quoted for a usufruct is real but incomplete: it applies only where the usufructuary is a company. Where the usufructuary is a natural person, the right can run for that person’s entire life, with no 30-year ceiling, though it still ends on their death and cannot be inherited.¹¹

Closing this guide

Twenty-four chapters have circled one idea from different directions, and this is the last place to say it plainly. For years the question that decided an outcome was what the share register said: who held what percentage. That question no longer decides much on its own. The question now is what the shareholders can evidence: that the money for their shares came from them, that the company’s address is real, that their role in the business is real. A structure built to survive the old question is not built to survive the new one.

This chapter’s own leasehold, condominium, and usufruct sections were, in an earlier draft, three named gaps rather than three sourced answers. They stayed unfilled until statute sections and dates could be named and checked, and one of the answers that came back corrected a lease structure a lot of property marketing to foreigners still sells as safe. That is the whole method behind this guide: name what is confirmed, name what is not, and never fill the second category by guessing.

Every figure in this guide carries a date because Thai regulation earned that caution during 2026 alone. Orders were issued, effective dates were revised after publication, a VAT extension moved from proposed to law, a visa exemption was signed and then still not in force a week later. Check the currency of anything here before you act on it, especially anything this guide has marked provisional, unconfirmed, or under review.

None of this is legal advice. It is a map of what changed, what is confirmed, and what is not, built so that your first conversation with a Thai lawyer starts from the right question instead of the popular one.

Before you use a company to hold property

• Does the company do anything besides hold this property? If you cannot describe its trading activity in one sentence, it may not have one.
• Can your Thai shareholder show, with three months of bank statements, that they paid for their own shares?
• Is the registered address shared with several other companies set up through the same agent or lawyer?
• Does your actual business qualify for BOI promotion, and would its land-ownership permit even cover what you are trying to buy? That question belongs in BOI promotion, before this one.
• Have you priced leasehold, a condominium within the foreign quota, or a usufruct against a Thai lawyer, rather than against a company formation agent with an incentive to sell you a company?
• If the honest answer to the first question is no, are you willing to treat that as a criminal exposure question, not a paperwork question?

Sources

11 sources for this article, 1 of them primary. Where we could not verify something, the article says so rather than estimating.

1. Thailand Law Online, www.thailandlawonline.com
2. BOI One Start One Stop (primary), osos.boi.go.th
3. Lex Bangkok, lexbangkok.com
4. DFDL, www.dfdl.com
5. Chandler MHM, chandler.morihamada.com
6. Mahanakorn Partners, mahanakornpartners.com
7. Terms.law, terms.law
8. Thailand Law Online, www.thailandlawonline.com
9. Addleshaw Goddard, www.addleshawgoddard.com
10. Terms.law, terms.law
11. Thailand Law Online, www.thailandlawonline.com

This article is general information about doing business in Thailand and is not legal, tax, or financial advice. Every figure is cited with its source and its date. Thai regulation is changing quickly and rules current at publication may change without notice. Confirm anything you intend to act on with qualified Thai counsel.