Freehold vs Leasehold in Phuket: What Foreign Buyers Actually Own

Most confusion in Phuket comes from treating freehold and leasehold as two prices for the same thing. They are different legal products with different rules, buyers and resale markets.

Freehold means you own the asset outright and your name is on the title. For a foreigner, the usual route to owning a home outright is a unit in a registered condominium, where foreign owners together hold no more than 49% of the building's total sellable floor area (Condominium Act, section 19). Under the route most buyers use, you must also show that the purchase money came into Thailand in foreign currency. (A foreigner can also own a building separately from the land under it; exceptional land permissions are not ordinary villa-purchase routes.)

Leasehold means a Thai owner keeps the land title and grants you the right to use it for a fixed term, registered at the Land Office. An ordinary fixed-term lease of this kind is limited to 30 years (Civil and Commercial Code, section 540). This is how almost every foreigner buys a villa, a townhouse or land in Phuket.

A foreign freehold unit is registered on a condominium unit title deed (Chanote Hong Chud) in your name. It can be sold, mortgaged, rented out monthly and left to heirs, subject to the rules below.

The 49% quota

The cap is measured by floor area, not by number of units. A building can be sold out to foreigners while Thai-quota units remain. Before you pay a deposit, ask the juristic person (the building's management body) or the developer for a written confirmation that foreign quota is available for your specific unit. On a resale, the quota passes with the unit only if the seller is also a foreigner who holds it in the foreign quota.

Proof of foreign funds

At transfer the Land Office asks for evidence that the full price came from abroad in foreign currency. Banks issue a Foreign Exchange Transaction form (FET) for inward transfers of USD 50,000 or more per transaction; below that a bank credit advice is used. The money must be sent by SWIFT into your own Thai account or the developer's account with your name and the unit in the payment reference. Money that passes through a fintech app or a third party's baht account usually produces no FET. Our guide to transferring money covers the mechanics.

What freehold does not solve

You own the unit, not the building. The building's rules (Condominium Act, section 32) can ban nightly rentals, and you pay common-area fees and a one-off sinking fund. If the quota is full you cannot buy that unit in your own name at all, and the alternatives sellers suggest (a long lease on a Thai-quota unit, a Thai company) carry the risks described below.

A well-structured villa purchase in Phuket usually combines two registered rights.

1. A land lease of up to 30 years, registered on the land title (ideally a Chanote) at the Land Office. Leases longer than three years are only enforceable against third parties beyond three years if registered.
2. A right over the house. Either you buy the building itself (a foreigner may own a building, just not the land under it) or you take a registered superficies, the right to own a structure on someone else's land, for up to 30 years or a lifetime.

Together these give you a registered, enforceable package: if the landowner sells the land or dies, the buyer or heirs take it subject to your lease.

What the 30 years really mean

Many contracts promise 30+30+30. Only the first 30 years are registered. The renewals are a contractual promise by the landowner and, in Supreme Court decision No. 4655/2566 (decided in 2023 and widely reported in 2025) a pre-agreed renewal beyond 30 years was not enforced. Treat any renewal as a bonus. When you compare prices, divide by 30, not 90.

Where it goes wrong

• The lease is signed but never registered, so it binds nobody but the signatory.
• The land title is weaker than a Chanote or carries a mortgage the bank has not consented to.
• The contract says nothing about what happens if you die: by default a lease can end with the lessee unless it allows succession to named heirs. See inheritance.
• The villa sits on land owned by a company whose Thai shareholders are nominees. That turns a lease into a bigger problem, covered in our Thai company guide.

These are illustrative calculations, not upper bounds. The transfer fee uses the official appraised value; specific business tax and stamp duty use the higher of the declared price and the appraisal; lease fees use the rent for the registered term.

Example: a 20 m THB (≈ USD 597,000) villa where the lease is priced at 14 m THB and the house at 6 m THB. Lease registration and stamp duty: 14 m × 1.1% = 154,000 THB. Transfer fee on the house, if its appraised value were also 6 m: 6 m × 2% = 120,000 THB, shared as agreed. Compare a 20 m THB freehold condo, assuming the appraisal is also 20 m THB: 2% transfer fee is 400,000 THB, of which the buyer often pays 200,000 THB.

Holding costs are similar

Land and building tax for a second home runs at about 0.02–0.10% of appraised value a year. A condo adds common-area fees per square metre; a villa adds estate fees, pool, garden and maintenance. The full breakdown, with worked examples for selling as well, is in our taxes and fees guide.

Think about the buyer you will sell to before you buy.

A freehold condo sells like a normal apartment: you transfer the unit title at the Land Office. If you hold it in the foreign quota, the next foreign buyer can take it over in that quota, which keeps the unit easy to sell to the international market. Your sale proceeds can be sent back abroad, since the FET documents that the money came in from abroad in the first place.

A leasehold villa sells by transferring the remaining lease, which needs the landowner's cooperation and a new registration. The buyer gets what is left: a villa bought with 30 years and sold after 10 offers 20 registered years. That shorter term is the single biggest factor in leasehold resale prices. Some sellers ask the landowner to grant a fresh 30-year lease to the new buyer; whether that is possible depends entirely on the landowner and the contract.

Questions to settle before you buy a leasehold

• Does the contract allow assignment of the lease to a buyer without the landowner's further consent and fee?
• Will the landowner register a new lease for a buyer, and on what terms?
• Who owns the house when the lease ends?
• What happens if the landowner's land is seized or sold for debt?

None of this makes leasehold a bad buy. It makes it a product you should price on its registered years and the quality of the paperwork, not on the marketing.

Two reforms are often quoted in sales material as if they were done. As of October 2026 neither is law.

• 99-year leases. A draft to allow much longer leases was published for consultation in 2025 and was reported shelved in September 2025. The registrable maximum remains 30 years.
• 75% foreign condo quota. Raising the cap, possibly only in Phuket or special zones or above a price floor, has been studied since 2024. It has not been submitted to Parliament. The cap remains 49%.

What is changing is enforcement. In June 2026 the Department of Business Development inspected suspected nominee companies in Phuket, and in July the government called nominee shareholding one of the country's most serious economic threats. Investigators look at who funds and controls a company, not just its share register. That makes the paperwork quality of any company-based villa much more important than it was a few years ago, and it is one more reason to prefer a clean registered lease.

If a seller's pitch depends on a law that has not passed, ask for the Royal Gazette reference. If there is none, price the property on today's rules.

Choose by what you want the property to do, then pick the legal form that fits it.

• You want outright ownership, simple resale and something to leave to your children: a freehold condo in a well-run building with confirmed foreign quota.
• You want land, privacy and a pool, for living or long stays: a leasehold villa with a registered lease on a Chanote and a registered right over the house. Price it on 30 years.
• You want nightly rental income: check the legal rental route first. A condo in a licensed hotel or branded residence is usually cleaner than a private villa or a standard condo. See renting out legally.
• You are offered a villa through a Thai company: slow down and read our company guide before you pay anything.

Whatever you buy, have an independent Thai lawyer check the title, the registration and the contract, not the seller's lawyer. When you know which form fits, see freehold condos or leasehold villas, or tell us what you need.