Land for sale in Thailand: what a foreigner can and cannot do with a plot, and the four lawful ways to hold one

Why the search for land in Thailand ends somewhere else

Thousands of foreigners search every month for land for sale in Thailand, and almost all of them end up owning something that is not land. The reason is the Land Code of 1954, which reserves the ownership of land for Thai nationals and Thai juristic persons and has been amended several times without giving foreign individuals a general right to own a plot. A foreigner’s name cannot be written on a land title deed as owner, and no lawyer, agent or developer can change that; what they can do is set up one of the lawful ways of holding land without owning it, and the difference between a lawful structure and an unlawful one is the whole subject of this page.

The portals that rank for the search show thousands of plots at prices from a few hundred thousand THB for a rai of rubber trees in Isan to hundreds of millions for a beachfront plot in Phuket, and every one of those plots is either for a Thai buyer or is offered to a foreigner on a lease or through a company, whether the listing says so or not. This site takes a different position: it sells no bare plots to foreigners at all. Its catalogue holds 395 developer projects across Phuket, Koh Samui, Pattaya and Bangkok, and 201 of them are houses and villas where the plot is sold together with the house, the estate’s land has been or will be subdivided, and the lease is registered against the buyer’s own plot at handover. That is the form in which almost every foreigner who “buys land” in Thailand actually ends up holding it, and this page explains the law behind it so that a buyer knows what a villa estate’s lease is and is not.

The one exception, and why it is almost never used

Section 96 bis of the Land Code, added in 1999, allows a foreigner to own up to one rai of land for residential use if they invest at least 40,000,000 THB in specified Thai assets, government bonds, approved funds or Board of Investment promoted businesses, keep the investment for at least five years, and obtain permission from the Minister of Interior for a plot in a designated residential zone. The rule exists, the permission is discretionary, the investment must be maintained, and the plot must be used as a residence within two years or sold. In practice a handful of applications are made, because a buyer with 40,000,000 THB to lock up for five years usually prefers a freehold condominium of that value, which needs no permission at all. A proposal to widen foreign land ownership for wealthy long-term visa holders was floated in 2022, withdrawn after public opposition, and has not returned; the 99-year lease and 75 percent condominium quota proposals discussed since 2024 remain proposals in September 2026.

The four lawful ways to hold land

Two registrable rights from the Civil and Commercial Code appear across the table and deserve their own explanation. A superficies is the right to own buildings on land that belongs to someone else, registrable for up to 30 years or for the life of the holder, and it is the cleanest way to record that the house on a leased plot is the foreigner’s. A usufruct is the right to use land and take its fruits, registrable for up to 30 years or for life, and it is the usual right registered for a foreign spouse over land in the Thai spouse’s name. Neither gives the foreigner the land, and both survive a sale of it.

Insider tip: the phrase “freehold land” in a listing aimed at foreigners means freehold for the Thai or corporate buyer. Ask the seller to write down which of the four structures above is on offer and what will be registered at the Land Office in your name. If the answer is a company set up for the purchase with shareholders you have never met, walk away; the checks on shareholder funds that the Department of Business Development and the Land Department tightened in 2025 have made those companies a liability at resale.

Rai, ngan, wa: reading a Thai title

Thailand measures land in units that a buyer must learn before reading a deed or a price. One rai is 1,600 square metres. A rai divides into four ngan of 400 square metres, and a ngan into 100 square wa of 4 square metres each. A title states the area as rai, ngan and square wa, so a deed marked 0-1-75 describes one ngan and seventy-five square wa, 700 square metres, and one marked 2-0-0 describes two rai, 3,200 square metres. Prices are quoted per rai for large plots and per square wa for small ones, and a listing at 50,000 THB per square wa is a listing at 20,000,000 THB per rai. Villa plots on Phuket’s estates typically run from 100 to 200 square wa, 400 to 800 square metres; a Samui hillside villa often sits on more, and a Bangkok townhouse on far less.

The same deed carries the title’s type, and the type decides whether the plot can be leased or bought at all. Chanote, formally Nor Sor 4 Jor, is the full title, with boundaries surveyed and fixed by GPS and a red garuda at the top of the deed; it is the only document that proves ownership beyond argument, and the only one to accept for a purchase or a long lease. Nor Sor 3 Gor is a surveyed certificate of use with a green garuda, transferable and upgradable to Chanote on application, and acceptable with a lawyer’s check of the survey. Nor Sor 3 without the Gor is an unsurveyed certificate whose boundaries are approximate and whose transactions require a 30-day public notice during which neighbours may object. Sor Kor 1, Por Bor Tor 5 and the various possession and tax receipts that are sometimes offered as titles are not titles; they record a claim or a tax payment, they cannot be sold to a foreigner in any form, and land held under them may be forest reserve or state land that no one can lawfully sell. The land ownership guide goes through the deed types with images of each.

What a plot costs, and why this page gives no price per rai

Thailand has no public register of land transaction prices. What exists is the Treasury Department’s appraised value for every plot, revised in four-year cycles and used to compute transfer fees and taxes, which sits well below market prices in the resort provinces and is not a guide to what a seller will accept; and the asking prices on portals, which are asking prices. A page that quoted a price per rai for Phuket’s west coast or Samui’s hills would be quoting one or the other and calling it a market, and this site does not. What can be said is structural. Land near a beach on Phuket’s west coast is priced in the tens of millions of THB per rai and rising with every metre closer to the sand; land on the Cherng Talay plain and in Thalang is priced in the millions to low tens of millions; land on the east coast and in the interior in the low millions; and land on Samui’s north-coast hills between Phuket’s plain and its coast. The Phuket property page and the Koh Samui page give the prices of the houses that sit on such plots, which for a foreign buyer is the number that matters.

Taxes and fees on land

Land in Thailand is cheap to hold if it is built on and expensive to hold if it is not, and the difference is deliberate.

The Thai-buyer relief that reduces the transfer fee to 0.01 percent until 30 June 2027 applies to homes up to 7,000,000 THB bought by Thai individuals and does not reach a foreign lease or a company purchase. The tax guide carries the worked examples.

Due diligence on a plot: twelve checks before a lease

Land carries more risk than a finished house, because a plot can be unbuildable, inaccessible, encumbered or simply not the seller’s to sell, and none of that shows from the road. The checks below are the ones our lawyers run before a lease is signed.

1. The deed. Chanote or, with care, Nor Sor 3 Gor. Anything else ends the conversation.
2. The owner. The name on the deed against the seller’s identity card or company registration, and the company’s shareholder list if the seller is a company.
3. Encumbrances. Every lease, mortgage, servitude and usufruct endorsed on the back of the deed.
4. The survey. The boundary pegs on the ground against the plan on the deed, walked with a surveyor; Thai plots have been sold with boundaries that were wrong by a road’s width.
5. Access. A public road at the boundary, or a registered servitude over the neighbour’s plot; a handshake right of way is not a right.
6. Zoning. The provincial town plan’s colour for the plot, which decides what may be built and how high; Phuket’s and Samui’s plans restrict building near the shore, on steep slopes and above set elevations.
7. Coastal setback and forest. The distance from the shoreline and the plot’s relation to national park, forest reserve and mangrove land, on which no title is valid however old.
8. Environmental rules. Whether a build of the intended size will need an environmental impact assessment, and whether the estate’s assessment, if there is one, covers the plot.
9. Utilities. Electricity from the Provincial Electricity Authority at the boundary or the cost of bringing it; water from the municipal supply, a borehole or an estate system; drainage and where it goes.
10. Flood and fill. The plot’s level against the road and the neighbours, and whether it has been filled; the Cherng Talay plain and parts of Thalang flood in heavy monsoon years.
11. Subdivision. On an estate, whether the plot has its own deed yet, because a lease cannot be registered against a plot that does not exist.
12. The lease itself. The term, the rent, the registration, the superficies or building transfer, what happens to the house at expiry, whether the lease can be assigned and inherited, and what the landowner promises about renewal.

The due diligence guide expands each step, and the hillside villa guide covers the slope rules that decide whether a Phuket or Samui plot can be built on at all.

Leasing from a private owner and leasing on an estate are different risks

A 30-year lease is the same right whoever grants it, but the person on the other side of it changes what can go wrong. On a developer’s estate the lessor is a company that owns the whole estate, has subdivided it or is doing so, registers dozens of identical leases a year and expects to be around when they need renewing; the risks are the developer’s solvency during construction, the subdivision not yet done, and estate regulations that a buyer did not read. With a private landowner the lessor is a person, and a person dies, borrows, divorces and quarrels with heirs. A lease registered on the title survives all of those, because it binds whoever owns the land next, but a lease that has been signed and not yet registered does not, and a plot with a mortgage on the deed can be sold by the bank over the lessee’s head if the owner defaults. The rules for a private lease are therefore stricter: register on the day the money moves and not before, check the deed for mortgages and pay nothing while one is on it, pay the rent for the term up front only against registration, write succession and assignment clauses so that the lease passes to heirs and can be sold, and meet the owner’s family, because they are the people the renewal will depend on. The 30-year lease guide sets out the clauses.

Agricultural, rural and forest land: where the rules are different again

The plots advertised at the low end of the portals, a rai of rubber trees in the north-east, a durian orchard in the east, a hillside above a Samui beach, are usually agricultural, rural or forest land, and each carries rules that a residential buyer does not meet. Agricultural land is taxed at 0.01 percent for individuals and its use is restricted by the town plan, so a house may not be permitted on it at all. Land allocated under the agricultural land reform programme, with a Sor Por Kor 4-01 document, belongs to the state and cannot be sold or leased to anyone outside the programme, whatever a seller says. Forest reserve, national park and mangrove land can carry no valid private title however old the paper, and titles issued over such land have been revoked in Phuket and Samui in recent years with the buildings on them ordered demolished; the beachfront demolitions report describes the 2025 and 2026 cases. A foreigner who is offered a hillside plot with a sea view and a document that is not a Chanote is being offered a lawsuit, and the correct response is to ask for the Chanote or to leave.

From plot to registered lease: the sequence

The order of a land transaction is what protects a foreign lessee, and it runs in five steps over four to ten weeks once a plot has been chosen. First, the deed is pulled at the Land Office and the twelve checks above are run by the lessee’s own lawyer, before any money moves. Second, a reservation, refundable if the checks fail, holds the plot while the lease and the building arrangements are drafted. Third, the lease agreement, the superficies or building transfer, and any construction contract are signed together, so that the house and the land are dealt with as one transaction. Fourth, the purchase funds arrive from abroad in foreign currency, in the lessee’s own name, with the purpose stated, so that the bank issues the Foreign Exchange Transaction record that will let the money leave the country when the house is sold. Fifth, on a single day at the Land Office, the lease and the superficies are endorsed on the deed, the fees are paid, and the lessee leaves with a certified copy of the deed showing the endorsements. A lessee who is abroad on that day acts through a power of attorney on the Land Office’s printed form, notarised and legalised at home; the remote purchase guide explains the wording.

Building on leased land

A foreigner who leases a plot and builds a house on it owns the house from the first day, and the arrangement is the cleanest form of foreign homeownership in Thailand when it is done in the right order. The lease is registered first, for the full 30-year term, with a clause on what happens to the building at expiry. The construction permit is applied for from the local municipality in the foreigner’s own name, so that the house is the foreigner’s asset rather than the landowner’s. A superficies is registered alongside the lease where the landowner agrees, recording the right to own the building on the deed. The builder is contracted with a fixed specification, staged payments, a completion date, a defects period and retention, and the house is registered in the municipality’s house registration book with the foreigner named as owner of the building.

What the arrangement cannot do is outlast the lease. At the end of the 30 years the land returns to its owner and the house, unless the lease says otherwise, becomes the owner’s too, or must be removed; the lease should say which, and a buyer should price the house on that basis. A buyer under fifty building for life should think about the term; a buyer over sixty rarely needs to. The 30-year lease guide covers the term, the renewal promises and the inheritance of a lease.

Where the plot comes with the house

Almost every foreigner who set out to buy land in Thailand ends up buying a house on an estate, and this site’s catalogue is built for that end. On 6 September 2026 it holds 515 house and villa projects: 149 pool villa estates in Phuket from 5,490,000 THB, 38 villa estates on Koh Samui from 3,650,000 THB, 28 villa estates and 4 housing estates in Hua Hin and Cha-Am from 2,390,000 THB, 8 pool villa estates and 5 housing estates in Pattaya from 8,290,000 THB, 4 villa groups and 2 estates around Chiang Mai from 8,300,000 THB, and one townhouse estate in Bangkok. On every one of them the plot is sold with the house, the estate’s land has been or is being subdivided into plots with their own deeds, and the lease is registered against the buyer’s plot at handover, with the house transferred or permitted in the buyer’s name. The developer has done the zoning, access, utilities and environmental work that a bare plot leaves to the buyer, and the price includes it.

Buyers who want a plot without a house, to build to their own design, are the exception the agency handles by hand: a lease of a subdivided plot on an estate that permits self-build, or a lease from a private landowner with the twelve checks above, and a builder contracted separately. The Thailand houses page and the villa page set out the estates; the Thailand property guide sets out the whole legal frame for a foreign buyer.

Who asks about land, and where each ends up

The self-builder who wants to design a house wants a subdivided plot on an estate that allows it, a 30-year lease with a superficies, and a builder with a record; Thalang and the Cherng Talay plain in Phuket and Maenam on Samui are where the plots are.

The investor who wants to hold land for its value cannot, as a foreign individual, and should not through a nominee company; the honest alternatives are a freehold condominium, which is land value in a form a foreigner may own, or a genuine business that needs land.

The couple with a Thai spouse can hold land in the Thai spouse’s name with a usufruct or lease registered back to the foreign spouse, and should have the declaration, the usufruct and the will drawn on the same day.

The business owner who needs land for a hotel, a factory or a farm looks to the Board of Investment’s promotions, which may allow a promoted company to own the land its business requires, and to the industrial estates, which have their own regime.

The retiree who dreams of a plot and a garden is best served by a completed villa on a large plot in Rawai, Pa Khlok or Samui’s south, where the lease is already registered and the garden already grows.

How MORE Group works on a land question

MORE Group is a licensed Phuket agency with its own teams for Koh Samui, Pattaya and Bangkok, and it sells houses and villas rather than plots, because a house on a registered lease is what a foreign buyer can lawfully and safely hold. When a buyer’s brief begins with land, the work is to establish which of the four structures applies, to find the estate or the private plot that fits, to run the twelve checks through a lawyer the buyer appoints, and to register the lease, the superficies and the building in the right order at the Land Office. Where a plot cannot be held lawfully by a foreigner, the agency says so rather than reaching for a company.