I have been thinking about this a lot lately.
Foreigners love living in houses in Thailand. They want three or four bedrooms, a swimming pool, a
garden, room for two cars, some storage, privacy, security, pets running around and preferably nobody
living above them.
Nothing strange about that.
The problem has never really been the house. The problem is the land underneath it.
For many years our industry has tried to solve that problem in roughly the same ways. A Thai company.
A 30-year lease. Sometimes a combination of structures that takes half an hour and several diagrams
before the buyer really understands what he owns.
With the current scrutiny surrounding Thai companies and nominee shareholders, perhaps this is exactly
the right moment to stop defending old solutions and ask a much simpler question.
Why are we trying so hard to make the old product fit?
Maybe we should change the product.
We already know foreigners can own property in Thailand
Foreigners have been legally buying condominium units in Thailand in their own names for decades.
Within the permitted foreign ownership quota, a properly transferred condominium can be registered
directly in the foreign buyer's name.
No Thai shareholders are required simply to hold the home. There is no 30-year expiry date built into the
ownership. The system is familiar to buyers, lawyers, developers and Land Offices.
So the ownership structure already exists.
Then I asked myself a very simple question.
Who says a condominium has to be on the 28th floor?
Most of us hear the word CONDO and immediately picture a tower. Reception. Corridors. Neighbours
above you. Neighbours below you. A balcony, not enough cupboards, waiting for the lift and another cold
pizza because the delivery driver is still downstairs trying to find the right building.
But that is simply the product we have become used to.
A condominium is first and foremost an ownership structure. A defined residential space, together with
rights and obligations in the common property.
So why do those residential spaces always have to be stacked on top of each other?
Why not spread them out?
Now imagine the product people actually want
Forget the tower for a moment.
Imagine a beautifully landscaped gated community somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard. Luxury three-
and four-bedroom CITY POOL VILLAS. Two storeys, perhaps three. A proper western kitchen, real
storage, private swimming pool, garden, two-car parking, pets, outdoor living, solar power, EV charging,
privacy and security. On the larger homes, perhaps even a private lift.
You walk through the front door and it feels like a villa. You sit beside your swimming pool and it feels like
a villa. Your dog certainly will not know he is living in a condominium.
The difference is in how the development has been planned, designed and legally structured from Day
One.
Villa lifestyle. Condominium ownership structure.
That is the horizontal condominium.
And no, I did not invent this over breakfast
This is not some Pattaya property trick and it is certainly not a new loophole.
Noble Development introduced what it called a horizontal condominium more than 30 years ago. So the
idea itself is not new at all.
That is actually what makes it interesting.
Perhaps horizontal condominiums are not a new idea. Perhaps they are an old idea whose time has
finally come again.
Especially now.
Why now?
For years, foreigners buying houses were often told: No problem, just put it in a Thai company.
I think we have to be much more careful saying that today.
There is nothing wrong with a genuine Thai company owning property. A real company, with real
shareholders, real investment, real activity and proper compliance, is exactly that: a company.
But a company created only so a foreigner can effectively control land, supported by Thai shareholders
who are shareholders only on paper, is a very different matter.
Thai authorities are looking much harder at those arrangements.
Personally, I do not think that is necessarily bad news.
Maybe it forces our industry to become smarter.
And then there is the 30-year lease
I am not anti-leasehold.
For some people, a properly registered 30-year lease can make perfect sense. If you are 70 years old,
find a beautiful pool villa in Bang Saray and want to enjoy the next couple of decades there, fine.
But let's call it what it is.
Thirty years.
Not freehold ownership. Not 90 years because somebody typed 30 + 30 + 30 into a contract.
Thirty years.
Now compare that with a properly registered condominium unit owned directly in your name, without a
fixed 30-year ownership expiry.
Suddenly the horizontal condominium becomes a very interesting conversation.
What does the foreign buyer gain?
Potentially, a lot.
Within the permitted foreign ownership quota, the foreign buyer can own the condominium residence
directly in his or her own name, provided the project and transfer meet the legal requirements.
We are not inventing a new kind of ownership. We are changing the kind of home that sits inside an
ownership structure Thailand has used for decades.
And if we design the development properly, that home can deliver almost everything people actually want
from villa living: space, garden, pool, parking, privacy, security and proper storage, without having to live
in an apartment tower.
For many buyers, the biggest advantage is simply clarity.
They should be able to answer the question 'What do I actually own?' without needing a 45-minute
explanation and three diagrams.
There are downsides too
There is no magic wand in property.
A foreign buyer in a horizontal condominium would not own a separate land Chanote underneath the villa
in the same way a Thai buyer might own a conventionally subdivided house and plot.
The owner is part of a condominium structure. There is a Condominium Juristic Person. There are
common fees, rules, votes and shared areas. There may be restrictions on what an owner can extend or
change. And the foreign ownership quota still applies.
Those are real differences.
But put them next to the alternatives.
For many foreign buyers, choosing between clearly registered condominium ownership in their own
name, an artificial company structure or a lease slowly counting down from 30 years may be a
surprisingly easy discussion.
And what about the Thai buyer?
This part matters just as much.
I do not want a horizontal condominium designed as some strange foreigner-only ownership vehicle. That
would be a mistake.
It has to be a great residential development first.
Thai buyers want good homes too. They want private swimming pools, security, good design, gardens,
privacy, quality landscaping, convenient locations and easy access to schools, hospitals, motorways and
everything that is developing around Pattaya and the EEC.
A Thai buyer can own the condominium residence directly in his or her own name as well.
So I do not look at the Thai ownership proportion and think: Oh dear, how do we sell the other 51%?'
Wrong question.
Build something Thai buyers actually want.
If the project only works because foreigners are desperate for an ownership solution, then we have
designed the wrong project.
What is the downside for the Thai buyer?
Some Thai purchasers will simply prefer a conventional house with their own individual land title. Nothing
wrong with that.
They may also prefer fewer juristic-person rules and more freedom to alter their home.
But there is another side to this.
Drive through enough housing estates ten years after completion and you will understand it immediately.
One owner builds a kitchen into the garden. Another adds a strange roof. Someone turns the lawn into
parking. Someone paints the house purple. Someone else stops paying the community fees.
A well-designed condominium structure can provide stronger control over common property,
maintenance, security and the overall look and feel of the community.
For one buyer, that is a restriction. For another, it is protection.
Again, there is no perfect answer for everybody.
There is simply another choice.
The real breakthrough is not legal. It is product design.
This is the part I find most exciting.
Think about what people actually want from a home. Three or four bedrooms, a proper garden, their own
swimming pool, enough storage, room for two cars, pets, privacy and security. Nothing extraordinary. In
fact, that is exactly what many buyers are already looking for.
So why do we keep assuming that a condominium has to mean a box in a tower?
If somebody prefers a house-style environment, why not design that residential space horizontally
instead? Give them the pool, the garden, the parking and the privacy they want, but structure the project
from Day One so that the ownership can sit within the condominium framework.
That, to me, is where this becomes genuinely interesting.
It still has to be done properly
You cannot build 40 villas and afterwards walk into the Land Office saying: 'By the way, we would like
these to be condominiums.
It does not work like that.
The whole concept has to be engineered correctly from the start.
The land, planning, architecture, private and common property, gardens, pools, parking, roads, utilities,
drainage, wastewater, fire access, environmental requirements, building permits, condominium
regulations and foreign quota all have to fit together.
Lawyers need to be involved. Architects need to be involved. Engineers and environmental specialists
need to be involved. And the relevant authorities should be consulted before somebody spends millions
designing something that cannot ultimately be registered the way it was intended.
This is not a way around Thai law.
Quite the opposite.
The whole idea is to design the project properly around Thai law from Day One.
I like that.
And this is where Town & Country comes in
Town & Country has been active on the Eastern Seaboard since 2003, but we have never only sold other
people's property.
We developed The Meadows. We developed Whispering Palms. We developed The Residence Jomtien.
Approximately 125 completed residences.
And I have personally lived in Thailand since 1997.
That is nearly 30 years of living here, and more than 20 years working in Eastern Seaboard property.
Developing, selling, renting, advising, watching buyers arrive, watching families settle here, watching
people change their minds and sometimes watching projects fail because nobody asked the right
questions at the beginning.
That experience changes the way you look at property development.
An architect sees architecture. A lawyer sees the law. An engineer sees engineering. A contractor sees
construction. A developer sees the numbers. A sales agent sees the buyer.
A successful project needs all of them.
But somebody needs to connect the dots.
And frankly, I think an experienced property consultant should be sitting at that table from the beginning,
not when construction is 80% finished and somebody suddenly arrives with a price list asking us to sell it.
By then, many of the important decisions have already been made.
Sometimes badly.
Maybe we have been asking the wrong question for years
Thailand is perfectly entitled to protect Thai land ownership. I respect that.
Foreign buyers are equally entitled to want clarity about what they are paying millions of baht for. I
respect that too.
Those two interests do not have to fight each other.
Maybe we do not need another clever company arrangement. Maybe we do not need to convince
somebody that a 30-year lease feels almost like ownership.
Maybe we simply need to design better property.
Stop automatically thinking of a condominium as a box in the sky.
Think of it as a legal residential ownership structure, then start with the buyer and design the home
people actually want to live in.
Garden. Pool. Privacy. Security. Storage. Pets. Two cars. A proper community.
Then let the lawyers, architects, engineers and authorities make sure the development structure supports
that lifestyle properly.
That, to me, is much more exciting than finding another workaround.
Perhaps the answer was right in front of us
I do not pretend horizontal condominiums will replace normal housing estates. They will not.
And I certainly do not suggest that every piece of land on the Eastern Seaboard should suddenly become
one.
But for the right location, the right landowner, the right developer and the right market, I think this
deserves a very serious look.
Especially now.
Foreign buyers want safe, understandable ownership. Thai buyers want good homes. Developers want
products that stand out. Landowners want better use of their land. And the Eastern Seaboard is entering
another very interesting period of growth.
Maybe the timing is not bad at all.
More than 30 years after Thailand first experimented successfully with the horizontal condominium,
perhaps it is time to stop stacking everything on top of each other.
Spread it out.
Give people the lifestyle they actually want.
And where legally available within the foreign quota, give the foreign buyer something he has understood
and trusted for decades: registered ownership in his own name.
Sometimes the smartest property idea is not inventing a new law.
It is finally looking differently at the one we already have.
The answer is near.
Town & Country is here.
KC Cuijpers
CEO, Town & Country Property Co., Ltd.
PROPERTY INSIGHTS SPECIAL
This article presents personal commentary on a potential development model. It is not legal advice. Every development requires site-specific title, planning, building-control, environmental and condominium-registration review by the appropriate professionals and authorities.