TOP 5 MANDATORY PROPERTY CHECKS IN THAILAND
In several countries, once a buyer decides to purchase a property, a deposit is paid, and the parties involved sit back and handover the legal matters to their lawyers. This allows them to concentrate on rather stressful practical issues like furniture removal, checking heater/boilers/air conditioners and often working their way through a set-pattern of interdependent transactions, which in some cases involve buyers loaning monies from a bank. On the contrary however, this same set of buyers when investing in properties overseas, say in a country like Thailand, forget to dispense with the most crucial and often common-sense oriented property checks.
The Top 5 mandatory property checks in Thailand are:
- Carrying out an Internal and structural survey of the property
Because of many foreigners buying properties outright with cash, there are often no banks overseeing purchases, insisting on the bare minimum of property checks. Weirdly enough, many buyers’ approach the structural integrity of a property with the view that if it looks like the construction is standing up-right, it must be okay and safe live in. This is however far from the truth. So, why not splash some cash equivalent to say a few cases of overtaxed wine and make sure the ceilings of your place don’t cave in a-top you and your loved ones now or in the near future.
- Checking Legalities surrounding the properties existence?
There are various aspects to a property being constructed and legally existing in Thailand and each aspect must be checked because it shouldn’t be assumed that a seller when re-selling their property knows of any existing issues or wishes to disclose them, or in the case of an off-the-plan purchase that the property developer has followed all the rules.
- Check that you’re not walking into any ongoing dispute
In many properties around the world, there are a large amount of legal fee wells for lawyers dealing related to property disputes. Lawyers, most of the time, can’t be legitimately attributed to having created any disputes. Most people are more than capable of creating arguments or disputes without any assistance whatsoever.
- Clearly defining what you are buying
Due to the gulf existing between high quality agents and other agents of low quality, there can be quite contrasting and disparate approaches to the seemingly easy task of creating the ‘description’ or ‘particulars’ of a specific property. The description of a property, by nature, becomes the subject of a purchase agreement and binding sale which under Thailand law is a sale of immoveable property. In the event that the subject is incorrect, any act arising from the transaction can be jeopordised by misunderstandings, which can lead to disputes.
- Make sure something is legally transferred and/or registered to you in the right way
When you purchase a property, just because someone claims to ‘own it’ doesn’t mean that is really the case. Please kindly make sure you check for documents like – construction permit, land title documents, constituent parts of any foreign and Thai companies involved, the validity of the ‘company books’ or registers, recorded information at the Department of Business Development, and lastly make sure when any legal interest is transferred to you like say that in a property, building, condominium title right, leasehold right, and/or shares, that this is taken care of by competent professionals, who know their job.
