I have looked extensively at buying land or a house and land in Thailand. What the other posters say is correct, a foreigner can buy a condo – as long as the total foreign ownership in the complex is 49% or less. Usually this isn’t a problem. If you want to go this way, I have found that properties 2 to 5 years old are probably the safest. Firstly, I love the Thai people to bits, but they are a permanently disorganised lot. A new building NEVER opens quite finished, and seldom with reliable management. So avoid the hassle and buy in when they’ve got their act together. Also if you are renting it out, you will be obliged to have it run through the property managers. There is a famous saying in the Kingdom – ‘Thais help Thais’. As a farang expect not to get the pick of either the holiday clients or permanent tenants, unless of course you ‘donate’ cash now and then to the manager. This goes for repairs as well – if the manager is onside, the bills will be ‘Thai price’ not ‘Farang price’ – a BIG difference believe me.

As for the house/land option, on the face of it aliens cannot do it. However if you create a Thai company with say six Thai nationals who have 51% control + yourself at 49%, it can be done. A local solicitor can structure the company so that you are granted the other directors proxies for ever, therefore ensuring you retain control. A friend did this in Trat on the southeastern coast. The solicitor sent his ‘researcher’ out for 3 hours with 6 directorship forms and some cash and he came back with 6 Thais who had nominated to be the majority directors. All their company mail is permanently directed to the solicitors office. They included a beach massage chick, a hotel porter and a taxi driver. They got paid 1500thb each, (about aud$50), have never met eachother and never will! All up the legals + govt fees came to about aud $2k. This was about 18 months ago and my mate has since bought a block of land in the company name and is in the process of building a house.

This link is from a property company on the island of Koh Phangan, but the general info is valid. I have found very helpful:
http://www.kp-property.com/index.cfm?action=phangan.glossary&CFID=315381&CFTOKEN=19806661

One final word about this topic is the confusing array of land titles that exist in the Kingdom. They range from ‘chanot’ which is pretty well iron clad to what amounts to basically squatters rights which mean nothing at all.

This link will assist here:
http://www.iamkohchang.com/Real_Estate/index.htm

I hope this is of some help to you. Cheers, nw1

Hi, I presume you’ve asked the neighbour to call you if any activity is seen at your house? The electricity meter is a good idea, (both reading it and switching it off for a time).

Did you mean that the c/link letters in the letterbox are addressed to the new but absent tenants? If so, they are in breach of the law as C/link requires a current residential address. Would it be worth their while to claim a false benefit by this means? – Probably not for one applicant, but for all you know your house could be the phantom address for a whole tribe of ‘claimants’. Perhaps the neighbour could see how many different identities have mail adressed to them?

By experience, this type of fraud inevitably leads to investigators, process servers and even Federal police regularly calling in for months and months after the ‘tenants’ have done the bolt. They tend to knock incessently on doors and windows at all hours, as well as tackling the neighbours.

Whilst I agree with the other replies, that at the moment your problem may be actually good news, the last thing you want for your property down the track is having that sort of carry on, irritating all concerned.

My advice; set a mental deadline and if that passes with no move in, contact Centrelink with their correct address, swap the locks and keep taking their money. Cheers.