Freehold vs leasehold in Thailand: a practical comparison
Updated · ZODIAC Co., Ltd.
For a foreign buyer, freehold in Thailand means owning a condominium unit outright within the 49% foreign quota. Leasehold means a registered right to use property, usually land with a villa, for up to 30 years. Freehold gives permanent, transferable ownership; leasehold gives a fixed-term right whose value falls as the term runs down.
What freehold means for a foreigner
Freehold is full ownership recorded on a title document. For foreign individuals the only freehold available in normal circumstances is a condominium unit under the Condominium Act, registered in your own name on a condominium title deed. You can sell it, mortgage it, rent it out on long-term tenancies and leave it by will. There is no end date.
Freehold land is not available to foreign individuals, apart from the rarely used Section 96 bis route that requires a THB 40 million investment and ministerial approval. So when a villa is described as freehold for a foreign buyer, it usually means the house is freehold and the land is leased, or the land is held by a Thai company. The first can be a legitimate structure; the second needs very careful legal review because nominee shareholding is a criminal offence.
What leasehold means
A lease is a contract under which the owner lets you use the property for a period in exchange for rent, which in the Thai resort market is usually paid upfront as a single sum. Section 540 of the Civil and Commercial Code caps the term at 30 years, and a lease of more than three years must be registered at the Land Office to be enforceable for its full term. Registration costs 1% of the total rent over the term plus 0.1% stamp duty.
A registered lease is a real right recorded on the land title, so it binds a new owner if the land is sold. It is transferable if the lease permits, and it can pass to your heirs if the contract provides for it. It is not ownership: when the term ends, the right ends.
The 30+30+30 question after the 2025 Supreme Court ruling
Phuket villa sales have long been marketed with leases of 30 years plus renewal options, often described as 30+30+30 or 90 years. In March 2025 the Thai Supreme Court, in judgment No. 4655/2566, held that renewal terms agreed in advance to extend a lease beyond the 30-year limit are unenforceable. Several law firms, including Addleshaw Goddard and Formichella & Sritawat, have summarised the decision.
The safe position is to treat a lease as a 30-year asset. A landlord can still agree a new lease when the first one ends, but you cannot compel it. When you compare prices, do so on the basis of the registered term only.
Proposals to extend leases to 99 years have been discussed for years. The government publicly shelved the plan in September 2025, and as of September 2026 the maximum registered lease remains 30 years.
Leasehold condominiums
Leasehold also appears in condominiums, normally when the foreign quota is full or when a developer sells units on lease as a product. Here you lease the unit rather than own it. Pricing should reflect the difference. Ask for the lease to be registered at the Land Office, check who the lessor is (the developer, a company or an individual), and understand what happens to your lease if the lessor sells or becomes insolvent.
Also ask what happens at the end of the term. A leasehold condominium unit reverts to the lessor when the lease expires, so its value declines towards zero over time, unlike a freehold unit whose value depends only on the market.
Comparing freehold and leasehold side by side
The two forms differ in more than duration. The summary below covers the points that matter most when you are choosing between them.
- Duration: freehold condo title has no end date; a lease runs for a maximum of 30 years.
- Resale: freehold units can be sold to any eligible buyer within the quota; a lease can be assigned only if the contract allows, and its value falls as the remaining term shortens.
- Financing: Thai bank lending to non-resident foreigners is limited in general, and lending against leases is rarer still.
- Inheritance: freehold passes under Thai succession law with restrictions for some foreign heirs; a lease passes only if the contract says so, since leases are otherwise personal to the lessee.
- Transfer costs: freehold transfers attract a 2% transfer fee plus business tax or stamp duty and withholding tax; lease registration costs 1% of total rent plus 0.1% stamp duty.
- Legal security: both are secure if properly registered; unregistered leases over three years are only enforceable for three years.
Superficies and usufruct: rights that sit alongside a lease
Villa structures often combine a land lease with a registered right of superficies, which lets you own buildings on someone else's land for up to 30 years or for the lifetime of the landowner or right holder. This matters because it gives you a recorded ownership right in the house itself, separate from the lease of the land. A usufruct is a right to use and take the income of a property, also for a fixed term or for life, and is used more often between family members than in developer sales.
These rights must be registered at the Land Office. They improve your position but do not change the basic picture: the land belongs to someone else.
How to value a lease
A leasehold price should be judged as the cost of 30 years of use. A simple discipline is to divide the price by the number of years remaining to get an annual cost, then compare that with renting an equivalent property. Add what you expect the right to be worth when you sell, bearing in mind that a buyer in year ten is acquiring only 20 years.
Also check the lessor. A lease from a well-capitalised Thai landowning company with clear title is a different risk from a lease from an individual with mortgages on the land. Your lawyer should search the title for existing encumbrances before you pay.
It is also worth asking what the lease says about the end of the term. Some leases provide for the buildings to revert to the landowner; others give the lessee the right to remove them or be compensated. Clauses on subletting, assignment fees, and what happens if the land is sold or expropriated all affect value, and should be reviewed by your lawyer before you pay.
Which one should you choose?
If long-term security, resale flexibility and succession are priorities, a freehold condominium is the most straightforward option available to foreigners. If you want a private house with land and a pool, leasehold is normally the only lawful route, and the right approach is to pay a price that reflects a 30-year term and to insist on proper registration of every right you are paying for.
In our Phuket catalogue, villa projects start from a median price of about THB 29.9 million against about THB 6.2 million for condominium projects, so the choice between leasehold villa and freehold condo is often also a choice between very different budgets.