Freehold vs leasehold

This is the question every foreign buyer asks, and the answer is reassuring: a registered lease and a registered superficies attach to the land itself, not to the person who happened to own it when you signed.

If the landowner sells in year 10, the new owner takes the land subject to your remaining 20 years. You cannot be evicted. Your rights survive the sale untouched, and the buyer knew that when they bought, which is precisely why land encumbered by a long lease sells at a discount and why selling mid-lease is usually unattractive to a landowner in the first place.

One caveat, and it matters: only the registered rights make the journey. The personal promises wrapped around them, such as a renewal option or a succession clause, do not bind the new owner unless the new owner agrees to take them on. The Thai courts have said so more than once. The lease survives the sale; the goodwill may not.

For two decades the standard workaround was 30+30+30: register a legal 30-year lease, then sign private side agreements promising two more terms, often paid for up front, and market the package as 90 years of security. On Koh Lanta, as everywhere else in Thailand, this was simply how leasehold was sold.

The Supreme Court has now tested that structure on its own facts. A Phuket lease signed in 1990 came with a same-day side agreement in which the buyer prepaid two further 30-year terms. When the first term ended in 2020, the landowner told them to leave. The courts sided with the landowner: decision 4655/2566 held that prepaid renewals on frozen terms are an attempt to get around the 30-year cap, and the cap is public policy, not a default two parties can contract away. The buyer was evicted from land they believed they had paid to hold until 2080, and was ordered to pay damages for staying on.

Two things follow. First, a promise to renew is a personal promise. At best it binds the person who made it; it does not bind their heirs, and it does not bind whoever buys the land. Second, this was not new law. Thai courts have read the cap this way for decades; what changed in 2025 is that the ruling was widely reported and buyers finally heard it. The first 30 years, registered at the Land Office, are as solid as Thai law can make anything. Everything promised beyond them is only as good as the person who promised it, on the day you ask.

You cannot buy a guaranteed renewal any more. You can still load the dice, and a lease that does the following is worth materially more than one that does not.

• A registered superficies. The single most important add-on. It makes the house genuinely yours and it triggers the buy-at-market-value protection at the end. Register it for your lifetime where you can.
• A renewal option with the price set on the day. The court's red flag in the 90-year case was rent fixed decades in advance. An option that reprices the new term at renewal, by an agreed formula or at market, is both more honest and more likely to survive a judge.
• The right to sublet and assign, in writing. Thai law grants neither by default. Without them you cannot legally let the house out or sell the remaining years to the next buyer, and the melting ice cube melts to nothing.
• A succession clause. A lease does not automatically pass to your heirs, and some are written to end on your death. Say who inherits the remaining years, in the contract.
• A right of first refusal. If the landowner ever sells the land, you get the first chance to buy it, through a Thai entity or spouse.
• A counterparty who will still exist in 30 years. The wording matters less than who signed it. A lease from a long-established family or a developer with a name to protect is worth more than identical clauses from someone you cannot check.

• Freehold. Owning an asset outright, forever. A foreigner can hold freehold on a building and on a condo unit. Never on land.
• Leasehold. A registered right to use land for a fixed term, capped at 30 years for residential land.
• Lease premium. The lump sum paid up front for the whole term, instead of monthly rent.
• Superficies. The registered right to own a building on land you do not own. Binds future landowners, can last a lifetime, transferable and inheritable. The foreign buyer's best friend.
• Usufruct. The registered right to use land and take its fruits, for life or up to 30 years. Personal: it ends on death and cannot be inherited.
• Chanote. The strongest land title, marked with a red garuda. Only land has one. A house never does.
• Tabian Baan. The house-registration book: blue for Thai residents, yellow for foreigners. It records who lives there. It is not proof of ownership, and it is regularly presented as if it were.