Can a foreigner own a villa in Phuket?

You can own the house, not the land. The standard structure is a 30-year lease over the land, registered on the title deed, combined with ownership of the building in your own name via superficies or a separate building title. Registered rights are enforceable and inheritable within their terms; the key is having them properly drafted and actually registered.

Is the 30+30+30 lease structure still safe?

No. Thai Supreme Court Judgment No. 4655/2566, circulated in 2025, held that a 30-year lease with pre-signed, pre-paid renewals is a disguised 90-year lease and void as a circumvention of the legal maximum. The registered first 30 years remain valid; the renewal promises bind only the current landlord personally and do not survive a sale or inheritance of the land. Price renewals as options, not guarantees.

Should I buy a villa through a Thai company?

Not as a workaround. Nominee shareholding (Thai shareholders who hold shares in name only) is illegal under the Land Code, and enforcement escalated sharply in 2026: shareholders must now evidence the real source of their investment, and penalties reach company dissolution and land forfeiture. A genuine joint venture with real Thai capital is lawful; a structure built to disguise foreign land ownership is a liability, and we say so plainly.

What is the safest way for a foreigner to buy a Phuket villa?

A registered 30-year lease over the land plus registered ownership of the building (superficies), with renewal terms negotiated honestly as unsecured options and the whole structure reviewed by independent counsel. It is less exciting than “90-year lease” marketing, and it is what actually holds up. We flag the structure on every villa we list and can introduce lawyers who specialise in exactly this.

What happens to a leasehold villa after 30 years?

The lease ends and renewal is a fresh negotiation with whoever owns the land at that time; there is no legal mechanism that guarantees it in advance. Sensible mitigation: buy where the landowner is an institutional estate with reputational stakes, document renewal options properly, and price the property on the secure 30-year term rather than on promises beyond it.

Villas for Sale in Phuket — 26 Available

26 live villas for sale from ฿19.8M to ฿88M

Villas are where Phuket property law deserves the most honesty, so here it is: foreigners cannot own land in Thailand, which means a foreign villa purchase is really a structure, most commonly a registered 30-year lease over the land plus outright ownership of the house itself (via superficies or building title). In 2025 the Supreme Court voided the widely marketed “30+30+30” pre-paid renewal structure, ruling it a disguised 90-year lease; the registered first 30 years stand, the promised extensions do not. Any villa page still selling you a 90-year lease is selling last decade’s law.