In our office, foreign villa buyers are no longer asking how to set up a Thai company to own the land. Many are clear that they do not want a company structure at all. They are looking at leases instead.
That has moved the conversation to a harder question: if the secure legal right is a 30-year lease, with no guaranteed renewal, should the price be lower?
Buyers increasingly think it should. They understand that 30 years is 30 years. They still ask whether the lease can be renewed, but they no longer treat a renewal clause as the same thing as a guaranteed additional term. That difference is already entering negotiations.
This is the market change we see from clients coming into the Ocean Worldwide office. The legal discussion around nominee companies may have pushed buyers toward leases, but the more important property story is what happens next: buyers are putting a different value on leasehold villas.
The supply’s value has changed, and it has changed the nature of the demand.
Buyers are pricing the right they can rely on
A registered 30-year lease remains a familiar route for a foreign buyer who cannot own Thai land directly. The problem is not the first 30 years. It is the value buyers are prepared to assign to anything beyond them.
For years, some villa projects were marketed with 30+30+30 lease structures that made the purchase feel close to a 90-year interest. Supreme Court Decision No. 4655/2566 challenged that assumption. In that case, the court found that two pre-agreed additional 30-year periods, designed to avoid the statutory limit, were void.
That does not mean a lease can never be renewed. It means a future renewal should not be priced as though it is already guaranteed.
Clients understand that distinction now. Their question is simple: if I pay a price close to freehold today, but the right I can rely on is only 30 years, where is that difference reflected?
The answer is increasingly: in the negotiation.
A buyer may still choose the villa because of its location, design or rental potential. But the lease term is no longer treated as a technical detail for the lawyer to review at the end. It affects the offer from the beginning.
Why buyers moved away from company structures
The shift toward leases did not happen in isolation. It follows much closer scrutiny of Thai-majority companies used to hold villa land for foreign buyers.
A 51% Thai and 49% foreign share split is not, by itself, proof that a company is safe. The questions authorities are asking go deeper: Who funded the Thai shares? Could the Thai shareholders afford them? Do they exercise real control? Who receives the economic benefit?
This matters because a genuine Thai company with real Thai capital and active Thai shareholders is very different from a company where the foreign buyer supplied nearly all the money and the Thai shareholders mainly supplied their names.
Recent enforcement shows how systematic the checks can be. On Koh Samui, authorities screened 12,906 registered companies. They identified 8,254 with foreign shareholders and flagged 875 for further scrutiny. The investigation later narrowed to 60 cases involving 59 companies, 88 suspects and 37 plots of land and buildings valued at about 1.2 billion baht.
In a separate Koh Samui and Koh Phangan investigation, the Department of Special Investigation said one law office was connected to more than 150 companies. More than 100 of them held property or other assets acquired for roughly 795 million baht, with investigators saying the financial trail pointed to foreign funding.
The methods and legal questions are not limited to Samui. Phuket is another resort market where company ownership has been common, and old structures do not become safe simply because they have existed for ten or fifteen years.
That is why many of the clients we speak to do not want to debate whether a company can be defended. They prefer the cleaner idea of a registered lease, even though they know it comes with a fixed term.
Cleaner does not mean equivalent
A lease can remove the nominee-company question, but it creates a valuation question.
Buyers are comparing two things that are not equivalent: the use of a villa for a defined period, and the permanent ownership value people often associate with property. When the reliable right is time-limited, the remaining term matters more each year.
This also affects resale. A buyer taking a new 30-year registered lease is not in the same position as a buyer acquiring a villa with 18 or 20 years left on an existing term. The market will have to become more precise about that difference.
We expect it to affect long-term prices, especially as new villa supply continues to come onto the Phuket market. Demand remains strong, but the demand is changing. Buyers are more informed, more cautious about legal structures and more willing to separate a villa’s lifestyle value from the value of the legal right attached to it.
The broader market data adds pressure to this conversation. Krungsri Research reported 475 villa sales in 2025, down 69.6% from the previous year, while remaining supply rose to 2,043 units. Its estimated sell-through period reached roughly 50 months.
That does not mean every villa will fall in price. Exceptional properties in the right locations can still command strong demand. But in a market with more supply and slower absorption, buyers have more reason to question whether leasehold pricing properly reflects the length and certainty of the right they are buying.
What developers will need to address
Developers can no longer rely on a renewal clause alone to settle the concern. Buyers want to know what is registered, what is contractual, who controls the land at renewal time, and what happens if the landowner, project company or ownership structure changes.
Those are legal questions for an independent Thai lawyer. But they are also commercial questions for the developer, because uncertainty affects what a buyer is willing to pay.
Projects that explain the lease honestly, document the buyer’s rights clearly and price the product accordingly will be easier to understand. Projects that continue to present a 30-year lease as though it carries the value of permanent ownership will face more resistance.
A different Phuket villa market
The nominee crackdown is important, but it is not the whole story. It explains why some foreign buyers have moved away from 51/49 villa companies. The next stage is more significant for the market: those buyers are now asking what a 30-year lease is actually worth.
We are already hearing the answer in our office. Buyers will still consider leasehold villas, but they want the fixed term and the lack of a guaranteed renewal reflected in the price.
Phuket still has demand. It also has new supply coming. What has changed is how buyers assess that supply and what they are prepared to pay for it.
The supply’s value has changed, and it has changed the nature of the demand.
