Koh Samui Villa Ownership: What Thailand’s Nominee Crackdown Changes for Foreign Buyers

Ask anyone buying a villa on Koh Samui what keeps them awake, and the answer is no longer the price. It is the paperwork.

Asia Lifestyle Magazine spent last week on the island, and no subject came up more often. We put it to developers, local agents, brokers and property professionals, among them Ornsirin, a Thai developer listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand. Guiding us was Asa Marsh, real estate expert in Asia, who spends his year moving between property markets across the region.

“If you’re looking at buying a villa in Koh Samui, this is probably the most important conversation you need to understand,” he says.

The structure that built this island

For roughly twenty years, a great many villas on Koh Samui were bought through Thai company structures. A foreign buyer would take a 49% shareholding in a Thai limited company, Thai shareholders would hold the balance, and the company would hold the land.

It became the standard route. Lawyers set them up. Accountants filed for them. Agents recommended them. For a long time nobody asked hard questions about who was really in control.

What changed

The Thai state has stopped looking the other way, and the numbers show how seriously.

Koh Samui has 12,050 registered companies. Of those, 8,213 involve foreign investment, which is 68.16% of every firm on the island. Across Samui and Koh Phangan together the figure is 11,426 companies out of 16,811, or 67.97%. The Department of Business Development compiled those numbers itself, and its director general, Poonpong Naiyanapakorn, has said publicly that more than 7,000 businesses across the two islands are at risk of being nominee companies. Most of them sit in real estate, hotels, tourism and restaurants.

The department chose these two islands as the first target of a national audit. It is now expanding to Phuket, Krabi, Phang Nga, Pattaya and Hua Hin.

The Department of Special Investigation has opened formal investigations into 34 companies on Samui and Phangan, each holding assets above 100 million baht, and referred them to the Anti Money Laundering Office for financial tracing. Its director general, Pol Maj Yutthana Praedam, confirmed the investigations in May 2026. On Samui, one individual was found registered as a shareholder in 87 separate companies.

Enforcement has also moved upstream, into the registration process itself.

• The Department of Lands has instructed provincial land offices to run tighter checks before a transfer is registered, including the source of the purchase funds and the relationship between the parties
• Where a Thai spouse is buying, that spouse must now confirm the money is genuinely their own
• Where a company is buying, officials examine its shareholding, its actual income, the origin of its investment funds and the intended use of the land
• Companies with foreign shareholders are monitored after purchase, with reporting every three months
• Agencies now share data across the Department of Lands, the Department of Business Development, the Anti Money Laundering Office and the Department of Special Investigation
• The Department of Business Development is in talks with the Thai Bankers’ Association about verifying the source of a Thai shareholder’s funds before a company is even registered

Penalties reach imprisonment and fines. Land held unlawfully can be ordered sold, and if the owner does not sell, the state can sell it for them. Thai nationals who lend their names are liable too.

None of this is new law. It is existing law, finally enforced.

What buyers are being moved towards

The conversations we had on Samui sounded very different to the ones agents here were having a few years ago. Everyone is now talking about the structures that Phuket adopted long before this island did.

“They’re learning the same ownership structures that we’ve been using in Phuket for years,” Marsh says.

The approach separates the house from the ground beneath it. The building is owned outright by the buyer. The land underneath is secured through a properly drafted and registered leasehold.

Is that freehold? No, and nobody should pretend otherwise.

“Thai land can’t be owned freehold by a foreign individual,” Marsh says.

It is, however, legal, established and widely used when it is put together correctly. It is also registered with the Land Department, which is precisely what a nominee arrangement is designed to avoid.

Where leasehold differs from a nominee company

The word leasehold makes a lot of buyers uneasy. Some of that is imported from other markets, where it means something different. Some of it is simple confusion between a structure that is lawful and one that is not.

“In reality, a well structured leasehold is very different from a badly structured nominee company,” Marsh says. “The legal work, due diligence and documentation are what matter.”

A registered lease is a transparent instrument. It is recorded at the Land Department, it names the parties, and it survives scrutiny because it was never designed to hide anything.

A nominee company is the opposite proposition. It exists to present a shareholding that satisfies the letter of the law while the real control sits somewhere else. That is the arrangement the state is now unpicking, company by company.

Two cautions worth carrying into any conversation with a developer. Thai law registers a lease for a maximum of thirty years at a time, and any renewal beyond that is contractual rather than automatic. Nobody should buy on the assumption that a ninety year term is guaranteed simply because it appears in a brochure.

What the money actually buys

Set the structures aside for a moment, because there is a reason buyers keep looking at this island.

“In Samui, a budget of around 15 to 25 million baht can buy you a genuinely impressive four bedroom villa,” Marsh says.

That is roughly USD 460,000 to 770,000. In Phuket’s prime addresses, the same money does not stretch nearly as far. The trade the market is asking buyers to make is a real one, and it is not obvious which way a sensible person should answer.

The one route that sidesteps all of it

There is a form of Thai property ownership that the nominee crackdown does not touch, because it never involved land in the first place.

Under Thailand’s Condominium Act, a foreign buyer owns the condominium unit outright, freehold, in their own name. No company. No nominee. No Thai shareholders. No annual filings. No source of funds enquiry into a corporate structure, because there is no corporate structure. The title deed carries one name.

That is why the enforcement campaign has barely disturbed condominium buyers while villa purchasers pause and take advice.

The problem, on Koh Samui specifically, is that this route has hardly existed. For years, a buyer who wanted clean freehold title on this island had almost nothing worth looking at, and the ones who insisted on it went to Phuket instead.

“For years there have been very few high quality freehold condominiums here,” Marsh says.

That is finally changing, and the timing is not accidental. A market under this much regulatory scrutiny creates real demand for the one structure nobody has to defend.

What we took away

Buyers on Samui now face a decision that did not exist in the same terms five years ago. Pay more in Phuket, or take an ownership structure that requires proper legal work here. Or step out of the land question altogether and buy a condominium.

Which leaves the question we kept coming back to. Would you rather own a more expensive property with a stronger ownership structure, or get significantly more villa for your money and accept a different ownership model? Both answers are defensible. Only one of them can be reached without a lawyer.

Nothing in this article is legal, tax or financial advice. Thai property law is complex and enforcement is moving quickly. Take qualified counsel before you commit to anything.

Own it outright, in your own name

Koh Samui has almost no foreign freehold condominiums. That single fact has shaped how people buy on this island for the last twenty years, and the nominee crackdown has made it impossible to ignore.

A foreigner cannot own Thai land. So a villa here means a leasehold structure, or a Thai company, with the legal work, the annual filings and the government scrutiny that now comes with it. A condominium is the exception.

Under the Condominium Act you own the unit outright, freehold, 100% in your own name, on a title deed carrying your name and nobody else’s.

A developer listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand is preparing one of the island’s first serious foreign freehold condominium developments, in Fisherman’s Village. Whether you intend to live in it or let it, this is the cleanest form of ownership available to a foreign buyer anywhere in Thailand.

• No company structure, no nominee, no annual filings
• Freehold title registered in your own name
• Nothing for the Department of Lands to unpick, because no land changes hands
• Predictable running costs through a common area fee
• A simpler resale than any villa on the island
• Foreign ownership capped by law at 49% of the building, so the freehold allocation in any project is finite

Floor plans, pricing and first release details go to the waiting list ahead of the open market.

Join the Koh Samui freehold condominium waiting list