Thailand considering raising foreign condo-ownership rates. Is it a good idea?

If you live in Thailand for a while you already know that they have rather strange laws regarding what foreigners can and can't own. For one thing, as a foreigner you can never own land. You can start a company that has 99-year leases on land, but you can never actually own it. Your wife/husband/partner can own it, but that is another story about the perils of getting involved financially in the land of smiles that has plenty of bad-ending stories in it.

One thing that foreigners were always allowed to do was to purchase condos outright. I say this because as a foreigner, it is nigh on impossible to find a bank that will loan you money since they have no great way to actually force you to pay should you decide to just up and leave the country one day. It makes sense when you think about it.

These condos in question tend to be in touristy areas in luxury establishments but one thing has always held owners of such facilities back: Foreigners are only allowed to own 49% of the overall units. This can be quite complicated in areas certain areas where the condos are constructed almost entirely with foreign sales in mind. I don't want to speak for all Thai people, but I don't know a great many Thais that would be interested in owning a condo in Pattaya, especially when you consider that these units tend to be overvalued because they know that the foreigners are willing to pay for it where as the average Thai person with a lot of money, can buy property anywhere they want and aren't restricted to condo operations. Also, one time a while ago when I was looking at perhaps purchasing a condo, I was told by the agent that foreigners cannot occupy the ground floor units either - which is odd but she suggested that this was because foreigners cannot own anything that touches the ground legally and if that is true that is, for lack of a better word, stupid, because the people who do own the ground floor condos have the LEAST attractive units anyway, and the do NOT own the land it is sitting on anyway.

While I have no proof of this I have heard through the grapevine that interest on the part of potential Thai owners is so limited, that many of these condo operations end up having a lot of the units, or perhaps even 51% of them, unoccupied. So this industry has likely been pressing the government for many many years to increase the percentage that can be held by foreigners. I would imagine that the industry would like to see that number be 100% that is allowed but lately, the sitting Prime Minister has said that they are looking at increasing the number to 75%.

I don't know who this would impact positively but I have a suspicion as to why this is even being talked about at all and it is isn't to benefit the common man even though the politicians would certainly try to portray it in that light. The already extremely wealthy property developers have seen a lull in sales since Covid and it never really recovered just like many of the other industries that were in the tourism sector. Thailand is still number 1 in SE Asia and one of the most visited places in the world, but industrious people always want to be growing and they see this cap limit being raised as a way to get more foreign investors involved.

For me, someone that would never be able to afford one of these properties anyway, this seems like an obvious ruse to benefit the rich owners and the "trickle down" to the lower classes would never happen. Many of the places where these sorts of buildings are, well they are already kind of overrun with tourists and are very crowded. If developers buy up all the land for more condos, that doesn't leave a lot of space left for the middle and lower-class to make businesses. In fact, it would likely have the reverse effect where supply and demand would end up dictating that the little bit of land that would be left over would see massive increases as far as rent prices are concerned.

To me, this is a no brainer and it should be rejected. I believe that a nation's government's objective should be firstly to protect the interests of the native population... Unfortunately that is not the way that the world works and the wealthy property developers probably have their cronies working around the clock to ensure that something like this does change to benefit the already ultra-wealthy. I just don't see how it can possibly benefit the common man. When elected or appointed leaders start using phrases like "stimulate the economy" I don't really think they mean YOUR economy, just the economies of them and their golf-buddies.