Due diligence · Thai property

How to verify a property developer in Thailand

Every check that matters is a public record, and all five can be run before you agree to list a single unit. None of them requires a lawyer to start.

1. The company — the DBD file

Every company registered in Thailand has a thirteen-digit registration number and a file at the Department of Business Development. It is searchable free of charge at dbd.go.th, and the DBD DataWarehouse exposes the same records in Thai and English.

What the file tells you is unglamorous and decisive: when the company was registered, its registered capital, who the directors are, and whether it has filed financial statements. A developer selling a four-hundred-million-baht project through a company registered eleven months ago with a million baht of capital and no filed accounts is not necessarily fraudulent — but it is a different proposition from one with fifteen years of filings, and you now know which one you are dealing with.

Registered capital is not cash in a bank account and should not be read as one. It is a declared figure. Its value here is comparative: against the size of the project being sold, and against the same developer's other companies, because projects are frequently held in a separate special-purpose company each.

2. The land — the title deed

The second question is whether the developer holds the land. Title is registered at the Land Department office for the district where the land sits, and the full title deed is the chanote. The register shows the current owner, the plot boundaries and area, and any registered mortgage or encumbrance.

Three situations look similar from the outside and are not: the developer owns the land outright, the developer has an option or a conditional purchase agreement over it, or a third party owns it and the relationship is informal. The first is the strongest. The second is ordinary and fine if disclosed. The third is where projects die quietly.

A registered mortgage is normal — development is financed — but it is worth knowing it exists, because it will have to be released plot by plot as units transfer.

3. The permits — EIA, then construction

A condominium project in Thailand of 80 units or more, or with a total usable area exceeding 4,000 m², requires an Environmental Impact Assessment. The report is prepared by a consultant approved for the purpose and reviewed by the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning (ONEP).

The sequencing is the part that matters to you: EIA approval is a condition precedent to the construction permit. A project above the threshold that is advertising units while its EIA is still under review is selling something it does not yet have permission to build. That is not always a scandal — pre-sales before approval are a known practice and some projects get their approval without incident — but it is a real risk, and a buyer who is not told about it has not been told everything.

Below the threshold, no EIA is required and its absence means nothing. Check the threshold before you treat a missing EIA as a red flag.

The construction permit itself is issued by the local authority — the district office, or the municipality outside Bangkok. It is a document, and the developer has a copy.

4. The foreign quota — 49% of floor area, not of units

Under the Condominium Act, foreign owners may collectively hold no more than 49% of the aggregate floor area of all units in a registered condominium. The measure is floor area, not a headcount of units — which is why two buildings with an identical number of units can have very different amounts of quota remaining, depending on which sizes have sold to whom.

The only authoritative source for the current figure is the building's juristic person, which maintains the register. Ask for it in writing. A sales sheet is not the register, a portal listing is not the register, and a figure remembered from a previous deal describes a building that has since changed.

What to do when the quota is already full

It does not make the unit untransactable; it makes one route unavailable. Freehold registration in a foreign name cannot happen in that building until quota frees up, and quota only frees when a foreign owner sells to a Thai buyer.

What remains: a long lease registered at the Land Department, or a purchase within the Thai quota by a buyer who qualifies for it. Both are ordinary. The failure mode is not the full quota — it is discovering it after a foreign buyer has paid a reservation fee on a unit they were never going to be able to register.

This is the single check most worth running early, because it is the one whose cost lands on the agent. It is also why the quota belongs on the listing record itself rather than in someone's memory — the reasoning behind our foreign quota tracker.

5. The track record — and how to read it

A developer's completed projects are the strongest evidence available, and the way to check them is to go to the buildings rather than the brochure.

The juristic person of a completed project will tell you when the building was handed over and whether handover happened on the scheduled date. Owners in the building will tell you what the first two years were like. Neither conversation is difficult to arrange, and both are more informative than any document, because they describe delivery rather than intention.

What to be careful with: a brand name is not a legal entity. Developers commonly hold each project in its own company, so "the same developer" on the brochure may be a company with no history at all, related to the successful one only through shared directors. The DBD file is where that resolves — directors are listed, and the same names recurring across companies is the actual continuity.

Why this is the agency's job and not only the buyer's

A portal that carried the listing has no continuing relationship with anyone. The agent who arranged the viewing does. When a project stalls, the buyer calls the person who showed it to them, and no explanation of who built it changes that conversation.

The practical argument is that the work is reusable. Verifying a developer takes an afternoon; the result holds for every project that developer launches afterwards, and the checks only need refreshing when something changes. Agencies that do this keep it on the developer record rather than in a folder per project — which is the difference between due diligence you did once and due diligence you can still find in eighteen months.

If you are the one being verified — a developer selling your own project — the same list is what a serious agency will ask you for, and having it assembled shortens every conversation. That is the reasoning behind how we structure project sales.

The five checks, in order

• DBD company file — registration date, capital, directors, filed accounts. Free, online, five minutes.
• Land title — Land Department office for the district. Confirms ownership or option, and any mortgage.
• EIA approval — only where the project is 80+ units or over 4,000 m². Must precede the construction permit.
• Construction permit — issued by the district office or municipality. The developer holds a copy.
• Juristic person of a completed project — handover date, whether it was on schedule, and the current foreign quota if you are checking a specific building.

What this article does not claim

No failure rates, delivery statistics or developer rankings appear above, because we have not measured them and figures published on this subject vary by source and period. The thresholds cited — 80 units or 4,000 m² for the EIA requirement, 49% of aggregate floor area for foreign ownership — are statutory and verifiable against the Condominium Act and the EIA notifications. Everything else here is a description of which office holds which record. This is not legal advice, and a transaction of any size deserves a Thai property lawyer reading the actual documents.