You are preparing a purchase in Thailand, your file is clean, and you still wonder whether it will catch the administration's eye. The question is healthy, because the press spent months dramatizing the hunt for nominees, often with false or inflated headlines.
This THEVA file, eighteen articles long, answers with facts, statute in hand and dates attached. Thailand is finally enforcing rules that already existed, and that is exactly what makes the market safer for anyone investing seriously. The first article described the full ten-step procedure. This one goes into the detail of a single step, the screening of an individual buyer, and lists the thirteen signals the administration looks for.
Article 2 of 18: the thirteen indicators that, in a Thai buyer acting in their own name, raise the suspicion that they actually hold the land on behalf of a foreigner.
Source: Land Department circular (กรมที่ดิน) No. มท 0515.2/ว 11493, dated 25 May 2026.
First, a Rule That Should Reassure You
Before the list, the principle that governs the entire framework. Finding one of these signals proves nothing. It is grounds for verification, not a verdict. The circular repeats it in every section: a conclusion requires a body of consistent evidence, never a single isolated indicator. A good-faith buyer can show one or two of these features for perfectly legitimate reasons, and has nothing to fear as long as the whole picture holds together.
The thirteen signals fall into five families. Here they are, grouped so you can see the overall logic.
Who Is Behind the Buyer
The first family looks for the foreign hand behind a Thai name. The administration pauses if the Thai is named as the buyer, but a foreigner negotiates, provides the money, pays, holds the power of attorney, or runs the operation in substance. It also takes an interest in close ties between the Thai holder and a foreigner, spouse, parent, employee, business representative, once other elements suggest a holding on behalf of someone else. Finally, it spots the same agents, the same negotiator, or the same group of people recurring across several transactions linked to foreigners.
When the Money Does Not Add Up
The second family tracks financial inconsistency. A buyer whose income, occupation, or assets do not match the price of the land draws attention. A cash payment of two million baht or more, or a property with an assessed value of five million and above, triggers a check on the source of funds, the actual payer, and the true beneficiary, unless it is an inheritance passed to a legal heir. Holding several plots, in several areas, or for amounts unrelated to the holder's economic situation, also falls into this category.
Who Uses It and Who Collects
The third family looks at the reality of the land, not the paperwork. A foreigner who occupies, lives in, operates, controls, manages, or collects the income from the land without being its registered holder is a strong signal. So is a Thai holder who does not use the land themselves, or who cannot reasonably explain how they bought, paid for, and maintained it. And the administration names the at-risk uses directly: residence, hospitality, tourism, rental villas, commerce, agriculture, whenever a foreigner is the actual user, the manager, or the one collecting the receipts.
The Contracts That Hand Over Control
The fourth family is the most technical, and the most sensitive. A long-term lease, a loan, a mortgage, a promise of sale, a power of attorney, or a management contract can, depending on how they are drafted, give a foreigner control, use, disposal, or the real benefit of the land. The law does not condemn these instruments in themselves, it looks at those built to transfer de facto control. The line between a transparent right of use and disguised control is exactly what we detail in our articles on lease renewal and on the superficies right.
What Shows From the Outside
The last family starts from what is public or reported. An advertisement, a website, a social page, a project sign, or a promotional document presenting a foreigner as owner, seller, lessor, or manager is a direct indicator. A report, a complaint, a press article, or a tip from a local service weighs the same way. And the circular adds a catch-all clause: any other circumstance that, cross-checked against evidence, would indicate that a foreigner finances, controls, uses, or profits from the land, even without being its registered holder.
A signal is not an accusation. It is grounds for inquiry, nothing more. The law demands a body of consistent evidence, and it protects the good-faith buyer as much as it pursues the nominee.
What This Changes for the Foreign Investor
Reread the five families. All look for the same thing, a foreigner hidden behind a Thai buyer. That is exactly where the model THEVA stands by sets itself apart. In this model, the foreigner hides behind no one.
The land stays the property of a real Thai entity, genuinely Thai in the eyes of the law. The foreign investor, for their part, stands in plain sight, not as a masked owner, but as the declared holder of a registered lease and a superficies right over their villa. These two rights are perfectly legal for a foreigner, recorded on the title, enforceable against everyone. There is no Thai holding in their place, so none of the thirteen signals applies. Transparency is not a precaution here, it is the structure itself.
This is the difference between getting around the rule and using it. The thirteen signals target those who get around it. Anyone who openly holds a lease and a superficies over land that stays Thai triggers no filter, because they have nothing to filter.
Final Thoughts
These thirteen signals can worry you on first reading. Up close, they say the opposite. They do not target the legitimate foreign investor, they target the structure that makes them look Thai. The administration is after concealment, and concealment exists only in shaky structures.
For anyone buying cleanly, this grid is a protection. It pushes fragile deals out of the market, the ones that collapse at the first check and that drive serious investors away. A market that can recognize a nominee is one where the transparent owner sleeps soundly.
Everything is decided upstream, in the choice of a structure where these thirteen signals never concern you.
