With Thailand becoming a property investment destination over the last 10 years it has been a boon to the property and property development industry but at the same time it also brought into the industry many 'fly-by-night' operators. This can be seen the Asian financial crisis where even today vast amounts of half completed property still stand around Bangkok as a testament to a property market gone wrong.

Many lost their investments to these developers and the property market in Thailand took a major hit. If you are going to register a Thai company to hold the property for you then you need to speak to a property attorney about this as the escrow would have to be held in the name of the Thai company.

To counter many of the problems Thailand over the past 7 years have started to introduce escrow accounts into the property market in order to bring confidence into the market. The Thai civil and commercial law did make for something like an escrow account where the account was setup with rules as to how the account was to be used. This did not work as expected hence the escrow accounts have now become more common. In May 2008 escrows officially  became part of Thailand property landscape.

In Thailand many of the small operators tend to build the building with funds from deposits. When the escrow accounts came in many went bust as they could no longer do what has been done over so many years - building out of deposits. Some welcomed it being mainly the large brand name developers while the smaller developers disliked it from the start.

Buying property in Thailand has never been easy. If you are looking at buying property in Thailand then speak to your property attorney about the use of escrow and the protection of your money while the project is completed. Call us today or walk into any of our offices in Thailand to ask about escrow accounts and how best to protect your investment in Thailand.