Can Indians Buy Property in Thailand?

Does being Indian change the answer? No.

This is the first thing to get straight, because most of the internet gets it backwards. Thailand law does not sort foreign buyers by nationality for this asset. A Indian buyer, a British buyer and a Singaporean buyer face the identical rule. Your passport is not the variable. What varies is the route your money takes to get there and what your own tax system does about it afterwards, and that is what the rest of this page is about.

Sending the money from India? The LRS limit, the 20% TCS and the FET, step by step: buying a Thai condo from India.

What you can own, and what you cannot

You can own a condominium: freehold title inside the building’s 49% foreign quota. You cannot own land. That line is not negotiable and no structure sold to you as a way around it is safe. Read the full ownership rules before you form a view on any particular building.

The money leg, from India

The purchase money must arrive from abroad in foreign currency and be documented by a Foreign Exchange Transaction certificate in the buyer’s own name. That document is what the Land Office wants, and it is what makes the eventual sale proceeds repatriable. How the transfer works is worth reading before you commit to a price, because the wire is the part that decides whether the exit works.

The Indian-specific constraint. This is the constraint that actually decides the purchase. Indian residents move money abroad under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, which caps outward remittance per individual per financial year. A purchase above that ceiling has to be structured across family members or across financial years, and that has to be planned before an offer rather than discovered at the wire.

What your own tax system does about it

Tax is paid where the property is, and then again considered where you live. This is the constraint that actually decides the purchase. Indian residents move money abroad under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, which caps outward remittance per individual per financial year. A purchase above that ceiling has to be structured across family members or across financial years, and that has to be planned before an offer rather than discovered at the wire. Confirm the current LRS ceiling and the tax collected at source on outward remittance, both of which have moved more than once with an adviser who handles both sides — not with a sales agent, and not with this page. What the local side costs is set out in the Thailand tax guide.

Where Indian buyers sit in REIC’s 2025 table

237 units, worth THB 1,645 million. That is ninth of the ten nationalities REIC publishes for full-year 2025, on a table REIC orders by value. Units were down 8.8% on 2024 while value was up 7.7%. It was 1.6% of the 14,899 condominium units transferred to foreign buyers nationwide, and 2.7% of the THB 60,921 million those transfers were worth. REIC publishes only the top ten by value, so there is no published ranking by units below that table and this page does not invent one.

The number that actually separates the Indian buyer from every other nationality in the table is size. The average Indian purchase was THB 6.9 million and 75.7 square metres, both the highest in REIC’s published ten, against THB 4.1 million and 41.3 square metres across all foreign buyers. REIC links that high average to owner-occupation by large families.

That has a direct consequence for the quota. The 49 percent ceiling in the Condominium Act is measured on the floor area of all the units in a building, not on the number of foreign buyers, so unit size is what consumes it. At 75.7 square metres the average Indian purchase takes close to the area of two average foreign purchases out of a building’s foreign side. Indian buyers took 17,933 square metres of the 615,098 transferred to foreign buyers in 2025 across only 237 units. If you are buying at the larger end in a building that is already close to its ceiling, the headroom question is about square metres, not about how many foreigners are on the register.

Into 2026 the Indian line rose while the market fell. REIC recorded 128 units in the first half, up 15.3% on units and 9.3% on value, tenth of the published ten, averaging THB 6.3 million and 72.1 square metres. Foreign transfers nationwide fell 8.8% on units over the same half.

// Sources

• REIC, foreign condominium ownership transfers, Q4 2025 and full-year 2025 (20 April 2026), the full-year table: units, value, floor area and year-on-year change by nationality
• REIC, full-year 2025 release, PDF (Table 1), the ranked table itself, compiled from Department of Lands transfer records
• REIC, Q1 2026 foreign condominium transfers (16 June 2026), the first-quarter 2026 table
• REIC, Q2 and H1 2026 foreign condominium transfers (11 September 2026), the half-year 2026 table

What India asks before the money leaves, and after it lands

This is the layer that decides the purchase for an Indian buyer, and it has two halves that get planned at different times.

The Liberalised Remittance Scheme. The Reserve Bank of India states that all resident individuals, including minors, are allowed to freely remit up to USD 250,000 per financial year, running April to March. The RBI’s own FAQ on purchase of immovable property states that a resident individual can send remittances under the LRS for purchasing immovable property outside India. On the ceiling, the RBI states that remittances for acquiring immovable property outside India may be consolidated in respect of relatives, provided those relatives comply with the terms and conditions of the scheme. And capital account remittances, directly or indirectly, to countries identified by the Financial Action Task Force as non-cooperative countries and territories are outside the scheme.

Tax collected at source on the wire. An outward LRS remittance carries TCS, collected by your Indian bank from you at the time of the transfer rather than charged by anyone at the far end. The rate and the threshold have been changed more than once by successive Finance Acts, and published rates for the current year do not agree with one another, so this page does not state a figure. Ask your bank for the rate it will apply on the day, in writing, before you commit to a price.

Schedule FA, after you own it. The Income Tax Department’s guide states that residents of India must furnish details of foreign assets in Schedule FA of the return, and that Schedule FA need not be completed if the taxpayer is classified as not ordinarily resident or non-resident. Immovable property outside India is Table C of that schedule. The reporting period is the calendar year ending on 31 December, values are converted using the State Bank of India telegraphic transfer buying rate, and ITR-1 and ITR-4 do not carry Schedule FA at all, so a buyer who has always filed one of those is filing a different form from the year of purchase onward.

// Sources

• Reserve Bank of India, Liberalised Remittance Scheme FAQ. USD 250,000 per financial year, consolidation for relatives, and the FATF exclusion
• Reserve Bank of India, purchase of immovable property FAQ, a resident individual may remit under the LRS to buy immovable property outside India
• Income Tax Department, step-by-step guide to Schedules FSI, TR and FA, who files Schedule FA, Table C for immovable property outside India, and the conversion rule

Does buying get you a visa? No.

Buying property in Thailand does not grant residency, a long-stay visa, or a right to work. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. Visas and property are separate systems and should be planned separately.

What Indian buyers get wrong

The same three things, in the same order. They treat the brochure yield as the real one and never subtract the running costs. They plan the purchase and not the exit, so the first time anyone thinks about getting the money back out is when they want to sell. And they let the money leg be arranged by whoever is selling them the property, which is the one part of this that should never be outsourced to the counterparty.

Indian buyers took 237 units, and the largest average unit size in the top ten of the 14,899 condominium units transferred to foreign buyers in Thailand in 2025. The full table, and what it means for a building's 49 percent ceiling, is in who actually buys Thai condos.

Frequently asked questions