THE THREE CONTRACTS BEHIND AN OFF PLAN VILLA
What you are actually signing:
When you buy a villa off plan in Samui, you are not signing one contract. In most off-plan villa purchases you sign two contracts, and sometimes three. Each one does a different job.
1. The land lease agreement.
You cannot own the land as a foreigner, so you lease it, usually on a registered 30 year lease. This is the contract for the ground your villa sits on. Quite often the developer is itself leasing the land from the owner and then subleasing it to you, which is common on Samui but adds another layer of due diligence. I will cover that in Part Three.
2. The construction agreement.
This is the contract covering the villa itself, which becomes your asset. It covers the design, the payments, the timeline, and the warranty.
3. The management agreement, optional.
If you want to keep the villa as an investment and rent it out, many developers also offer to manage it for you as a holiday rental.
That third one comes with a legal point worth knowing now. In Thailand, short stays under 30 days fall under hotel-style accommodation rules. Since the 2023 regulation change, a villa or small accommodation with no more than 8 rooms and no more than 30 guests generally does not need a full hotel licence. But that does not mean “no rules”. It still usually needs to be registered as non-hotel accommodation with the local district office, and the registration normally needs to be handled through the Thai owner, Thai company, or authorised local operator.
Anything 30 days and over is much simpler. That is ordinary renting rather than daily holiday accommodation. I will do a full post on rental management on Samui soon, so I will keep it short here.
I am not a lawyer, so this is not legal advice. Just make sure you understand which contract is doing what before you sign any of them.
𝑶𝒏𝒆 𝒗𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒂, 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒆𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒔. 𝑮𝒆𝒕 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒆𝒆 𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒅𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒎 𝒉𝒐𝒍𝒅𝒔 𝒕𝒐𝒈𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓.
If you’re curious about what types of villas currently offer the strongest investment potential on the island, you can browse Jane’s latest Koh Samui property listings here.
