Thailand now has a public number for land held by companies with foreign shareholders. The Department of Business Development (DBD) released it on 7 September 2026, from Land Department records dated 4 September 2026: 36,277 juristic persons with some foreign shareholding hold 305,838 title deeds over 1,064,265.38 rai. Phuket appears in none of the province lists the release publishes.
That last point is the one most likely to be misread. The release ranks only the top five provinces in each band, and those lists are dominated by Bangkok and the eastern industrial belt. Phuket’s absence is a statement about corporate freehold land. It is not a measure of foreign money in Phuket housing, because the count reaches one kind of ownership only — freehold land deeds registered to companies — and a buyer’s own arrangement on the island may sit outside it.
What the three departments agreed to share
On Friday 4 September 2026, Deputy Prime Minister and Commerce Minister Suphajee Suthumpun met Deputy Interior Minister Polpee Suwanchawee at the Ministry of Commerce to step up action against nominee shareholding. The DBD, the Department of Provincial Administration and the Department of Lands agreed to pool their records and keep them refreshed.
The DBD then received Land Department data on property and condominium holdings by 144,706 juristic persons as of 4 September 2026. Of those, 125,622 are entities the DBD supervises, and 123,542 of them hold land title deeds — 1,269,326 plots, 4,504,926.88 rai in total.
Wholly Thai-owned juristic persons account for 87,265 entities (70.64%), 963,488 plots (75.90%) and 3,440,661.50 rai (76.38%). Entities with any foreign shareholding account for 36,277 entities (29.36%), 305,838 plots (24.10%) and 1,064,265.38 rai (23.62%).
Most of the foreign-linked land sits in minority-held companies
The release splits the foreign-shareholding group by the size of that shareholding.
| Band | Entities | Entities as % of the 36,277 | Plots | Rai |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.01%–49.00% | 31,516 | 86.88% | 287,176 | 901,596.92 |
| 49.01%–99.99% | 1,311 | 3.61% | 8,633 | 59,077.06 |
| 100% foreign | 3,450 | 9.51% | 10,029 | 103,591.40 |
- Foreign stake 0.01–49.00%85%
- Foreign stake 100%10%
- Foreign stake 49.01–99.99%6%
Set that against the country. Thailand covers 513,729.83 sq km, or 321,081,144 rai. The 103,591.40 rai held by wholly foreign-owned juristic persons is about 0.03% of the national area. One rai is 1,600 sq m.
The province lists name Greater Bangkok and the eastern industrial belt
For each band the release names the five provinces holding the most title deeds. The ranking is by number of deeds, not by area.
Those five provinces together hold 6,463 deeds, or 64.44% of the wholly foreign-owned band, over 79,125.54 rai (76.38% of the band’s area). The order would change if the release sorted by area: Rayong holds fewer deeds than Chonburi but more rai.
In the 0.01%–49.00% band the top five are Bangkok with 36,047 plots over 29,518.43 rai, Chonburi 29,214 over 95,846.83, Samut Prakan 25,029 over 35,649.62, Pathum Thani 24,876 over 24,441.04 and Nonthaburi 19,874 over 12,563.45. Together that is 135,040 plots (47.02%) and 198,019.37 rai (21.96%).
In the 49.01%–99.99% band the top five are Chonburi with 1,047 plots over 10,031.89 rai, Rayong 989 over 13,309.09, Bangkok 954 over 1,623.90, Samut Prakan 949 over 3,782.81 and Chachoengsao 456 over 6,180.61 — 4,395 plots, which the department gives as 50.90% of the band, and 34,928.30 rai (59.12%).
The three lists name nine provinces between them: Bangkok, Chonburi, Samut Prakan, Pathum Thani, Nonthaburi, Rayong, Chachoengsao, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya and Prachinburi. Phuket is not among them. The release publishes no full province table, so this means Phuket is outside every top five. It does not mean that no foreign-owned company holds land on the island.
The condominium section counts companies, not individual buyers
Juristic persons hold 244,115 condominium units, 13,153,690.14 sq m, across 14,878 entities. Wholly Thai entities hold 167,275 units (68.52%). Entities with foreign shareholding hold 76,840 units (31.48%) and 4,103,114.88 sq m (31.19%). Wholly foreign-owned entities hold 1,179 units and 98,773.09 sq m of that.
Every one of those units is registered to a company. A foreigner who buys a condominium in their own name is not in this table.
A foreign shareholding is not a finding against a company
DBD Director-General Poonpong Naiyanapakorn said the 36,277 entities cannot all be treated as nominee arrangements, because many are genuine Thai–foreign joint ventures formed lawfully, while some carry nominee risk. Manager Online reported the remarks on 7 September 2026, and The Standard carried the same substance on 8 September.
The department has passed the data to the Department of Provincial Administration, the Department of Lands, every provincial governor, the Department of Special Investigation, the Royal Thai Police, the Anti-Money Laundering Office, the Board of Investment and the Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand, each to run checks under its own powers. The release does not say how many entities are under active examination, and no check has been reported as concluded. These are figures about shareholding structure, not a count of unlawful holdings.
Earlier inspection work had already reached Phuket
The department’s field inspections are a longer-running strand, and Phuket is in them. In a statement dated 4 July 2026, the DBD said that between 1 October 2025 and 23 June 2026 it inspected nominee-risk businesses in 35 areas across 11 provinces: Surat Thani, Phuket, Krabi, Chonburi, Samut Prakan, Chiang Mai, Ratchaburi, Samut Sakhon, Samut Songkhram, Tak and Bangkok. The named target categories include accounting offices, law offices, villa businesses, construction, brokerage, tourism, co-working spaces and restaurants.
That round of inspections ended in June. It is separate work, and the two facts should be read on their own: the September data does not rank Phuket, and the department’s inspections have reached the island. Owners who hold a villa through a Thai company with foreign shareholders are the readers the second one touches. The department’s own position, stated above, is that the shareholding alone is not the finding.
Whether a Phuket home is in this dataset depends on how it is held
The data counts one thing: freehold land title deeds registered to juristic persons, sorted by how much of the company foreign shareholders own. Two of the routes open to a foreign buyer sit outside that count, or can. This is a fact about what the dataset measures. It is not a statement about how many homes on the island use each route.
The first is condominium freehold. Up to 49% of a project’s saleable floor area may be held freehold by foreigners in their own names under Section 19 bis of the Condominium Act — see the 49% foreign quota. That is an individual holding a unit title. It is not a company, and it is not land, so it falls outside this dataset by construction. The release’s condominium section counts juristic persons only, and wholly foreign-owned entities hold 1,179 of the 244,115 units it covers. The release gives no figure at all for individual foreign ownership under the quota.
The second is a registered lease, and here the answer turns on who owns the land. A lease right is not a title deed, so the lease itself is never a row in this count. The land under it is, and the freeholder takes one of three shapes. A Thai individual is not a juristic person, so there is no row anywhere in this data. A wholly Thai-owned company is a row, inside the Thai-owned segment of 87,265 entities and 3,440,661.50 rai reported above — but the release gives that segment as totals only, with no band split and no province ranking, so such a deed is in the dataset and can never reach a province table. A company with any foreign shareholding at all sits in the 36,277, in whichever band matches its foreign percentage, and those are the only holdings the release breaks out by band and province. A Thai company is not automatically the second shape: a Thai-majority company with a foreign minority, the 51/49 structure, has foreign shareholding and lands in the third, inside the 0.01%–49.00% band. The shareholder register decides which. So what settles a leased villa is who holds the freehold, and, when that is a company, whether any of its shareholders are foreign. The difference between owning and leasing is set out in freehold and leasehold in Thailand.
What remains is the company route, and that is the one this dataset does see — the structure, the rules around it and its risks are covered in holding Thai property through a company. For the full set of legal routes open to a foreign buyer, start with how foreigners hold Thai property.
Phuket’s absence from these lists is therefore a statement about corporate land title in the industrial provinces. It is not reassurance, and it is not evidence of under-reporting. The release also publishes no breakdown by shareholder nationality, so nothing in it supports a claim about buyers from any particular country. A reader should take the numbers for what they measure and no further.
