Buyer guide
Renting out your property: rules, costs and tax in general terms
Many buyers plan to let their property for part of the year. Whether that works depends on what kind of letting the law and the building allow, and on what is left after costs. This guide covers both in general terms.
Short lets and the 30-day line
Under Thai law, providing accommodation for periods shorter than a month is hotel business and needs a hotel licence. A condominium unit cannot be licensed as a hotel, and many buildings also ban short lets in their regulations. Daily and weekly rentals of an ordinary condominium unit are therefore outside the law, whatever a listing site allows.
Small houses and villas can operate under a lighter registration with conditions of its own. New rules for short-stay accommodation have been proposed; at the time of writing they are not law. Check what applies before you buy for holiday letting.
Letting by the month or longer
Letting for a month or more needs no licence. Use a written lease, take an inventory and a deposit, and check the building's regulations on tenants. A lease longer than three years must be registered at the Land Office to be enforceable for its full term. Owners who let several homes come under consumer protection rules that limit what a lease may say.
Managed rental programmes
In hotel-managed projects, branded residences among them, units can be let by the day under the project's hotel licence. The owner joins a rental programme: the operator lets the unit, deducts its fees and costs, and pays the owner a share. Expect limits on how many days you may use the unit yourself.
A rental guarantee is a promise by the developer to pay a fixed return for a number of years. It is worth as much as the developer's ability to pay, and its cost is usually in the price. Ask what the unit would earn without it.
From gross rent to what you keep
- Empty periods: no home is let every month of the year, and resort areas have a low season.
- Management and letting fees, and in a rental programme the operator's share.
- Common fees, utilities, insurance and the yearly land and building tax.
- Furniture, repairs and the cost of getting the home ready between tenants.
- Tax on the rental income.
Ask for figures from comparable homes that are actually let, not projections. We do not promise rents or returns, and nobody can.
Tax in general terms
Rent from a property in Thailand is income from a Thai source. It is taxable in Thailand whether or not you live there, and whoever pays the rent may have to withhold tax from it. If you are tax resident elsewhere, your home country may tax the same income as well. Whether and how the two are set against each other depends on where you are resident.