Thailand LTR Visa Property Investment: the USD 500,000 Rules for Phuket Buyers

Quick answer: Property counts toward the Thailand LTR visa property-investment leg: USD 500,000 for a Wealthy Global Citizen, who also needs USD 1 million in assets, or USD 250,000 for a Wealthy Pensioner on the lower income track. It is a Board of Investment visa, not the ฿3M one, and grants no land ownership.

Not legal or immigration advice. BOI decides eligibility — verify at ltr.boi.go.th or with a licensed Thai immigration lawyer before you buy.

Does buying property in Thailand qualify you for the LTR visa?

Not on its own. Property is one of three investment instruments the Thailand Board of Investment (BOI) will count, and the investment is one of four tests a Wealthy Global Citizen has to pass. Buy a qualifying property and fail the asset appraisal, and you have a property, not a visa.

The rulebook is BOI Announcement No. Por. 3/2568, announced 4 February 2025. It repeals the two announcements that governed the programme before it — Por. 2/2565 (30 June 2022) and Por. 6/2566 (16 March 2023) — and was issued under section 13 of the Investment Promotion Act B.E. 2520. Every number below comes from that document or from BOI's live programme pages.

One correction first, because a page ranking for this query gets it wrong: the LTR is not the ฿3M property visa — that is a separate Immigration Bureau track from October 2025 (Orders 237/2568 and 238/2568), with a different authority, threshold and renewal cycle, covered alongside Thailand Privilege membership tiers and the ฿3M Investment Visa. The gap between the two thresholds is more than five times.

All figures below were re-checked against ltr.boi.go.th and the announcement PDF on 2 August 2026.

Thailand LTR visa eligibility in 2026 — the four categories and their thresholds

BOI runs four LTR categories. Only two of them have an investment leg a property can fill.

Every category also needs health cover: insurance of at least USD 50,000 with 10 months of coverage remaining, or Thai social-security benefits, or a USD 100,000 deposit held 12 months in a bank in Thailand or abroad — plus no prohibited characteristics under immigration law.

The mechanics are why people chase this visa. Permission runs five years, extendable by five more, at ฿50,000 per person collected in Thailand. The 90-day report becomes a 1-year report and re-entry permits are waived. Up to four dependants ride on one permit — spouse, parents, children under 20 or legal dependants — at USD 25,000 per dependant in bank funds. The digital work permit costs ฿3,000 a year, and BOI states plainly that Work-from-Thailand Professionals get none.

A page ranking for this query says Wealthy Global Citizen needs USD 80,000 a year in income. Por. 3/2568 contains no income test for that category — assets, investment, insurance, clean record. That requirement went in February 2025 and the internet has not caught up.

What the BOI announcement actually says about property — and what it does not

This is where nearly every page on the subject stops being reliable, so here is the primary text.

In the list of instruments a Wealthy Global Citizen may use for the USD 500,000, section 3.1.1 names three: Thai government bonds with at least five years remaining to maturity; direct investment in a private or public limited company, or a venture-capital company or private-equity trust registered with the SEC or certified by the relevant authorities; and, third, one word — "Property."

That is the entire definition. We read all six pages of the English announcement and searched the text. It contains zero occurrences of lease, leasehold, freehold, tenure, usufruct, condominium, villa, 10 years or 30 years. The only "20 years" in the document is the age limit for dependent children.

The ten-year leasehold rule is not invented. Law firm Tilleke & Gibbins reports that BOI accepts leasehold interests with at least ten years remaining, and that reading has been syndicated across legal-commentary sites and copied onward. It may describe BOI practice or separate internal guidance. But it is one firm's reading, it is not in the published announcement, and no page in the search results tells you which of the two you are reading.

The practical consequence is simple. If your eligibility turns on how your property is held rather than on what it cost, get BOI's position in writing before you sign anything. A wrong assumption here costs an eight-figure baht purchase and still leaves you visa-less.

Which properties count toward the Thailand LTR visa property-investment leg?

Two conditions in section 3.1.1 do more work than the threshold itself, and most guides skip both.

"In the applicant's name." The investment must be held by the person applying. The announcement says nothing about an asset held by a Thai company the applicant part-owns, and the guides disagree openly: one ranking guide says company-held or leasehold structures "may not satisfy the direct investment requirement", while Tilleke reads leasehold as qualifying. Nobody has published a reconciliation. Treat it as unresolved.

"Invested or owned before the date of application." The money has to be in the asset first. This is not a route where you apply and then buy.

Then there is Thai property law, which the LTR does not touch. A foreigner cannot own land, so villa purchases run on the standard split: freehold of the structure over a registered lease of the land. If a lease term carries your investment, read how Thai leasehold is structured and registered before assuming anything about eligibility — Phuket villas for sale are commonly sold in that form, with a Thai company structure the other route in common use. Condos are cleaner: freehold in your own name, inside the 49% foreign quota. The rest — title-deed classes, due diligence, who signs what — is in the foreign-buyer rules that apply regardless of visa.

Three things BOI has not published, which we will not guess at:

• A holding period. No published minimum time to keep the asset after approval. "Not published" is not "none".
• A valuation basis. Land Office registered value, contract price and market appraisal differ widely on the same unit. Which one BOI uses decides borderline cases.
• The exchange rate applied. The thresholds are in dollars; the purchase is in baht. Nothing published says which rate, or which date, BOI assesses on.

What USD 500,000 buys in Phuket — and how much of it you can register in your own name

Every competing page states USD 500,000 and stops. Here is what a Thailand LTR visa property purchase meets on the ground.

Our conversion basis, stated plainly because it is ours and not BOI's: USD 500,000 ≈ ฿16.25M and USD 250,000 ≈ ฿8.125M at ฿32.5 per dollar, 2 August 2026. The official numbers are the dollar ones. Currency moves shift the baht line without anyone announcing anything.

Against the full Phuket sale catalogue — 5,779 active listings on 2 August 2026 — the thresholds split like this:

So 1,697 listings clear the Wealthy Global Citizen threshold on price. Villas alone are 1,310 of them — 77% — which pushes most qualifying buyers into the land question rather than the condo quota. That band lives mostly in the villa segment of our catalogue.

Price is the easy test. Ownership structure is the one that decides an application, and inside the ≥฿16.25M band it looks like this:

Only 579 of 1,697 — 34% — are advertised in a form a foreigner could register in their own name, the wording Por. 3/2568 uses. Of those 579, 469 are villas or houses, 103 are condo-type units and 7 are townhouses. Another 825 (49%) sit in Thai-name or company structures, which is precisely the ground where "in the applicant's name" gets tested.

A caveat on that table: ownership is free text as supplied by the listing, not a legal classification of title. The values overlap, 159 rows say nothing, and only two say "Freehold". Read it as how properties are described in our catalogue, and confirm the deed and registration route with a lawyer before relying on it for a visa application. No listing here is certified as LTR-qualifying. For how these bands map onto zones and ฿/m², see current Phuket price levels by district.

What a Thailand LTR visa property purchase does not give you

Short section, because none of it is ambiguous.

• No land. The Land Code Act B.E. 2497 bars foreign land ownership. The LTR creates no exception, at any threshold.
• No larger condo quota. Section 19/2 of the Condominium Act B.E. 2522 caps foreign freehold at 49% of a building's saleable floor area. It applies to an LTR holder exactly as it does to a tourist buying freehold condos in Phuket.
• No permanent residency and no citizenship. LTR is a long-stay visa with a ten-year horizon and no published bridge to either.
• No guarantee. BOI approves applications at its own discretion. A qualifying purchase is a precondition, not a decision.

How is an LTR visa holder taxed in Thailand?

Two claims travel with this visa and both get overstated.

The 17% rate is category-specific. BOI lists "17% Personal income tax for Highly-skilled professionals". It is not a Wealthy Global Citizen benefit and not a Wealthy Pensioner benefit. Anyone selling you an LTR on a flat 17% while you plan to live off a pension is describing someone else's visa.

The overseas-income exemption is stated by BOI without category detail. The privileges list on ltr.boi.go.th reads, in full, "Tax exemption for overseas income". BOI does not qualify it there, and it interacts with Thailand's rules on remitted foreign income. Take it as BOI states it, then have it modelled for your situation — a question for a Thai tax adviser, not a property site.

What it plainly does not cover is rent from a Phuket property. That income arises in Thailand, so it sits in the progressive personal income-tax band like anyone else's. Purchase costs are unchanged by visa status too — see the transfer taxes and annual costs on a Phuket purchase.

Documents and the application path

BOI does not publish a step-by-step timeline we would stand behind, so this is a document checklist, not a process guarantee.

• Proof of assets — for Wealthy Global Citizen, an appraisal supporting USD 1,000,000 across Thai and foreign holdings.
• Proof of the investment — evidence the USD 500,000 (or USD 250,000) was invested or owned before the application date, in the applicant's own name.
• Health cover — insurance of at least USD 50,000 with 10+ months remaining, or Thai social security, or the USD 100,000 deposit held 12 months.
• Income evidence — for the Wealthy Pensioner, pension or fixed personal income at the stated level.
• Dependants — USD 25,000 in bank funds per person, up to four.

For a Thailand LTR visa property application, the paper trail behind the money matters as much as the money. Foreign currency has to arrive in Thailand and be documented at the bank — the same evidence the Land Office wants for a freehold condo registration. Start with evidencing the inbound transfer with an FET form.

Budget ฿50,000 per person for the visa, plus ฿3,000 a year if you take the digital work permit.

LTR vs Thailand Privilege vs DTV — which fits a property buyer?

The choice is about which hurdle you would rather clear. LTR is the cheapest ten years available and the only one of the three where a purchase does any work, but it screens you on assets and income and BOI can refuse. Privilege has no eligibility test — you pay, you are in — which is why it stays the fallback for buyers whose wealth is real but hard to document. DTV competes with neither; at ฿10,000 it buys time on the ground while you decide.

Frequently Asked Questions

These answers are general information, not legal or immigration advice. Eligibility is determined by BOI at its discretion — confirm current requirements at ltr.boi.go.th or with a licensed Thai immigration lawyer before making a purchase decision. Buying property through us does not secure a visa.

Does buying property in Thailand qualify you for the LTR visa?

No. Property is one of three investment instruments BOI accepts, and it only satisfies part of one requirement. A Wealthy Global Citizen also needs USD 1 million in appraised assets and qualifying health cover. Announcement Por. 3/2568 lists property with no definition attached, so structure matters.

How much property investment is required for the Thailand LTR visa?

USD 500,000 for a Wealthy Global Citizen, held in the applicant's own name before the application date. A Wealthy Pensioner aged 50 or over needs USD 250,000, but only on the lower income track of USD 40,000 to 79,999 a year. Thresholds are set in dollars, so exchange-rate moves shift the baht equivalent.

Does a leasehold property qualify for the LTR visa?

Unconfirmed. Announcement Por. 3/2568 names only "Property" and never mentions lease, leasehold or freehold anywhere in its six pages. Law firm Tilleke & Gibbins reports that BOI accepts leases with at least ten years remaining, but that rule is not in the published text. Ask BOI in writing before buying.

Is the ฿3 million property visa the same as the LTR visa?

No — different visas, different authorities, more than five times apart. The ฿3M route is an Immigration Bureau Non-B track from October 2025. The LTR is a Board of Investment visa needing USD 500,000, about ฿16.25M at ฿32.5 per dollar. Buying a ฿3M condo does not produce an LTR visa.

Can an LTR visa holder own land in Thailand?

No. The Land Code Act B.E. 2497 bars foreign land ownership and the LTR visa creates no exception. Condominium Act B.E. 2522 section 19/2 caps foreign freehold at 49% of a building's saleable area for LTR holders exactly as for tourists. Villa land is normally taken on a registered lease.

LTR Wealthy Pensioner or Retirement O-A — which suits a Phuket buyer?

They test different things. LTR Wealthy Pensioner wants USD 80,000 a year in passive income — or USD 40,000 plus a USD 250,000 investment, which is where property fits — and gives ten years with annual reporting for ฿50,000. Retirement O-A wants ฿800,000 seasoned in a Thai bank and renews yearly. Pick whichever proof you can produce.

Sources

• BOI Announcement No. Por. 3/2568 — official English text (PDF) — categories, thresholds, insurance and deposit rules, dependants, repeal of Por. 2/2565 and Por. 6/2566
• Thailand Board of Investment — LTR Visa (ltr.boi.go.th) — ฿50,000 fee, 5+5 term, four dependants, 17% PIT for highly-skilled professionals, 1-year reporting, work permit ฿3,000/year
• Tilleke & Gibbins — LTR pathway through property investment — the ten-year leasehold reading, cited as one firm's interpretation
• Royal Thai Immigration Bureau (immigration.go.th) — Orders 237/2568 and 238/2568, the separate ฿3M route
• Thai long-stay visas compared — Privilege, ฿3M and Retirement O-A side by side
• Freehold vs leasehold in Thailand — the 49% quota and how villa land leases are registered

Last reviewed 2 August 2026 against the BOI announcement text and ltr.boi.go.th. AIProperty Phuket Editorial — we sell property, we do not process visas and we are not immigration advisers. Catalogue counts are live figures from our own listings on the date shown and drift daily. BOI has already repealed two earlier versions of this announcement and can amend this one. Read our editorial standards.

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