What Sixteen Years of Australian and British Property Taught Me, and What Phuket Made Me Unlearn
I spent sixteen years in property before I moved to Phuket. I sold in almost every Australian state and worked in London. I have bought in Australia, where I still own, and in the north of England and Wales. Anyone buying property in Phuket as a foreigner arrives the way I did, whether from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or Perth, London or Manchester: with a set of instincts that are correct at home. Some of them are correct here too. Several are not, and the dangerous ones are the ones you do not know you have, because at home somebody else was quietly doing the checking for you.
This is the list I wish someone had handed me on the way in. What does not carry over, what does, and what it means whether you are buying or selling. My examples are Australian and British because that is where I worked. If you are coming from Singapore, Hong Kong or Dubai, swap in your own rulebook. The point holds.
Nobody here holds a licence
The first thing that genuinely shocked me: there is no licence for selling property in Thailand.
In Australia the rules change from state to state, and I have worked under most of them, but the principle never does. You cannot sell a home for someone without a licence or registration, deposits sit in an audited trust account, and there is a regulator to complain to. The UK does not license estate agents, but it has an Estate Agents Act, a compulsory redress scheme, and a solicitor holding the money.
Thailand has no equivalent for the people selling. No exam, no statutory code of conduct, no trust account rules, no disclosure obligations. There are broker associations with their own codes of ethics, and membership is voluntary. Someone can post a listing this afternoon and meet a client tomorrow.
Contracts are a different matter. Thai law governs what a sale agreement does, a developer’s condominium contract follows a prescribed form, and a good lawyer will check every line. The gap is not in the paperwork. It is in the person standing between you and the paperwork.
People call it the wild west. I would put it more plainly: the safety rails you are used to were never installed. That is not a comment on the people working here, plenty of whom are excellent. It is a comment on what you are entitled to assume, which is nothing. At home the licence does a layer of vetting for you. Here you do it yourself. That is why this market runs on relationships, and why choosing who you work with deserves more time than choosing the villa. Ask who they act for, how they are paid, where your deposit will sit, and whether all of it goes in writing before anything is signed.
Buying property in Phuket as a foreigner: what does not carry over
Who pays what is not set by law. In Australia the buyer pays stamp duty and the state tells you how much. In England and Wales the buyer pays the land tax. Nobody negotiates it. Here the main transfer fee is 2 percent of the official appraised value, and the split between buyer and seller is custom, not law. Half each is usual. The contract is final. I have set out the full picture in what buying in Phuket actually costs, but the short version is: read the costs clause before you read anything else.
Nobody runs the searches unless you hire them. In Australia a conveyancer or settlement agent sits in the middle of every transaction. In the UK your solicitor will not let you exchange until the searches are back. Here a transfer can go through at the Land Department with no lawyer on your side at all. The system will not stop you. An independent lawyer is something you choose to engage, and as I wrote in the common mistakes piece, it is the cheapest insurance in the whole process. If you do not have one, I can introduce you to lawyers I trust.
There is no sold-price record to look up. In Australia every portal shows you what next door sold for. In England and Wales the Land Registry publishes it. Thailand has no central record a buyer can open, and what you see online are asking prices. Some of the portals are starting to try to fill the gap, and I hope they manage it. Until then, knowing what actually sold, what did not, and why comes from market knowledge and a network: someone with the contacts to pick up the phone and ask. So the two questions every new buyer asks me, “what is it per square metre” and “what did the last one go for”, do not have the clean answers they have at home.
Freehold is not the default. At home you buy the dirt and never think about it. Here a foreigner can own a condominium freehold within the building’s foreign quota, and most villas are sold on a registered lease of up to thirty years. If a renewal has been described to you as guaranteed, read my piece on the 30+30+30 ruling before you put a value on it.
What does carry over
The fundamentals. They were the same in every market I have worked in.
I first spent real time around Bang Tao in the Covid and post-Covid years, and everything I had learned to look for was already here. A wellness and fitness scene growing fast, Muay Thai gyms full. Bars and beach clubs opening to serve a high-end crowd. Porsches and Mercedes parked outside the cafes. I had not seen another part of Thailand like it, and I was sure a boom was coming. In parts of this coast, prices have since gone up something like three times. That is my own observation from watching the area, not a dataset, and it is not the whole island. I wrote this week about Phuket’s 19 months of stock and where that pile is deepest.
The clearest sign of where this coast is heading is the number of branded residences. Bang Tao and Layan now have more of them, on the market or on the way, than anywhere else on the island, and international hotel names do not put their badge on a postcode they do not believe in. That instinct carries over from home: follow the serious money. But the brand is a management agreement, not a title. A branded residence can still sit on a thirty-year lease, so value the tenure first and the name second. I cover how they work in my guide to Phuket branded residences.
The other thing that carries over is the oldest rule in property: it is worth what the market will pay. Some international buyers new to this market are shocked at what this end of it costs. Their opinion of the price does not change the price. Location, quality, uniqueness, resale pool and rental return move it. I know owners here who already hold several properties and are still buying. New buyers keep arriving, and more of them are families, which suits the international schools along this coast.
What it means for a buyer
Rebuild the safety net yourself. An independent lawyer who acts only for you, written terms with whoever is advising you, and a clear answer on where your deposit is held. At home these come as standard. Here you put them in place.
Let the contract tell you what it costs. Fee splits are custom until they are written down. Then they are whatever the page says.
Value the tenure before the view. Two villas at the same price on the same road can be very different assets. At home that would be strange. Here it is normal.
What it means for an owner
If you own here and you are selling, your buyer is probably carrying the same home-market instincts, and so are you. An owner from Australia or the UK expects one agent, one portal and a visible sold price next door to anchor the number. None of those exist here in the same form. Your price has to be argued from evidence someone has gathered, and your buyer’s lawyer will ask for the title, the ownership structure and the paperwork from your original purchase. Have all three ready before you list. I cover the process in how listing with me works.
The read
Phuket rewards the instincts that made you money at home and punishes the assumptions you never knew you were making. The fundamentals travel. The safety net does not. Build your own, in writing, before you fall in love with anything.
Buying or selling on Phuket’s west coast? Message me on WhatsApp: +66 93 760 8561
Home-market references: state and territory agent licensing laws in Australia, the Estate Agents Act 1979 (UK), and HM Land Registry Price Paid Data. Observations about Bang Tao and price movement are my own and are not transaction data.
Rex Butler, Managing Director, Butler Estates. This is general market commentary, not legal, tax or investment advice.