How to Buy a Business in Thailand as a Foreigner

Yes. This is the question I get most, usually phrased as "can foreigners buy a business in Thailand at all," like the country is closed. It isn't. What's restricted is the ownership structure, not the buying. The Foreign Business Act sorts activities into lists. Some are wide open, some cap foreign shareholding at 49%, a few are off-limits without special approval. A restaurant, a guesthouse, a dive shop, an e-commerce brand: all buyable. The paperwork is what changes depending on what you're buying and where.

So the real question isn't "can I buy," it's "what will I be allowed to own outright, and what needs a workaround." Different question. Better one.

Wider range than people expect. A small café in Nimman or a two-room guesthouse on Koh Lanta trades in the 1.5 to 4 million baht range. A stable, foreigner-run bar-restaurant in Rawai or Chalong with a real lease and a couple of years of books, more like 6 to 15 million. A boutique hotel on Samui with a strong Booking.com history can run 25 million and up, and it'll be worth every satang more than the guy selling a "turnkey" concept with no revenue.

Budget past the sticker price. You need working capital for the first few months, a lawyer (30,000 to 80,000 baht for a proper deal review, which is the cheapest insurance you'll ever buy), accounting setup, and a cushion for the handover period when the previous owner's magic touch turns out to be, say, their cousin who does the books for free.

Three places, ranked. Marketplaces built for this (that's what we do here) where listings are structured and you can filter by location and price. Brokers, who are useful but work for the seller, so read everything twice. And direct outreach. The best deals I've seen never got listed. They came from someone knowing someone whose lease was up and whose wife wanted to move back to Chiang Rai.

Skip the Facebook expat groups for anything over a few hundred thousand baht. The signal-to-drama ratio is brutal, and the good operators aren't posting their P&L next to someone ranting about their visa run.

Assume they're fiction until proven otherwise. Not because Thai sellers are dishonest. Because cash businesses everywhere run two sets of numbers, and the one they show buyers is the optimistic one. Ask for bank statements, not a spreadsheet. Ask for the actual VAT filings and the tax returns submitted to the Revenue Department. If a bar claims 400,000 baht a month in sales and declares 90,000 to the taxman, you've just learned two things: the real number, and that you're inheriting a habit that's now your legal problem.

Sit in the business. Physically. A week if you can. Count covers on a Tuesday, not just a Saturday. I once watched a seller's "packed every night" resort do eleven guests across four days in low season. The photos were real. The context wasn't.

For a lot of activities, a foreigner can hold at most 49% of a Thai limited company, with Thai shareholders holding 51%. This is where people panic, and where people also do something stupid. The stupid thing is nominee shareholders. Paying Thais to hold shares they don't really control. It's illegal under the Foreign Business Act, it's being enforced more than it used to be, and when it unwinds you can lose the company. Don't.

The legitimate paths: structure with a real Thai partner whose interests are aligned and protected on paper; use preference shares and a shareholders' agreement so your 49% still controls the decisions and the cash; or buy something that qualifies for BOI promotion or the US Amity Treaty and own it outright. Which route fits depends entirely on what you're buying. This is the one part you do not improvise. Get a licensed Thai lawyer. A real one, with an office, not your landlord's nephew.

Buying the company shares means you get everything: the lease, the licences, the history, and every liability hiding in a drawer. Buying the assets means you cherry-pick what you want, like equipment, brand, and a lease assignment, and leave the old company's tax problems behind. Nine times out of ten a foreign buyer wants the asset deal for exactly that reason. The exception is when the value is the company itself: a BOI promotion, a hard-to-get licence, a lease that can't be reassigned. Then you buy shares and you do the deepest due diligence of your life.

The lease. Over and over, the lease. Someone buys a beautiful restaurant, then finds the lease has fourteen months left and the landlord's son wants the space for his own café. Verify the lease term, verify it's transferable, and get the transfer in writing from the landlord before you wire anything. A business is worth nothing if it can't stay where it is.

After that: unverified financials, skipping the lawyer to save 50,000 baht, and running out of cash in month three because nobody warned you that August in Phuket is a graveyard.

Buy when the numbers check out on paper, the lease is long and transferable, and the business runs without the owner standing in the doorway. Walk when the seller won't show you bank statements, when the whole thing depends on their personality, or when the only structure that works is one your lawyer won't put their name to. There's always another deal. The Gulf isn't running out of guesthouses.

If you want to see what's actually on the market right now, that's the entire point of this site. Real listings, filterable, with the boring details up front where they belong.