Foreigners wanting to invest in Chiang Mai land and property will normally find excellent value on land and house prices, especially when compared with the costs in their homeland. In addition to price savings, the city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand is rated as one of the kingdom’s most enjoyable and ‘foreigner-friendly’ communities to settle down in. Its real estate and land and prices are much cheaper than the Thai capital and the southern destinations, making it lucrative when purchasing a house or land in Chiang Mai.

For foreigners without Thai relatives, the leasehold is in general applied to foreigner ‘acquisition’ of real estate, and more specifically, the plot of land the structure is built on. The old scheme of investing in Chiang Mai property should be avoided whereby foreigners would establish a ‘paper’ business when purchasing the land the house is to be constructed on. Thai officials are now serious at checking such businesses’ legitimacy and implications could be possible, should a firm be proven to be false.

While pieces of land beyond the ever growing city limits provide the best value for money, land plots within the city centre – especially around Nimminhemin Road, the riverside and Night Bazaar areas – have increased considerably in line with Chiang Mai’s flourishing tourist industry and the economy’s common increase. This land might be relatively costly, but area trends predict that it will remain if not increase in price as the scarcity of land in these locations continues to grow.

The prices of land in Chiang Mai vary according to demand and supply as well as to the particular locations’ specific attributes. Price tickets can range from around 30,000 baht per four square metres in the downtown area, which will then decrease on a sliding scale to approximately 7,500 baht in the suburban locations which are still positioned within a 20-minute drive of the city centre.

When purchasing land in Chiang Mai, there are three different kinds of title deeds. The most solid and accurate are Chanotes since they’ve been demarcated making use of GPS and normally come with inner urban real estate. Nor Gor is another much used deed on land in Chiang Mai, which aren’t that accurate but allow the holders full entitlement to the land or houses they’re buying. There are other title deeds, such as Nor Gor Saam. However, these should be avoided due to the lack of security.