Thousands of foreign property owners across Southeast Asia are waking up to a sobering reality in 2025 and 2026: the ownership structures they were sold — structures widely described at the time as standard practice — are now being unwound by the very governments that tolerated them. Assets are being seized. Companies are being dissolved. Criminal charges are being filed. None of this is happening because foreign ownership is impossible in these markets. It is happening because buyers did not own their properties correctly. There is a lesson here that applies everywhere — including Zanzibar.

"The problem was never that foreigners couldn't own in these markets. The problem was that too many bought outside the law — and eventually, the law caught up."

ASANA — Zanzibar

The Thailand Reckoning

Thailand's property market has long attracted foreign buyers — sun-drenched villas in Phuket, clifftop retreats in Koh Samui, modern condominiums in Bangkok — and for decades, a quiet workaround kept many of those buyers in the game. Thai law prohibits foreigners from directly owning land. The workaround was deceptively simple: establish a Thai company with Thai nationals holding 51% of the shares on paper, while the foreign buyer controlled the asset in practice through side agreements, preference shares, and powers of attorney. Lawyers and agents described it as standard. In some circles, it was treated as an open secret.

That era is now ending with considerable force. From 2025 into 2026, Thailand's Department of Business Development deployed a sophisticated intelligence system — the IBAS platform — cross-referencing company filings, tax records, and land registries to identify structures where the Thai shareholders had no genuine financial stake. The results have been stark. Over 7,000 businesses have been flagged as suspected nominee operations, predominantly in real estate and hospitality. A landmark Phuket case saw 23 defendants convicted — foreign nationals and Thai nominees alike — with suspended prison sentences, heavy fines, and the full dissolution of the company network used to hold property.

Since 1 January 2026, new regulations require documentary proof of genuine source of funds for every Thai shareholder in any newly incorporated company. A second order, effective 1 April 2026, extended those checks to all amendment filings, share transfers, and capital changes. The message from Bangkok is unambiguous: the window for remediation is narrowing, and the consequences of inaction now include criminal charges, asset seizure, deportation, and blacklisting.

"Foreign investors found guilty of using nominee structures in Thailand now face prison sentences of up to three years, forced dissolution of companies, seizure of land assets — and possible deportation. This was never a legal grey area. It was always illegal."

A Global Pattern: The Same Story, Different Markets

Thailand is not an isolated case. Across the world, governments that restricted foreign land ownership watched for years as buyers found their way around those restrictions — and are now, one by one, choosing to enforce the rules that were always on the books.

Bali, Indonesia

Active enforcement since 2025

Freehold land in Indonesia is reserved for Indonesian citizens. Foreigners who used Indonesian nominees to hold titles did so under arrangements explicitly voided by Article 26(2) of the Agrarian Law. Bali's Governor signed Perda 4/2026 in February 2026, adding criminal liability on top of civil voidability. In July 2025, 48 structures on Bingin Beach were demolished — properties that had traded hands and generated income for years. In 2024, a single high-profile case saw an Australian investor lose over USD 6.2 million in a fraudulent nominee transaction, with his visa revoked. Indonesia's legal pathways for foreigners — Hak Pakai (right of use), PT PMA company structures, long-term registered leasehold — have always existed. Those who ignored them are now finding there is no safety net.

Spain & Portugal

Golden visa reversals, 2023–2024

Both countries offered Golden Visa programmes that drew billions in foreign property investment, promising residency rights in exchange for minimum purchase thresholds. In 2023 and 2024, both governments announced the winding down or significant restriction of those schemes, leaving buyers who had purchased specifically to access residency pathways facing uncertainty about what their investment actually delivered. The legal structure was always government-issued and formally compliant — but the policy underpinning it changed. The lesson: even properly structured foreign ownership is subject to political risk when the underlying vehicle is a government programme rather than a foundational property right.

Cambodia

Nominee risk widely documented

Cambodia's constitution reserves land ownership for Cambodian citizens. A cottage industry of nominee arrangements grew up to service the foreign buyer market — and has produced a consistent stream of legal disputes, family conflicts, and total loss of investment when relationships between foreign buyers and local nominees soured or the nominee passed away. Cambodian courts follow the official title, not the side agreement. The lesson from Cambodia predates the current wave of enforcement elsewhere: informality of ownership structure is not merely a regulatory risk. It is a personal relationship risk that compounds over time.

Vietnam

Ongoing restrictions tightened

Vietnam permits foreign nationals to own apartments in qualified condominium developments for terms of 50 years (renewable), under the 2015 Housing Law. Foreigners who chose to buy outside this framework — through informal agreements, nominee arrangements, or under-the-counter structures — found themselves with no enforceable rights when disputes arose. Vietnam's formally compliant route has always existed and always delivered genuine security. The buyers who found problems were, consistently, those who chose the informal route and hoped the rules would not apply.

The pattern across all these markets is consistent and instructive. Foreign property ownership is either permitted under a defined legal framework, or it is not. Where it is permitted, following that framework delivers genuine, enforceable security. Where buyers chose to work around restrictions through nominees, shell companies, or informal agreements, they built on foundations that were always legally fragile — and are now discovering the consequences.

The Leasehold Misunderstanding

Leasehold is not the same as renting. A note for freehold-first markets.

One of the most persistent — and costly — misconceptions among foreign property buyers is the conflation of leasehold tenure with non-ownership. This confusion most commonly affects buyers from markets such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and parts of continental Europe, where freehold title is the norm for residential property and leasehold is either rare or unfamiliar.

In fact, leasehold is one of the world's most established and legally robust forms of property ownership. Buyers from the United Kingdom will understand this intuitively: in the UK, the overwhelming majority of flats and apartments are sold leasehold, while the land on which they stand is held on a separate freehold. The leaseholder owns their property — fully, legally, with the right to sell, mortgage, sublet, and inherit. They are not a tenant. They own.

This same principle applies across Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and much of East and Southeast Asia, where all land is ultimately held from the state on long-term registered leases. Owning a 99-year leasehold interest in Singapore is not considered a diminished form of ownership. It is simply how ownership is structured.

Leasehold ownership
  • Full right to occupy, use & enjoy
  • Right to sell at market value
  • Right to mortgage & refinance
  • Heritable — passes to successors
  • Registered title in your name
  • Legal recourse if rights infringed
Rental / tenancy
  • Right to occupy for fixed term only
  • No right to sell or transfer
  • No capital appreciation benefit
  • No heritable interest
  • No registered title
  • Terminable by landlord

The confusion matters because it causes buyers to discount or dismiss markets that offer robust leasehold structures — and sometimes to seek informal freehold-like arrangements instead, which is precisely the path that leads to the problems described above. In Bali, the buyer who refused a legally registered Hak Pakai (80-year right-of-use title, registered in their own name) and instead sought a nominee freehold arrangement did not secure better ownership. They secured no ownership at all.

Zanzibar: The Same Principle Applies

The Misconception About Zanzibar

A common belief circulates online: that foreigners cannot own property in Zanzibar. This belief typically originates from buyers or agents who attempted informal purchases outside approved frameworks — and encountered exactly the problems you would expect.

The correct statement is not that foreigners cannot own. It is that foreign ownership requires the correct structure. Done correctly, title is fully secured and government-backed.

Zanzibar is not Thailand. It is not Bali. But it shares one characteristic with every market discussed above: there is a legally approved path to foreign ownership, and there is an informal market that operates outside it. The consequences of choosing the latter are identical everywhere.

Under Zanzibar's land tenure framework, foreigners acquire a Right of Occupancy — a long-term leasehold interest, typically 99 years, fully transferable, heritable, and mortgageable. This is not a compromise. It is the same framework that governs property in Singapore, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom's Crown land. The structure is different from pure freehold. The security is not.

The route through which ASANA structures all of its sales adds a further layer of certainty. Under the Zanzibar Condominium Act, each unit within a registered condominium development is treated as a distinct legal property. A buyer does not hold shares in a company, or a beneficial interest through a holding vehicle — they hold a registered title deed in their own name, issued by the Zanzibar government. This is the closest structural equivalent to outright property ownership available to a foreign national in Zanzibar, and it is backed by both ZIPA registration at the development level and the full force of Zanzibar statute.

The buyers who encounter problems in Zanzibar are, consistently, those who purchased informally — through handshake agreements, undocumented arrangements, or developers operating outside the ZIPA-registered condominium framework. When those arrangements go wrong, the experience feeds a false narrative: that Zanzibar cannot be owned safely by foreigners. It can. The evidence is the title deeds held by ASANA buyers.

"The problem in Zanzibar is not that foreign ownership is impossible. It is that too many buyers — often advised by those with no knowledge of Zanzibari law — purchased outside the approved framework. The framework exists. It works. It just has to be used."

99yr Right of Occupancy Registered & heritable tenure
ZIPA Government Approved Project-level registration
Title In Your Name Via Condominium Act

What the Thailand Moment Means for Serious Investors

Counterintuitively, the global crackdown on informal foreign ownership structures is good news for markets with well-established legal frameworks. Investors who were previously drawn to the path of least resistance — informal arrangements, nominee structures, ambiguous agreements — are now learning that compliance is not a bureaucratic inconvenience. It is the only thing that stands between your investment and a court order.

The buyers now scrambling to regularise their Thai villas or Balinese land titles are doing so in a hurry, under legal and financial pressure, having paid full market price for an asset they never properly owned. The buyers who purchased correctly in those same markets — registered condominiums in Thailand under the Condominium Act, Hak Pakai titles in Indonesia — are facing no such difficulty. Their ownership was always real. Their title was always enforceable.

This is the moment for investors who take due diligence seriously to distinguish between markets where compliant ownership is genuinely available and those where it is not. Zanzibar is firmly in the former category. The legal framework is clear, the approval process is transparent, and the government has actively signalled its desire for international investment. For those willing to engage with it correctly, the opportunity is as solid as the coral stone on which the villas are built.

Due diligence: what to ask before you buy

The Questions That Protect You

Whether you are buying in Zanzibar or anywhere else in the world, these are the questions that determine whether your ownership will hold:

The property market headlines of 2025 and 2026 are not a reason to retreat from international real estate. They are a reason to invest in knowledge — to understand exactly what you are buying, exactly how you own it, and exactly what legal framework protects you when the time comes to test it. In markets where the framework is clear and the route is compliant, the fundamentals are as strong as they have ever been.

Zanzibar is one of those markets. The conditions that are driving uncertainty elsewhere — enforcement of informal structures, scrutiny of nominee arrangements, tightening of investment regulations — do not apply to buyers who purchased through ZIPA-registered, Condominium Act-compliant developments. Those buyers own. Simply, legally, and without ambiguity.