Condo transfer fees & taxes in Thailand: who pays what (2026)
Transfer fee, stamp duty, business tax, withholding tax — the honest breakdown of transfer-day costs, and the fee cut foreigners keep hearing about that does not apply to them.
Nobody enjoys discovering costs on transfer day. So here is the full list of what changes hands at the Land Office when a Thai condo is bought and sold, what each item typically costs, and — because this site is about honesty — the popular "0.01% transfer fee" headline that does not apply to foreign buyers.
The four Land Office costs
- Transfer fee — 2% of the official appraised value. This is the headline registration cost.
- Specific Business Tax (SBT) — 3.3% of the higher of sale price or appraised value, normally due when the seller has owned the unit less than 5 years (with exemptions, e.g. the seller's registered residence for over a year).
- Stamp duty — 0.5% — paid only when SBT does not apply.
- Withholding tax — for individual sellers, calculated on the appraised value using a progressive Revenue Department formula based on years of ownership; for company sellers a flat 1%. This is the seller's income-tax prepayment, not the buyer's cost — in principle.
"In principle" — because everything is negotiable
Thai practice is that the split is agreed in the contract, not fixed by law. Common patterns: 50/50 on the transfer fee with each side carrying its own taxes; or "buyer pays transfer fee, seller pays SBT/stamp and withholding". Developers of new projects sometimes cap the buyer's share by law-regulated contract terms; resales are fully negotiable. The rule I give every buyer: the split must be written into the sale agreement before any deposit is paid. A vague "costs shared as customary" line is where transfer-day arguments come from.
About that 0.01% fee cut you read about
Thailand's government has repeatedly reduced the transfer fee (2% → 0.01%) and mortgage fee (1% → 0.01%) for homes priced and appraised at 7 million baht or less — most recently extended to run 1 July 2026 through 30 June 2027. Great news, but read the fine print: the measure applies to individual buyers of Thai nationality only. If you're a foreigner buying under the foreign quota, budget the normal 2% — and treat any seller or agent who promises you the discount as a red flag for how carefully they read the rules. (For Thai buyers reading this: yes, on a ≤7M฿ unit the cut genuinely saves you up to ~139,300฿ on transfer + mortgage registration.)
A worked example
Foreign buyer, resale condo, price 4,000,000฿, appraised value 3,800,000฿, seller owned 3 years (SBT applies), split agreed 50/50 on transfer fee, seller pays own taxes:
- Transfer fee 2% of 3.8M = 76,000฿ → buyer pays 38,000฿
- SBT 3.3% of 4.0M = 132,000฿ → seller
- Withholding tax (progressive formula) → seller
- Buyer's Land Office total: ~38,000฿ — plus their own lawyer, and the building's sinking fund/meter transfers billed separately by the juristic office.
Don't forget the building's own charges
Separate from the Land Office: expect the condo juristic office to bill a sinking fund contribution (new units), advance common-area fees, and small transfer charges for water/electric meters. The building also issues the debt-free certificate the Land Office requires — no certificate, no transfer, so unpaid fees block the deal until settled.
Before you sign anything, I'll get you a written line-by-line cost estimate for your specific unit — so transfer day is exactly as boring as it should be.