Only one of them is a deed

Land in Thailand is held, sold and inherited on at least six kinds of paper. Under the Land Code, only one of them is a document of ownership.

The rest sit on a ladder below it. Each rung carries a different right, a different way to sell and a different way to lose the land. The bottom rung is not a land document at all.

The top rung: the title deed

The Land Code defines the โฉนดที่ดิน as “a document of title to land”. Section 3 lists how a person comes to own land: by holding ownership under the law before the Code, by obtaining a title deed under the Code, or under another law. None of the other papers on this ladder is on that list. Land that nobody owns belongs to the state (section 2).

Section 57 sets out what a deed carries: the holder’s name, the location, the area and a plan showing the neighbouring land on all four sides, signed and sealed by the land office, which keeps the duplicate. It asks the same of a certificate. What separates the two is the right each one records.

A sale of land with a deed must be in writing and registered at the land office (section 4 bis).

The certificate rungs: possession, not ownership

Below the deed sits the หนังสือรับรองการทำประโยชน์, which the Code defines as an official’s certificate “that the land has been used”. It records possession (สิทธิครอบครอง), not ownership. The Code draws the line itself when it says what must be registered: a transfer of “ownership or possessory right” in land with a deed or a certificate (section 4 bis).

The certificate comes in more than one form. The one known as น.ส.3ก is drawn on aerial-photograph map sheets. Under section 58 ter, the minister can name an area where such certificates will be turned into deeds by adjusting the photo map, normally without a new survey. The certificate is cancelled on the day the deeds are handed out. The plain น.ส.3 has no plot plan of that kind, Thansettakij reported in 2021, so turning it into a deed needs a survey with the neighbours called to show the boundaries.

Selling land held on a น.ส.3 or น.ส.3ข takes a month’s public notice. The Land Department’s citizen manuals say a sale, gift or exchange of such land must be posted for 30 days under Ministerial Regulation No. 7 of 1954. The registration follows only once the notice has run without objection, and the manuals put the whole process at 47 days. The น.ส.3ก is not on that list.

The allocation rung: a licence to occupy

A ใบจอง is, in the Code’s words, “a document permitting temporary occupation of land”. The state issues it when it allocates land to a person (section 30). Once that person has used the land and met the conditions of the Land Allocation Committee, the land office issues a deed or a certificate.

That deed comes with a lock. Where the ใบจอง was issued on or after 14 December 1972, the land cannot be transferred for ten years from the day the deed or certificate is received (five years for some allocations made before then). The exceptions are inheritance, transfer to a state body, and transfer to a cooperative to settle a debt with the registrar’s approval. During those ten years the land cannot be seized to pay a debt (section 31).

The same ten-year lock applies to deeds and certificates issued in a survey to people who began occupying land after 1954 with no paper at all (section 58 bis).

The notice rung: “no new right”

The Land Code came into force on 1 December 1954. People already occupying and using land without a title had 180 days to notify the district. That notice is the ส.ค.1. The law that created it adds one line: notifying “does not give rise to any new right for the notifier” (section 5 of the Promulgating Act).

A ส.ค.1 records that someone said they were there. It is the occupier’s own notice to the district. Land held on one changes hands the way the Civil and Commercial Code passes any possession: by delivering the property (section 1378). There is no deed or certificate to register a sale against.

In 2008 the law put a clock on it. An amendment to the Land Code, No. 11 of B.E. 2551 (2008), gave ส.ค.1 holders two years to apply for a deed or certificate. The window closed on 8 February 2010. After that date, a land office may issue a document on a ส.ค.1 only once a court has ruled, finally, that the person lawfully possessed the land before the Code came into force. The Land Department checks the oldest aerial photographs it has and gives the court its opinion (section 8 of the amendment, as quoted in full in the department’s citizen manual).

The bottom rung: a tax form

The ภ.บ.ท.5 is not a land document. It was the form on which an occupier declared land for the local maintenance tax (ภาษีบำรุงท้องที่). The receipt was the ภ.บ.ท.6.

In 2019 the Royal Forest Department said that neither is a document of right under the Land Code, and that neither shows the holder occupies the land lawfully. It was warning buyers after finding the forms used to sell plots inside national reserved forest. The Department of Provincial Administration had told every province in 2008 that reserved forest, public land and state land could not be declared for the tax, and that the forms could not certify possession. Both statements are as the Forest Department described them to Thai PBS.

The tax itself is gone. The Land and Buildings Tax Act B.E. 2562 (2019) repealed the Local Maintenance Tax Act B.E. 2508 (1965) (section 3), and the new tax applies from 1 January 2020 (section 2). The new Act defines a taxpayer to include a person “who possesses or makes use of land or buildings that are state property”. The state taxes people on its own land. Paying the tax is a duty, not a claim.

A tax receipt is not worthless. The Land Department lists “evidence of land tax payment” among the papers that can support an application for a deed. It can help show how long someone has used land that may be titled. It cannot make land titleable if the law says it may not be. The department’s manual sets out which land may be titled; land in reserved forest or a national park qualifies only with a ส.ค.1 or ใบจอง from before the area was reserved.

Two clocks

The rungs also differ in how land can be lost.

The Civil and Commercial Code treats possession and ownership differently. A possessor who is unlawfully dispossessed may recover possession but must sue “within one year” of losing it (section 1375). Ownership is harder to lose. A person who occupies another’s land peacefully, openly and with the intention of owning it becomes the owner only after ten years (section 1382). How the courts apply each rule to a particular plot is a question for a lawyer.

The Land Code adds a third clock, for land left unused. Land on a certificate abandoned for more than five years in a row, or on a deed for more than ten, is treated as given up. On the Land Department’s petition, a court can revoke the document and the land returns to the state (section 6).

How many are still below the top rung

Bangkok Lad could not find a current published count by document type.

The Land Department says its offices keep the registration records for 39 million plots, in its service plan for the 2026 budget year. Thansettakij reported in 2021 that plots still on a ส.ค.1, น.ส.3 or น.ส.3ก numbered “no fewer than 3 million”, and a department source told the paper that about a million more plots had no paper at all.

The department’s walking surveys had titled more than 14 million plots since 1985, Thansettakij reported in 2023. The department’s walking-survey target is 70,000 plots a year in both the 2025 and 2026 budget years, on its own plan, a figure that includes re-surveying existing deeds to a common standard. Individual applications and the photo-map conversion under section 58 ter run alongside.

The ladder has a price outside the land office too. In 2021, Thansettakij reported, a Government Savings Bank loan secured on land, under soft-loan criteria set by the Bank of Thailand, accepted only title deeds as collateral. The Interior Ministry’s answer, the paper reported, was a target to convert 3 million certificate plots into deeds within five to ten years. Bangkok Lad found no published progress figure against that target.

What this adds up to

A deed is a product standard. It fixes the plot on a map, names an owner and sits in a public register. Every rung below it is a weaker standard, and the law prices the weakness in time: a month’s notice on a น.ส.3, a ten-year lock on allocated land, one year to sue for land held on possession, a court case before a 1954 notice can become a deed.

This is the site’s first structural finding, seen from the ground. Informal systems work when there is a product standard and a published price, as gold does (article 80 Money you can wear). Thai land has the standard at the top rung only. Below it, a buyer relies on the neighbours, the notice board and, in the end, a court.

The bottom rung is the plainest case. A tax form was used to sell land as if it were a deed. The state’s own definition of a taxpayer shows why it never was one.

Nothing in this article is advice on buying, selling, borrowing against or claiming any plot.

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Common misconceptions

“A น.ส.3 is a title deed.” It is a certificate that the land has been used. The Code ties ownership to the deed, not to the certificate.

“A ส.ค.1 proves the land is mine.” The 1954 law says notifying created no new right. Since 8 February 2010, a deed on a ส.ค.1 needs a final court ruling first.

“ภ.บ.ท.5 land can be transferred at the land office.” It is a tax form and there is nothing to register. The Land and Buildings Tax replaced the tax it was filed for from 1 January 2020.

“Paying land tax proves the land is mine.” The 2019 Act taxes people who occupy or use state land.

“A น.ส.3 sale is done in a day.” On the Land Department’s manuals, land on a น.ส.3 or น.ส.3ข needs 30 days’ public notice and about 47 days in all.

“A foreigner can buy land on a certificate rather than a deed.” The Land Department’s manual requires the buyer of certificate land to be a Thai national unless a law specifically allows otherwise. See article 16 Can foreigners actually own property in Thailand? What the agents don’t volunteer.