What are the legal steps for title deed and encumbrance due diligence — Rights in immovable property arise on registration before the competent official at the local Land Office under the Land Code, and condominium units are subject to the foreign-ownership ratio in the Condominium Act. /land|title deed/i Foreign nationals generally cannot hold freehold land under the Land Code, so leasehold, usufruct or condominium structures are used instead. The standard transfer registration fee is 2% of the appraised value, payable at the Land Office on the day of registration. Keep the receipt or application number: it is what allows you to track progress and to reference the file if a correction is needed. Civil-registry records issued before computerisation may need a fresh extract taken from the register held by the district office. Government fees can be revised by ministerial regulation, so the current rate must be confirmed on the filing date. Changes to registered company particulars must be filed with the Department of Business Development within the period set by the Civil and Commercial Code. Every file has a named case handler, a status-tracking channel, and a closing summary returned with your originals.
“What are the legal steps for title deed and encumbrance due diligence?” falls within an end-to-end service that combines document preparation, translation, signature certification, consular legalisation and coordination with the destination mission into a single file. The people who search for it are usually preparing a filing against a fixed deadline, recovering from a rejected submission and trying to identify the missed step, or coordinating documents for several people at once.
In practice, each step sits with a different body: the issuing office, the Notarial Services Attorney, the Department of Consular Affairs, and the destination country’s diplomatic mission. Knowing which body owns which step makes it possible to judge how many stages a bundle needs, and which of them cannot be corrected without starting again.
This is a baseline set. Individual receiving authorities may add requirements, so confirm with the destination body first.
Record how many stages each document needs, who certifies it, and what must finish first, so no step has to be redone.
Check personal names, company names, addresses and dates across the whole bundle before any certification begins.
Original → translation → signature certification / legalisation → destination mission. Doing these out of order forces a restart.
Verify the number of sets, the seals, the binding, and that issue dates are still within the destination’s validity window.
| Route | When it applies |
|---|---|
| Notarial Services Attorney certification | For privately drafted instruments — powers of attorney, affidavits, consent letters — signed in the attorney’s presence. |
| Legalisation at the Department of Consular Affairs | Where a foreign authority needs confirmation of the Thai issuing office’s signature and seal, or of the translation. |
| Attestation at the destination mission | Where the destination country requires its embassy or consulate in Thailand to attest the file after consular legalisation. |
| Thailand’s Apostille status | Thailand acceded to the Apostille Convention on 30 June 2026 and it enters into force for Thailand on 28 February 2027. No Apostille is issued in Thailand before that date. |
If you are working through “What are the legal steps for title deed and encumbrance due diligence?”, start by getting the receiving authority’s requirement in writing, then plan the certification chain backwards from your real filing date.