Real Estate

The discussion of an asset and its price cannot be crystallised properly until the quality of the asset and risk has been assessed and, if the parties agree, reflected in the valuation or price. Hughes Krupica’s team, including its Co-Founders have been immersed in real estate transactions as a mainstay of their practice for decades allowing their due diligence scope and skills to evolve to a sharp set of tools for any investor acquiring or disposing of assets. If necessary in the context of a deal, we are able to conduct checks to a degree that has been used to defend legal titles against revocation claims on assets estimated at an aggregate exceeding 200m USD or 6,200,000,000 THB. We are also comfortable handling due diligence checks for smaller value transactions including personal home or buy-to-rent investments, and will tailor scope of due diligence in consultation with you with regard to management of a budget.

A property transaction in Thailand can range between a straightforward sale and purchase agreement to a more complex set of contracts which are governed by Thai regulatory principles combined with more international property law and practice provisions which must, if Thai law applies, not conflict. Critical awareness of the interplay of these elements, jurisdictional issues and the consequences for a violation of the contract and potential remedies is essential for a competent analysis and amendment of a contractual package. We will deliver reasoned amendments backed by law and practice and our reputation for doing so has resulted in less reputable market participants shying away from interacting with our robust, candid and transparent approach to advice. We remain detached and independent, but commercial and bullish with regards to our clients’ objectives.

Poor planning and lack of agile governance can cause delays, heightened risk, dissatisfied investors and consumers, which can be avoided by a wide inclusive approach to project planning. We can either be involved on a consultative basis during the land site identification process or further along the development cycle and adjust our scope and advice accordingly. Our corporate structuring and governance expertise can be neatly applied into a real estate venture context to allow, if required an interplay between a foreign entity and domestic entities through debt and equity arrangements. This can include developing preliminary letters of intent into structured shareholder arrangements with tailored corporate constitutions.

A famous narrative-style saying in law is that there is no such thing as a perfect contract. A contract can never stipulate for every eventuality, risk, liability and obligation and therefore a contract must be a balance between experience, knowledge of the parties, issue solving mechanisms and clear provisions.

However, when the sales ‘value’ of a project is placed in a budget, there is no ‘assumption’ that the contracts for the project will be of a high quality and standard to manage relationships with buyers and also to elevate the reputation and standing of a project above its peers. We will design your sales and related agreements around the project and will not accept or engage in using stale templates and simply attaching annexes to differentiate the model. Where there are time savings that can be made by using tried and tested models, we will act accordingly, but we will also use our extensive experience to refine your agreements. We are also very much aware of the potential outcomes when a contract is challenged or disputed, and this aids us in our contract design so that provisions work within the applicable law or applicable legal system used to determine issues.

Our team has extensive experience in the full range of subject matter that can be the basis for a real estate dispute both in court litigation and arbitration forums. We have represented developers in their disagreements with contractors and sub-contractors, other suppliers and with defaulting purchasers acting in bad faith. We have represented individuals and groups of purchasers suffering losses from illegal underlying assets, mismanagement and/or fraudulent use of purchase funds. Further, we have had to defend spurious criminal proceedings typically coupled with weak civil claims designed to leverage parties to ‘settle’ on an unfair basis, and we have had to deny jurisdiction to claimants seeking to ignore the agreement to arbitrate as they may rightly or wrongly feel they have a stronger chance of success in a domestic court. We have also had to step in and take over cases which has been lost prior to Supreme Court level and assist ‘losers’ mitigate and in some cases overcome their losses through commercial negotiations.