I think a lot depends on how direct ownership is carried out. I'd like to see long-term expats be able to buy and own property sensibly. I wouldn't like to see, ever more of, the country flogged off to developers.

However, the whole thing is moot. You could drive ten herds of buffalo through the foreign ownership laws here and half the country has already been sold to Korean/Chinese and Japanese investors and investment consortiums. So the debate is daft as it is easy and straighforward for foriegners to own property in Cambodia including that with hard title.

TheGrinchSR wrote: However, the whole thing is moot. You could drive ten herds of buffalo through the foreign ownership laws here and half the country has already been sold to Korean/Chinese and Japanese investors and investment consortiums. So the debate is daft as it is easy and straighforward for foriegners to own property in Cambodia including that with hard title.

That may be true but they all have a Khmer 51% shareholder (on paper at least). Show me one where there is a 100% foreign ownership on record.

rubberbaron wrote:

TheGrinchSR wrote: However, the whole thing is moot. You could drive ten herds of buffalo through the foreign ownership laws here and half the country has already been sold to Korean/Chinese and Japanese investors and investment consortiums. So the debate is daft as it is easy and straighforward for foriegners to own property in Cambodia including that with hard title.

That may be true but they all have a Khmer 51% shareholder (on paper at least). Show me one where there is a 100% foreign ownership on record.

A shareholder with no legal right to vote on company matters, to disbursement of profits or indeed to company assets is a polite legal fiction nothing more. It's a deliberate device to allow 100% foreign ownership while keeping nationalists mollified.

jessy101 wrote:It has advantages and disadvantages.

please list them down Jessy.

foreigner should be allowed to buy a house on ground floor , they all come to australia and buy up the land and property so what cant we go there and do the same back?

TheGrinchSR wrote:... half the country has already been sold to Korean/Chinese and Japanese investors and investment consortiums.

That's not really true, those ELC's are on land that has been leased, not bought.

CEOCambodiaNews wrote:

Mr. Dath Chakna, the managing director of VMC Real Estate said that allowing foreigners to buy land and houses from the ground floor and full rights to own hard title is good, but there are some negative points towards Cambodia. He added, If Cambodia has this law, it might help foreigners who come to invest in Cambodia, but this law has to be restricted because the land and house is controlled and owned by foreigners.

Makes no sense a tall, He is saying nothing. So, he really expects foreigners to invest in houses here and not have hard title?

He continued, normally the majority of Cambodians are middle class and compared with foreigners, they have less money. Therefore, if we allow foreigners to buy land and houses from the ground floor, it will be hard for Cambodians to buy land to build houses and houses to live in because if more foreigners want to buy land or property, the price of land and houses will be increasing and most of the Cambodian people will never be able to afford it.

Seeing as land and house prices for foreigners are substantially greater a lot of the time than that of the Khmer due to duel pricing and lack of something or other, and seeing as the prices are already outrageous for a 3rd world, unstable backwater, his pricing theory holds little water. Anywhere else and he may have a point, but Cambodia? Perhaps they could restrict the investments to single householders rather than huge conglomorates. But don't the huge conglomerates own their hard titles already? So exactly who is he speaking to?

For instance, recently the land and houses in certain parts in the city (Phnom Penh) are really expensive and most locals don’t have enough money to buy them.

Well, seeing as foreigners don't have the right to hard title on the ground floor, he must be talking about the market for locals.
Yes, all those 200,000 dollar cars came from somewhere. Of Course , they don't inflate prices.

Mr. Mey Van, the director of financial industry Department of ministry of economic and finance said, "The government of Cambodia doesn’t have plans to give foreigners the right to buy land and houses from the ground floor and it will not happen any time soon either. He continued, "in Cambodia, we have two different contexts and we really want foreigners to come to invest in Cambodia, but there are some politicians who encourage Cambodian to hate Vietnamese. That’s why, if we allowed foreigners to buy land and houses in Cambodia, it would be easy for those politicians to stir and encourage Cambodians to hate foreigners."

Well, that's a better point, but then again huge Vietnamese corporations own hard title already. Maybe if he stopped hating the Viets and promoted a rational dialogue against the bigotry he could start to allow Cambodia to have a more fruitful and legal source of income.

Mr. Kim Heang is the director of Valuator and Real Estate Association and a managing director of Khmer Real Estate Agency. He said, "Cambodia doesn’t need this law. We don't need foreigners to own land and property in Cambodia."

Don't need the money? Odd for a Khmer to say. Or is it something else he feels they don't need?

He stressed, "whoever signs the documents for foreigners to own land and houses in Cambodia will become a traitor in next 50 years. We have to stop it from happening. Singapore and America are different from Cambodia. Even though taxi drivers in those countries have college degrees and their people are more educated than Cambodia. The number of educated people in Cambodia is really low."

Clears throat

He continued, "allowing foreigner to buy condos from first floor (second floor for you American readers) is good enough. If we allow them to buy from ground floor we will have no Phnom Penh city in the future and it will become a China town. Even though I am a businessman and working in Real Estate sector I am absolutely against with this law and no matter how much benefit I will be getting from it. It is okay if foreigners just lease the land even up to the next 50 or 60 years.

[/quote]

More Khmer xenophobic sophistry. By the way someone should tell him most Khmer are fact Sino-Khmer (that's half Chinese). Well 90% of the one's owning the businesses are anyway.

In conclusion, it seems that the foreign DEVIL is getting bigger and uglier in the Khmer's mind. I can't work out why the tuk-tuks haven't grenaded the new buses yet? Maybe wait till the next election.

TheGrinchSR wrote: A shareholder with no legal right to vote on company matters, to disbursement of profits or indeed to company assets is a polite legal fiction nothing more. It's a deliberate device to allow 100% foreign ownership while keeping nationalists mollified.

True, but having been in involved as a broker in such deals, there is a remaining risk for the foreign shareholder. Votes must be assigned according to shares held. Any other regulation will make the whole deal void and null according to the land law. You register a company with foreign shareholders for the purpose of acquiring land both the CDC and the Ministry of Commerce will point this out by handing over the relevant sections. Many of the smaller deals will simply go undetected as the buyer's name won't appear on the title. They use a Khmer front man to hold it for them. Finding those is the hard part. A friend of mine specialized in this. And then, enforcement is not this government's strong suit so even the big deals can mostly go about their business unhindered.