The project in Bang Saen along the coast between Bangkok and Pattaya is enormous. The developer is a world famous Swedish financier who has a wide social circle and has acquaintances within the Swedish royal family. A couple of hundred million Swedish krones had been invested in the project.
With several sales offices in Scandinavia and aggressive marketing they wanted to sell apartments in three giant buildings that surrounded one of the largest swimming pools in the world. The project included a health studio, nurses and transportation to the beaches.
The Swedes knew Thai law very well. It seemed they had come up with a concept that couldn’t go wrong.
The customer had to buy a membership in the project rather than become the actual owner of their own apartments. In Thailand only 45% of all the apartments in a building can be owned by foreigners.
The members were seduced with many advantages. They could, through the company, rent out their apartments when they weren’t in use with certain restrictions. Even though membership could not be inherited from a previous owner or be sold to others, they could sell it back to the entrepreneur at any given time but only for the original purchasing price. There were no price index regulations.
Since the minimum age for buying memberships was 55 years, the company could expect to resell the membership in the near future and make a repeat profit.
On paper it looked like a giant luxury project. The marketing was active, and potential members were treated like royalty on their visits. Many fell into the trap.
One married couple, who was tempted, paid about one million krones for an everlasting membership. They soon realized that the ”service charges” also reached unusual heights and were collected every month. They started to doubt their investment.
One day while they relaxed at the beautiful beach one kilometer away (they didn’t know that the water was one of the most polluted in the bay of Thailand), they met a young Scandinavian couple and started to chat.
- “We have leased a beautiful house down here at the beach” the new acquaintances told them.
- “And how much is that?” The married couple wanted to know.
It soon proved that the young couple had paid just a little more than their own maintenance fee. They could use the house as they saw fit. The leasing agreement lasted for seven years and they had full renewal rights.
The members in the Swedish project were swindled out of one million. Others in the same project had lost more than that.
(The story is from Danish press)