The LTR visa is Thailand’s most prestigious visa and in this post I will explain my experience of getting the LTR Wealthy Global Citizen Visa approved. The LTR visa was introduced a couple of years ago in order to try to attract more wealthy long term tourists to Thailand. It is split into 5 main categories;
- Highly Skilled Professionals
- Work from Thailand Professionals
- Wealthy Global Citizens
- Wealthy Pensioners
- Spouses and dependents of the above 4 categories
The LTR visa’s are not available for everyone and there are strict criteria in order to be approved. This is probably why the amount of approvals is still very low. At the time of writing (end of March 2026) there are only 9,392 LTR visas that have been approved. By far the most popular visa is the LTR Wealthy Pensioner with 3,493 approvals, closely followed by the dependents with 2,989 approvals. The LTR Wealthy Global Citizen visa has the lowest number of approvals with only 551. That is probably due to a mix of high requirements and amount of documentation required to get approval.
Americans lead the way with 1,900 approvals (mainly pensioners), followed by the Japanese with (1,603 approvals (mainly highly skilled professionals) and then the UK with 804 approvals (again mainly pensioners).
Below I will discuss my experience of the application process, required documents & timeline for getting my LTR Global Wealthy Citizen visa approval.
Requirements to Qualify for LTR Global Wealthy Citizen Visa
The LTR website lists the following requirements in order to apply for the LTR Global Wealthy Citizen Visa;
- Investment in Thailand of at least USD 500,000 in the applicant’s name. This can be in one or a combination of the following;
- Thai Government Bonds with a remaining maturity of no less than 5 years in the applicant’s name
- Direct investment in companies registered in Thailand. If the investment is owned by more than one person, the value will be divided equally or on a pro-rata basis among the owners
- Investment in Thai property. If the investment is owned by more than one person, the value will be divided equally or on a pro-rata basis among the owners. The applicant must invest or hold ownership in their own name.
- Owning at least USD 1 million in global assets or Thai assets in the applicant’s name. (This can include or combine with the investment in Thailand of at least USD 500,000 mentioned above.)
- Insured under a health insurance covering a minimum of USD 50,000. OR Currently receiving social security benefits in Thailand. OR Deposit and maintain at least USD 100,000 in bank account balance under the applicant’s name for no less than 12 months.
* Note: The applicant must already have made the investment and hold the qualifying assets before applying for the visa.
Documents Required to Apply for LTR Global Wealthy Citizen Visa
The full list of documents for the LTR Wealthy Global Citizen visa can be found on their website here. To summarise;
- Copy of your passport with at least 6 months validity and 2 spare pages which must include all previous Thai visa stamps and the biodata, in chronological order as a double page spread.
- Passport photo taken within the last 6 months
- Thailand Digital Arrival Card – TDAC (only if applying whilst in Thailand)
- Evidence of Thai assets
- Evidence of Global assets
- Evidence of health insurance with at least 10 months expiry from date of application OR 12 months bank statements showing minimum balance of $100k throughout
Other documents which may be asked for include police certificate (from your home country or Thailand), or any other documents as they may see fit to request.
Documents Required to Show Proof of Thai Assets
As mentioned above, Thai assets can include Thai Government Bonds, Investment in Companies registered in Thailand, or Thai property. The website states that the following documents are required to prove you own the Thai assets;
Thai Government bonds are very hard to apply for if you are a foreigner so good luck finding a way to purchase them. If you do, you need to provide proof of ownership with at least 5 years to maturity.
Direct Investment in a Registered Company in Thailand requires;
- Company shareholder list (Bor.Or.Jor. 5, no more than 3 months old) and the latest
audited financial reports. - Securities Business License from The Securities and Exchange Commission for
investments in venture companies. - Letter from a broker certifying the applicant’s ownership of a public stock listed on
SET which has been held for no less than 1 year as of the application date.
Thai Property falls under freehold and leasehold options and the required documents vary;
For freehold – 1. A copy of the sale and purchase agreement issued by the
Department of Land, which is no older than 6 months and 2. A copy of the condominium title deed issued by the Department of Lands, which is no older than 6 months.
For leasehold – 1. A copy of the leasehold agreement, with a remaining lease
term of at least 10 years from the applicant’s date, issued by
the Department of Land, which is no older than 6 months and 2. A copy of the title deed issued by the Department of Lands, which is no older than 6 months.
How to Prove Thai Property Ownership for LTR Global Wealthy Citizen Visa
We used our Thai property as evidence of our investment in Thailand. But we found that the reality of what the BOI want in terms of paperwork, is a little bit different to what is stated on the website. Firstly, if you own a property as freehold as a foreigner (unless it’s a condo) it’s likely it’s in a Thai company name with you as 51% shareholder. If this is the case, they will not consider it at all. The property has to be owned in your personal name.
For a leasehold property, it’s likely that you lease the land but own the building in your personal name. In this instance, what they want is;
- Copy of Sales and Purchase Agreement certified from Land Office dated within last 6 months. Whatever price is shown on this document is what they take into account as your asset value
- Copy of Lease Agreement certified from Land Office dated within last 6 months. Again, whatever price is shown on this document is what is taken into account for your asset value
- Copy of Title Deed certified by Land Office dated within last 6 months. This is to prove current ownership. If there is more than 1 owner, the asset value will be divided by the number of owners.
- Proof of payment for the lease, to prove you have paid the full amount for the lease in advance and are not paying for it yearly.
These documents are required in order to prove you still own the property. Providing utility bills from PEA/PWA etc doesn’t count for anything. They will only accept the certified documents from the Land Office.
Clarification on Paperwork Required for LTR Wealthy Global Citizen Visa
To clarify some of the points above. In order to get a certified copy of the documents from the Land Office, you (or a representative) can request these from the Land Office directly. You need 3 papers. One will have the price you paid for the building, one for the price of the lease and then the title deed.
As we weren’t in Thailand, we hired a lawyer to do on our behalf. Prices varied between provinces and lawyers. Some wanted 20,000 baht per property! We paid 3,000 baht in Hua Hin and 5,000 in Samui. The actual cost at Land Office is around 500 baht so it depends if you want to keep your sanity and save time, or save money and do it yourself. We also had the misfortune of Land Office ‘losing’ some of our original documents. So it cost us an extra 10,000 baht for them to be ‘found’.
The BOI are not interested in the sales and purchase between yourself and the seller. They only want the official document from the Land Office. So if you underdeclared the value at the Land Office in order to reduce taxes, they will only take into account the value stated on the Land Office documents. No amount of proof of payments or separate agreements will change that.
In terms of proof of payments. All they want to see if proof of payment for the lease to show you’ve paid it in full. This can be from a Thai or foreign bank account. We didn’t have proof for all of our properties, since some were bought over 10 years ago. For those, we simply removed the lease value from our overall assets and they still counted the value of the building without providing any proof of payment.
How to Prove Ownership for Global Assets for LTR Visa Application
For proof of Global Asset ownership, please note that the $500,000 Thai investment can be counted towards this total. So you only need to prove an additional $500,000 of Global Assets to qualify. The website states you can provide;
- Latest investment portfolio
- Latest bank statement
- Title deed & land registry extract (for property)
For property, the title deed and land registry extract must be dated within the last 6 months. This can easily be done online for the UK at a cost of £7. They also asked us to provide a council tax bill dated within the past 6 months. As our properties are rented and the tenants pay the bills, we provided a copy of the service charge receipt, which was accepted.
For bank statements and investment portfolio, the website states only the latest is required. However, we provided 6 months to be on the safe side. Given how nit picky they were over all of the other documents, I struggle to believe they would accept only 1 month of bank statements/investment portfolio. We didn’t want to give them extra documents to ask for.
Proof of Insurance
For insurance, they want to see an insurance that;
- Must cover the entire duration of stay in Thailand for hospitalization and medical
treatment at least USD 50,000 with a remaining coverage period of at least 10
months. - Group health insurance policy must provide at least USD 50,000 per person.
- Life insurance without health insurance and travel insurance are not accepted.
We have a rolling medical insurance policy that covers us globally and we pay for annually which we have done for over 5 years. It covers up to $600k, so well above the required amount. However, they would not accept this as the last payment was made in January, meaning in their eyes it only had 8 months left to run (even though we proved payment every year for the past 5 years). The main issue was that the policy didn’t specify an end date.
In the end, we sent 12 months of bank statements and this was sufficient. I do find the insurance section a bit of an issue as usually policies are annual and depending on when you take them out it’s unlikely to coincide with your application. I believe there are many that take out a separate policy just to satisfy this visa, which is a bit crazy. But, whatever does the job!
Timeline for LTR Wealthy Global Citizen Visa Approval
The official timeline on the LTR website shows as follows;
I have applied a total of 3 times for the LTR Wealthy Global Citizen visa. The first was rejected as our assets at the time weren’t sufficient when split jointly.
The second, I applied for in October. As I couldn’t speak to anyone in BOI, I really couldn’t understand what they wanted in terms of documents from Land Office. As far as I knew, I had the documents as I sent them my copies of the sales and purchase agreement and land lease but this wasn’t enough. Eventually they put it to final reviewing stage and it sat there for months. I eventually went to One Bangkok on a visit to Thailand and they explained that they needed Land Office to stamp these papers to certify them.
You would think once I had the documents I could just upload them to this application. But no. As it was in final reviewing stage, I had to withdraw this application and start all over again.
So my successful application was started on 6th March, whilst sat at One Bangkok. All of my applications were dealt with by ‘Screen 7’. I assume each visa category is dealt with by a different ‘Screen’ or person as David’s dependent visa is dealt with by ‘Screen 1’. Generally speaking, it took between 24 – 48 hours after submitting a document for them to come back with a request for new information which wasn’t so bad. After a lot of back and forth, I submitted the final document on 8th April. The following day I was shocked to see an e-mail saying that the qualifications had been endorsed and I was finally approved for my LTR Global Wealthy Citizen Visa.
Receiving the LTR Global Wealthy Citizen Visa
By the time the endorsement came through, I was no longer in Thailand, but back in Japan and we don’t plan on going back to Thailand until August. However, the endorsement only lasts for 60 days, and there’s no way I want to go through the application again! So I wanted to get the E Visa.
To apply for a Thai e-visa, you must be physically in the country of the Embassy you want to issue the e-visa. In Japan, in order to apply, you must hold a resident card. Which at the time, we didn’t hold. No chance of us going back to the UK either.
Luckily, we were headed for a short break to Guam. The Embassy that deals with applications for Guam is the Thai Embassy in LA, so I wrote to them. Thankfully, they don’t need you to be a resident, you can apply as a tourist. All I had to do was submit a copy of my hotel booking whilst I was physically in Guam.
I submitted the application for E Visa with LA as the Embassy of issuance on 21st April and paid my fee of US$1,600. What I hadn’t realised is that the endorsement e-mail isn’t the final step. You need to log in and request an endorsement letter once you decide where you will get the e-visa issued.
So LA Embassy wrote back to me on 22nd and asked for the official letter, not just the screenshot of endorsement. Thankfully due to time difference, we didn’t really lose any time. I did the final step requesting the endorsement letter on the LTR website on 22nd and received it on 23rd. I submitted to the LA Embassy and finally received the E-Visa in my inbox when I woke up on 24th April!
Frustrations with the LTR Visa Application
What we found quite frustrating as a married couple applying is that each applicant must qualify in their own right. If you own assets jointly, everything is divided 50/50. This means you must have $1m invested in Thai property and $2m of global assets jointly in order to qualify. Which doesn’t seem quite so fair when someone can qualify alone and then apply for a dependent with 0 assets. Surely the couple with $900k of Thai assets and $1.9m of global assets is more sought after than a couple with $500k of Thai assets and $1m of global.
We also found that it was very difficult to get to speak to anyone about the application. As we originally applied from overseas we couldn’t just go down to One Bangkok to speak to anyone. Phone calls didn’t get answered, e-mails didn’t get replied to. If they asked for extra documents, you just got an e-mail saying what they wanted. You just couldn’t speak to anyone to discuss anything. This was very frustrating as at times, a simple 5 minute phone call or e-mail would have avoided a lot of wasted time gong back and forth.
When we did go to One Bangkok, the only person we could speak to was a ‘front person’. They kept going into the back to speak to the officer dealing with the application. But we couldn’t speak to the officer themselves. This just didn’t make sense.
When we did our first application, back around 2022, our experience was a lot different. We even got the Line contact of the officer dealing with the application. This was much more efficient as any questions were answered quickly.
Conclusion
It took a total of 7 weeks to get the LTR Global Wealthy Citizen visa issued. Part of that was Songkran, so we lost some time there, but also I spent a lot of that time going back and forth with new documents. It also took some time for the issuance because of where I was based for the issuance itself. Had I submitted all of the correct documents at the first step, and been able to apply for the visa issuance the day I got my endorsement letter, I’m sure it would have all been done in less than a month.
I think the LTR Global Wealthy Citizen Visa is a quicker visa to be issued if you have all of the correct documents in place. As there are a lot less applicants for this visa type, the time between document requests etc seems to be quicker. However, it does seem to be the hardest one to get approval on.
We are so happy to finally have the approval for the LTR visa. I truly believe this is the best visa to have if you want to stay long term in Thailand.
Our next hurdle will be transferring the visa across to new passports in a couple of years (which BOI have already e-mailed me about). But we’ll worry about that later!
I hope this blog helps anyone looking to apply for the LTR Wealthy Global Citizen Visa in Thailand. I couldn’t find a lot of real life experience when applying. If it’s helped you in any way, please feel free to leave a small donation below. Any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below or any other tips you may have to give to anyone else looking to apply would be greatly received.
Natalie & David x