Can a Foreigner Own a House in Cambodia? What You Can and Cannot Hold in 2026

Can a Foreigner Own a House in Cambodia? What You Can and Cannot Hold in 2026

A foreigner cannot own a house in Cambodia, and cannot own the land it sits on. What a foreigner can own outright is a condominium unit on the first floor or above in a registered co-owned building. That distinction, between a unit in the air and anything touching the ground, is the entire foreign-ownership framework in Cambodia, and getting it wrong is how people lose money here.

The land restriction is constitutional. Article 44 of Cambodia's 1993 Constitution reserves land ownership for natural persons or legal entities of Khmer nationality. The Land Law of 2001 carries that through into the property system. No lease, no clever contract, and no friendly notary changes the basic rule: land belongs to Cambodians. A villa, a townhouse, a shophouse, or any ground-floor property is treated as part of the land, so a foreigner cannot hold freehold title to it.

What the 2010 law actually opened up

The door that did open is strata title. The Law on Providing Ownership Rights of Private Units in Co-Owned Buildings to Foreigners, passed in 2010, lets foreign nationals buy and fully own private units in co-owned buildings, the structures most people call condominiums. This is real freehold ownership of the unit, registered in the foreigner's own name on a hard title, not a lease and not a nominee arrangement.

Two limits define it. First, the unit must be on the first floor or above. The ground floor is considered part of the land and stays off-limits to foreign buyers. Second, there is a building-level cap: foreigners as a group may own no more than 70 percent of the total usable floor area of any single co-owned building. The remaining 30 percent must stay in Cambodian hands. This 70 percent ceiling is enforced at registration, so before you commit, you need written confirmation from the developer or the co-owners' association that foreign allocation is still available in that specific building.

The strata system itself rests on the co-ownership provisions of Cambodia's Civil Code, which created the legal machinery for dividing a building into individually owned units with shared common areas. Only buildings that are properly registered with strata title can sell to foreigners under the 2010 law, which is why the legal status of the building matters as much as the unit you are buying.

If you want land or a house, here are the legal structures

Wanting a house with a garden in Cambodia is not impossible, but it requires a structure, and each has trade-offs.

The long-term lease is the cleanest. A foreigner can lease land for up to 50 years, renewable, and register that lease. You control and use the property, you can build on it, but you do not own the land. The lease is a contractual right, so the quality of the lease document and the reliability of the landowner are everything.

The Cambodian land-holding company is the route used for larger projects. A company that is at least 51 percent Cambodian-owned can hold land, with the foreign investor taking up to 49 percent of the shares. This is legitimate when the Cambodian shareholding is genuine, but it depends on trusting your local partners and on a shareholder structure that protects the foreign minority. It is not a vehicle to enter casually.