Property in Thailand: How to Find Out What Will Be Built Next to Your Home

What You Need to Know in 30 Seconds

• Pattaya’s 2558 (2015) master plan is no longer in effect. It stopped applying around the turn of 2019–2020, when the EEC land-use plan came into force.
• Zoning today is set by the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) land-use plan, published in the Royal Gazette on December 9, 2019. By law, it is itself deemed to be the comprehensive city plan for the EEC provinces.
• The current EEC plan contains no FAR (floor area ratio), no OSR (open space ratio), and no height limits in meters. Regulation works instead through lists of permitted and prohibited land uses.
• Height limits near the sea are set not by the master plan but by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment’s 2563 (2020) conservation notification and Building Control Ministerial Regulation No. 8 from 1976.
• The new district plans for Banglamung and Sattahip are still drafts. Banglamung has been stuck at stage 4 of 8 since September 2024, and Sattahip at stage 3 of 8.
• No public map ties EEC zones to specific plots of land. So claims like “this plot is in the orange zone” are, today, simply made up.

Data verified on July 29, 2026.

What You’re Actually Buying Along With Your Condo or House

When you choose a condo or house in Thailand, you’re not just paying for square meters. You’re paying for the view from your window, for the quiet, and for the assurance that a twenty-story tower won’t rise on the empty lot across the street three years from now. That’s the most expensive part of the price — and the one part the seller doesn’t control.

There’s only one way to verify it: find out which document actually regulates development on that specific plot. And that’s where the problem starts. Almost every Russian-language article about “Pattaya’s master plan” is retelling a document that was repealed at the end of 2019. Yellow and orange zones, the FAR ratio, height limits — all of it comes from a paper that no longer applies.

Below: what applies today, who actually makes development decisions, what you can find out about your plot, and what simply can’t be known. With links to primary sources: the Royal Gazette (ราชกิจจานุเบกษา), the registries of the Association of Siamese Architects (ASA), and responses from the Department of Public Works and Town & Country Planning (DPT). Where there is no data, we say so plainly: no data.

Why Every Zoning Map You Find Online Is Out of Date

In 2018, Thailand passed the Eastern Special Development Zone Act (พ.ร.บ.เขตพัฒนาพิเศษภาคตะวันออก พ.ศ. 2561). It contains a provision that flips the usual logic on its head: the EEC land-use plan, once approved by the Cabinet, “ถือว่าเป็นผังเมืองรวมตามกฎหมายว่าด้วยการผังเมือง” — is deemed to be the comprehensive city plan under town planning law.

Any comprehensive plans previously in force within the EEC boundaries are — “เป็นอันยกเลิกไป” — repealed.

On December 9, 2019, the EEC land-use plan was published in the Royal Gazette (เล่ม 136 ตอนพิเศษ 301 ง, 200 pages). From that moment, Chonburi province’s provincial plan and five city plans ceased to apply — including the Pattaya 2558 (2015) master plan.

In the ASA registry, the Pattaya plan is marked “เป็นอันยกเลิก” — repealed.

A small but important detail. The ASA registry lists the repeal date as April 1, 2020, though legally it’s more accurate to count from the EEC plan’s entry into force on December 10, 2019. We won’t argue over the exact date — for a buyer, it’s enough to know: it stopped applying around the turn of 2019–2020.

A separate layer disappeared as well. From 2010 to 2013, the municipalities of Pattaya, Nong Prue, Nong Pla Lai, Na-Jomtien, and Huai Yai adopted temporary local ordinances (ข้อบัญญัติ) to replace the expired master plan. All of them automatically expired on April 2, 2015, when the 2558 plan took effect. No new ones have been adopted since.

Which Document Actually Governs Construction Today

This isn’t an “add-on to the master plan” or a competing document. It is the master plan — just operating across five jurisdictions at once: Chachoengsao, Chonburi, and Rayong, plus the parts of Bangkok and Samut Prakan that fall within the corridor.

Key parameters:

Worth remembering separately is a mechanism built into the plan itself (ข้อ 3): the EEC plan will cease to apply to a given area the moment the Ministry of Interior introduces a new comprehensive plan there. In Banglamung, that means the EEC plan will “expire” on the day the Banglamung district plan is adopted. When that will happen is unknown (see below).

Eleven Zone Types: Where Condos Are Allowed, and Where Only Houses Are

This is the most practical part of the document. Summarized below, covering only what’s relevant to housing:

The full text describing all zones is in the Royal Gazette publication.

No Floor Limits, No Density Caps: What’s Simply Missing From the Current Plan

We checked the full text of the plan line by line. The words that underpin any conversation about development density appear in it zero times:

• อัตราส่วน (ratio, including FAR) — 0 occurrences;
• ความสูง (height) — 0;
• ที่ว่าง (open space, OSR) — 0;
• อาคารชุด (condominium as a separate regulated category) — 0.

That means the current city planning document for Pattaya sets no numerical density parameter whatsoever. No “FAR 5:1,” no “OSR at least 6%,” no “no taller than 23 meters.”

So how is building height controlled at all? Indirectly — through two terms from building control legislation:

• อาคารสูง — “high-rise building,” 23 meters and above (under Ministerial Regulation No. 33 of 1992);
• อาคารขนาดใหญ่พิเศษ — “extra-large building,” 10,000 m² of total floor area and above.

In some zones, these categories are simply prohibited. For example, high-rise buildings can’t exist in the rural community zone (ชบ.) or the agricultural support zone (สก.) — not because of a “22.9 m limit,” but because the land use “high-rise building” never made it onto the list of permitted activities.

The practical takeaway for buyers: any FAR figures a developer shows you in a presentation, citing “Pattaya’s master plan,” refer either to the repealed 2015 document or to a draft that hasn’t been adopted. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re lying on purpose — more often they’re just copying old reference material.

What Actually Stops a Tower Going Up Outside Your Window

Three layers, and the master plan isn’t one of them.

Layer 1: The 2563 (2020) Conservation Notification

The ประกาศกระทรวงทรัพยากรธรรมชาติและสิ่งแวดล้อม (Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment notification) for Banglamung and Sattahip districts, Royal Gazette เล่ม 137 ตอนพิเศษ 170 ง dated July 24, 2020. It covers both districts in full — including Jomtien, Na-Jomtien, and Bang Saray.

• The first 20 meters from the shoreline: construction and renovation are completely prohibited.
• Up to 100 meters inland from mean sea level: buildings no taller than 14 meters, open space at least 75% of the plot, and greenery at least 50% of that open space.
• Koh Larn, Koh Krok, and Koh Sak: no taller than 9 meters.
• Slopes over 35%: development is prohibited; slopes of 20–35%: only detached houses up to 12 meters, with a strict cap on building footprint.
• Condominiums and hotels within 50 meters of the shore require a full Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) regardless of size.

A detailed breakdown is in a separate article in this series: “The 14-Meter Rule: Why Nothing Near the Sea Gets Built Taller.”

⚠️ A caveat we’re obligated to flag. The notification’s term, set out in ข้อ 21, expired on July 24, 2025. The ASA registry (updated November 20, 2025) records an extension through July 24, 2027. But as of July 29, 2026, the ONEP page — the primary source — shows only the 2563 edition with no mention of an extension, and we couldn’t find the extension act itself. The notification’s status needs to be re-verified as of the date of any specific transaction.

Layer 2: Ministerial Regulation No. 8 of 1976

กฎกระทรวง ฉบับที่ 8 (พ.ศ. 2519), as amended by No. 9 (1978), Royal Gazette เล่ม 93 ตอนที่ 87, dated June 29, 1976. It applies to the tambons of Banglamung, Nong Pla Lai, Naklua, and Nong Prue.

Within a 200-meter strip from the seaward edge of the controlled zone, buildings taller than 14 meters above road level are, among other things, prohibited. Plus a setback of at least 8 meters from Highway 3135 and open space of at least 75% of the plot.

This half-century-old document, not the EEC plan and not the 2015 master plan, is exactly where Pattaya’s famous “14 meters and 75% open space” formula comes from.

Layer 3: Nationwide Building Control Regulations

Ministerial Regulations No. 33, No. 55, and others: fire safety requirements, elevators, setbacks, sunlight access. These apply everywhere, always, regardless of zoning.

The Myth Behind Many Land Sales: “This Is a Yellow Zone”

This myth persists because it used to be true. The 2558 master plan really did have color-coded categories with numerical standards:

All of this is now historical reference only. The document has been repealed.

The same document also spelled out rules by building type — also useful to know as historical background, because these are the rules that shaped the city you see today:

Incidentally, the 2558 plan barely had any height limits in meters at all: the word ความสูง appears in it exactly three times, all three in clause 20, about reserved road corridors, where buildings are capped at 9 meters. In other words, even during the “master plan era,” it wasn’t the master plan that set height limits near the sea.

There’s a second inaccuracy that even Thai sources repeat: the letter codes ย.1–ย.9 / พ.1 / ก.1 don’t appear in the 2558 legal text at all. There, zones are labeled only as “ที่ดินในบริเวณหมายเลข X.Y” — “land in area number such-and-such.” The ย./พ./ก. coding is an external DPT working convention, not part of the statutory text.

And third: zoning maps for the current EEC plan, tied to specific plots, aren’t publicly available — the Royal Gazette PDF contains only text descriptions of boundaries. We couldn’t find any public GIS layer where you could look up “my plot = zone ม.24.”

That’s why we don’t say “Jomtien is an orange zone,” and we’d advise against trusting anyone who does. The only correct way to find out the legal status of a specific plot is to file a request with the local DPT office or municipality, citing the cadastral (Chanote) number.

Why the Development Rules Could Change Tomorrow

Under Article 32 of the EEC Act, the DPT is required to draft 30 new district plans: 11 for Chonburi, 11 for Chachoengsao, and 8 for Rayong. As of September 2024, according to EECO’s quarterly reporting, not one of them had been published in the Royal Gazette — meaning none had reached the final, eighth stage of the process. After the reports for fiscal year 2567, EECO stopped publishing its progress table, and there’s no data for 2025–2026.

Where do our two plans stand:

What the Banglamung Draft Proposes

The public display document (draft dated June 22 – July 6, 2022, public hearing held July 8, 2022 at The Siamese Pattaya hotel, objections accepted through July 25) covers all eight tambons of the district: Takhian Tia, Banglamung, Khao Mai Kaeo, Naklua, Nong Pla Lai, Pong, Nong Prue, and Huai Yai. Total area is 1,319.11 km², with land plus islands at 528.16 km². Pattaya is included in the plan as a special administrative unit; no separate plan is being prepared just for Pattaya.

The draft brings back numerical standards that the EEC plan lacks — but with a different toolkit: FAR stays, while OSR is replaced with BCR (maximum building coverage ratio) plus a permeable-surface requirement.

Additionally, the draft includes:

• absolute height limits — 12 meters in zone ก.1 and 9 meters in several environmental and agricultural categories;
• BCR and permeability requirements don’t apply to detached houses on plots under 35 square wa that were subdivided before the plan takes effect;
• area thresholds: in ย.1, hotels and any single building larger than 2,000 m² are prohibited; in ย.3, the threshold is 500 m² in places; in ย.5, up to 10,000 m² is allowed with road frontage of 16 m;
• 16 zone types in total, including a new category, อท. — environmental protection for tourism and marine resources.

How this compares to the repealed 2558 plan. The draft raises FAR in almost every residential category (commercial goes from 7:1 to 7–8:1), but introduces a strict BCR that didn’t exist before. In other words, buildings will be able to go higher and bulkier, but the building footprint on each plot shrinks, and part of the yard must stay permeable. For a city with chronic flooding problems, the logic is clear.

The Sattahip draft is different. From DPT’s response, we know one standard: in the medium-density zone ย.3, it proposes a FAR of no more than 3.5:1, versus 4:1 in Banglamung. That means, if both plans are adopted as currently drafted, Na-Jomtien and Bang Saray will be legally less dense than Pattaya.

Why the Draft Has Been Stalled Since 2024

Adopting a district plan in Thailand goes through eight stages: data collection and analysis, concept development, public display and hearings, review by the City Planning Committee, revision, approvals, final adoption, and, finally, publication in the Royal Gazette. A plan is only considered in force after the eighth step.

Banglamung went through hearings in July 2022 and reached the City Planning Committee by the fall of 2024 — two years for one step. There’s no public data beyond that: as of July 29, 2026, the ASA registry has no entry for Banglamung, DPT’s live public-display registry lists neither Banglamung nor Sattahip, and Chonburi’s provincial DPT office has published news over the past two years only about Koh Chang and Koh Sichang.

But these are still drafts. For a sense of pace: the ชุมชนวังจันทร์ plan in Rayong province, which in 2024 was a stage ahead of Banglamung, only reached the Cabinet of Ministers on June 30, 2026 — roughly 22 months for one or two steps of the process. We don’t know when our plans will be adopted, and right now, nobody does.

Who Actually Signs Off on a Building Permit

“Who decides what gets built nearby” isn’t a rhetorical question. It has a concrete answer in the form of a list of authorities, and it’s worth understanding who’s responsible for what.

Notice: the developer isn’t on this list. It operates within the framework these five authorities set. So it’s their documents you should check — not the sales presentation.

A Short Timeline: How the Rules Have Changed

Some Areas Never Had a Master Plan at All

The repealed 2558 plan covered only 6 tambons: Nong Pla Lai, Naklua, Pong, Nong Prue, Huai Yai (Banglamung district), and Na-Jomtien (Sattahip district).

For Sattahip, DPT stated plainly that the area “ยังไม่เคยมีการวางผังเมืองมาก่อน” — a comprehensive plan has never existed here. The 2020 draft is framed as “วางและจัดทำ,” creating a plan from scratch, rather than “ปรับปรุง,” updating one.

This explains a lot about the character of development in Bang Saray: decades of growth outside any city plan, with the only binding layer being the coastal conservation notification. That’s the source of its low-rise character and “uncrowded” feel. And it’s also the source of uncertainty: adopting the Sattahip plan will be the first zoning this area has ever had, and it could either permit or restrict what is currently, formally, unregulated.

What This Means for Buyers

1. No one can guarantee your view for the next 10 years — but a lot can be checked. The current EEC plan sets no numerical limits, but the coastal rules on height and slope do, and they’re specific. If your house on Pratumnak sits on a slope steeper than 35%, a neighboring plot with the same slope can’t be developed at all. That’s not a developer’s promise — it’s a legal rule.

2. In 2026, the phrase “the master plan only allows low-rise here” is a red flag. Not because the seller is lying, but because they’re relying on a repealed document. Ask for a reference to a currently valid regulation.

3. The next two years are a period of legal uncertainty. The Banglamung and Sattahip district plans haven’t been adopted, and their adoption will change the rules of the game: FAR and BCR, which don’t exist today, will appear. For the owner of a finished house, that’s relatively neutral (grandfathering applies); for a buyer of land to develop, it’s a significant factor.

4. Check the plot, not the district. Administratively, Jomtien and Pratumnak aren’t tambons at all — they’re informal place names: Jomtien is split between Nong Prue and Na-Jomtien, and Pratumnak lies entirely within Nong Prue. The legal regime is determined by the specific Chanote title, not by a name on a map.

5. Grandfathering applies, but not indefinitely. Under clauses 17–19 of the conservation notification, permits already issued may be completed and existing buildings aren’t subject to the new rules — but they can’t be rebuilt or have their use changed to something now prohibited. If you’re buying an old seaside house planning to tear it down and rebuild, factor this in beforehand.

Five Questions Worth Asking the Seller

Not to catch anyone in a lie, but to gauge how well they actually know the subject.

1. “What document is the claim about permitted nearby development based on?” The right answer: a certificate from DPT or the municipality for the specific plot. The wrong answer: “the master plan.”
2. “How many meters is it from the building to the shoreline?” The answer should be in meters, not minutes on foot. It determines which of the 20, 50, and 100-meter thresholds apply.
3. “What’s the slope of the plot?” For hilly locations, ask for a topographic survey. 34% and 36% are fundamentally different stories.
4. “Did the project undergo an EIA or IEE, and is there a report?” For coastal condominiums and hotels, this is not a formality.
5. “What’s the status of the district plan?” If the answer is “it’s already been adopted” — they don’t know the subject: neither Banglamung nor Sattahip has adopted its plan.

How We Use This in Practice

Before every land or house transaction, we check:

• the distance of the building footprint from the shoreline and from mean sea level;
• the plot’s slope — from a topographic survey, not a guess;
• whether the project requires an IEE or a full EIA;
• whether there’s a valid building permit and whether what’s built matches the approved design;
• for neighboring plots — what’s formally allowed there today.

If you’re planning to buy a specific property, reach out to us, and we’ll compile this kind of report for your plot as part of our “Property and Document Check” service. To see what’s already built or under construction in an area you’re interested in, browse our residential project catalog; to see the terrain and building density from above, check our drone footage section.

More Articles in This Series

• Beachfront Condos in Thailand: How to Know Your View Won’t Be Built Over
• Investing in Thailand: Is Buying a Condo for Regional Growth Worth It
• U-Tapao Airport: When It Will Open and Whether to Buy Property in South Pattaya
• The Pattaya High-Speed Rail: Is It Worth Paying More for Housing Near a Station
• Buying a House in Huai Yai, Thailand: What’s Known About the New City Near Pattaya
• Pattaya’s Districts: Where to Live and What to Buy — a Guide to Eight Locations
• How to Buy Property in Thailand: a 12-Point Checklist

Sources

1. Eastern Special Development Zone Act, พ.ร.บ.เขตพัฒนาพิเศษภาคตะวันออก พ.ศ. 2561.
2. ประกาศ กพอ. แผนผังการใช้ประโยชน์ในที่ดิน EEC พ.ศ. 2562 — Royal Gazette เล่ม 136 ตอนพิเศษ 301 ง, December 9, 2019. PDF · ASA mirror
3. Amendment No. 2, Royal Gazette, December 30, 2020. PDF
4. กฎกระทรวงให้ใช้บังคับผังเมืองรวมเมืองพัทยา พ.ศ. 2558 — เล่ม 132 ตอนที่ 26 ก, April 2, 2015. PDF
5. ASA registry of comprehensive plans (status “เป็นอันยกเลิก”). asa.or.th/mr-cp
6. ประกาศ ทส. บางละมุง–สัตหีบ พ.ศ. 2563 — เล่ม 137 ตอนพิเศษ 170 ง, July 24, 2020. PDF
7. กฎกระทรวง ฉบับที่ 8 (พ.ศ. 2519) — เล่ม 93 ตอนที่ 87, June 29, 1976. PDF
8. DPT response on the status of the Sattahip plan, August 26, 2025. info.dpt.go.th
9. EECO quarterly reports. eeco.or.th
10. ASA registry of environmental protection zones. asa.or.th/ma-epz
11. ONEP, Banglamung–Sattahip protected zone page. epa.onep.go.th
12. ผังเมืองรวมเมืองบางละมุง draft, 2022 public display version. Project website

This material is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Document status was verified on July 29, 2026; before any transaction, we recommend re-verifying current status through a qualified Thai lawyer.

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