When I first came here and looked into it I was told i couldnt own land. But i just heard somethign different mentioning getting permanent residence if you have over a certain amount in property. Now im confused.
Can a foreigner resident or permanent resident own land? I am probably going to go for my permie rez. status one of these days, if it makes any difference i will get it done now.
Not a house, i mean the actual dirt it sits on, at least as much as any Taiwanese could.
You may want to start your research here: fao.org/legal/prs-ol/lpo6.pdf ā> page 9 
More details here:
tcjs-land.gov.tw/chlas/chlal ā¦ 850241.pdf
land.moi.gov.tw/onlinebill/608-n1.pdf
Some related amusement:
forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopi ā¦ 80&t=13231
This topic has already been discussed extensively here. You can search my past posts to find related threads. The short answer is yes, a foreigner can own residential land (yes, the land itself, and buildings on the land) if his or her home country allows Taiwanese to own land (itās reciprocity based). When you buy a condo or house on residential land, you will get separate deeds for the building and the land. You donāt need any special visa or residency status to own land here as far as I know.
The above is true only for land zoned as āresidentialā land. Other types of land (farm land, forestry land etc.) have restrictions on, or are prohibited from, foreign ownership. Again, do a search and you will find more detailed discussion.
For foreigners wishing to buy residential land, the biggest obstacle (unless they are able to pay in cash) is usually finding a bank willing to give a foreigner a mortgage loan. This obstacle can be overcome by finding a qualified guarantor. Some people have also succeeded in getting mortgages without a guarantor, but it is difficult. Having an APRC will help to persuade a bank to consider your application, as will having a record of steady salary income paid through a local bank. This has also been discussed extensively already on this board. Hope this gives you some preliminary help.
Just bringing this thread back to life for another question.
If I am not a resident of Taiwan currently, can I still buy a property there? Canada is a reciprocal country with Taiwan for owing property.
I have read some articles online that say I need a resident ARC. There seems to be some alluding to this fact that an ARC is needed unless I am reading it wrong.
What I am looking to do is conduct the purchase in Taiwan, go back to Canada to close up affairs, and then at some point later move to Taiwan.
Does anyone know if an ARC is really required?
Iāve had a quick search for such posts/threads, but not found anything yet. Can anyone help?
Iām looking for info on what types of land an APRC holding waiguo is currently allowed to buy.
I presume these laws are set at the national / goverment level, and not at county level?
What types of land are there? Iām currently aware of:
jian-di (residential)
nong-di (farmland)
lin something something (forestry land)
??? (aboriginal land)
??? (mountain land)
APRC holders still only allowed to buy jian-di (according to our local Land Office). Govāt policy.
Hmh, I thought Iād written a post about this before, but I canāt seem to find it.
I think that your local land office is correctly stating the āgeneralā government policy on this matter, although the actual legalities appear to be more complex in one category: farmland.
The kinds of land that are off-limits to purchase by foreigners are listed in article 17 the Land Act (an online translation is available at: law.moj.gov.tw/Eng/LawClass/LawA ā¦ e=D0060001 ).
Farmland used to be on this āforbidden listā, but was removed from the list in a 2001 amendment, suggesting that under some circumstances foreigners may now be able to buy farmland. This appears to be something of a gray area though, because Article 19 lists the specific purposes for which foreigners may buy land, and farming is not among them. Article 19(8) does, however provide an open-ended category under which it might theoretically be possible to purchase farmland: ā(8) Investments helping important construction in the country, the economy as a whole, and agriculture and pasture, which have been approved by the central authority in charge of the business.ā
So for example, a foreigner who wanted to pursue, say, new developments in organic farming that would be beneficial for Taiwan might have a chance of applying for approval to purchase farmland for that purpose.
Note that Article 19 also gives local governments the power to restrict the area (size) and location of land that may be purchased by foreigners.
The above is just based on my cursory reading of the law. I havenāt actually done any further research into this yet, although Iām also very interested in the issue of whether and how foreigners can buy farmland, as some day in the future thereās a good chance Iād like to do that myself.
canāt say about farmland, but aboriginal land even Huaren cannot buy here. or at least cannot have their names on titles, they can lease it.
do you happen to know the chinese words for āresidentialā house in chinese? I am no longer going to pursue āfarmlandā as i hope to get an APRC and be independent from my wife. So now, even though we already bought farmland in her name, i am looking to buy my own land with a house but have it actually residential. meaning a house with a big yard, not a farm with a small house. realtors here i trust less than pretty much anyone on the island, so looking to get actual proper chinese characters, learn them proper and go in with guns loaded.
Also, because i always play devils advocate on everything, i am looking at the land act translation linked above and i see potential grey areas:
I can see this technically meaning a well if someone isnt paid off. Would a well be considered a source of water? there is no piped water in the areas i live.
my place will be considered all of these technically. call ti āhippy farmingā and i will live there, but i also turn a good profit. my worry of course is dealing with the smaller/local government bodies, they are fucking corrupt as shit here and i dislike even talking with them despite them liking me thus far. i know once they find out how much i make, which they will when i am going through my new APRC process, they might start getting old school Chinese style on me. i cant afford to āgive upā another piece of land hereā¦
and lastly, to be frank, how is Taiwan going to fuck foreigners buying homes with land? I hate sounding so cynical, but its not if its how we will get fucked, and i just want to try and reduce my retarded fees and taxes, to put it nicely, as best i can. in the end i want absolute security and feeling of freedom on the land so i can build and live and be happy not worry that Iām going to get fucked everyday, which has unfortunately been my experience in Taiwan thus farā¦I am at the point that I want to live problem free and not have anyone screwing with me anymore, my patience for bullshit is now zero.
The term in Article 19(1) of the Land Act is ä½å® zhuzhai (āresidenceā). But the thing that is more relevant to your concerns I think is the type of land that is open to relatively unrestricted purchase by foreigners, which is å»ŗå° jian di (āland zoned for constructionā).
The term in Article 17(6) translated as āsources of waterā is āę°“ęŗå°.ā This refers to land that is specifically zoned as a watershed area. For example, land that feeds into an important reservoir. Having a well or spring on some other kind of land, such as land zoned as residential land or farmland, would not fall in this category, so no worries there.
As a foreigner, the only land that you will easily be able to buy in your own name is å»ŗå° jiandi (there are some minor restrictions and formalities addressed in earlier posts but they are easily overcome for most people, provided you have the cash to buy or a bank willing to give you a loan). It may be possible for a foreigner to buy farmland č¾²å° nongdi in his or her own name if he can persuade the government that he is doing a service to society (my speculative example: by introducing new agricultural technology that Taiwan needs). This is based on a proviso in the law that Iāve written about in an earlier post somewhere. But I think it would be extremely challenging for a typical person to try to get approval for this. As a foreigner, you are also allowed to inherit farmland, but you must then transfer it out of your name within a certain period of time after inheritance.
Because your concerns are also related to concerns for your security and fairness as a married spouse, there are a couple of things you should keep in mind. First, even though the farmland is not in your name, if you were to divorce, you would be entitled to one-half of all the assets you and your spouse acquired during marriage, including the value of the farmland. Likewise, even if you acquire residential land wholly in your own name while you are married, that residential land would be included in the marital assets, and your wife would be entitled to half, even though itās not in her name. Of course, as long as both of you agree, you could split the assets however you like. For example, you keep the residential land and she keep the farmland. (Though not vice versa - because you would still have the hurdle of getting the farmland into your name. You could claim half the value of the farmland, but not actually claim for the farmland to be transferred into your name.)
Also, as an aside, when you buy real estate in Taiwan, you buy both the land and the structure on it and you get a separate deed to each. The restrictions in Article 19 of the Land Act are in reference to the types of land generally off limit to foreigners. The restrictions in Article 17 are on the purposes for which a foreigner can buy land. Notice that āfarmlandā is no longer specifically included in the restrictions of Article 19, but āfarmingā also is not specifically included as a permitted purpose in Article 17, though it might be allowed as an exception under the circumstances of Article 17(8). This is what I was referring to above ā a grey area under which foreigners might be able to obtain special permission to buy farmland. I donāt know of any actual precedents for this though.
well thanks a lot for tat, clears some things up for me. In fact there is some marital stuff going on as you suggested so i wont be buying land until i have APRC and all legal āpapersā are done with. Fun stuff this is.
å»ŗå° jiandi, will remember that one. SO this is what is needed. I plan to farm, but that doesnt need to be said to anyone, when someone owns a house large garden is easily doneā¦but i need the house on the said property to be legal (haha) and also I need to be legally allowed to won it and the land. I actually hadnāt heard of the deed for the house and the land being separateā¦interesting!
financially i know bank people and i have money anyway, so financing for said land will not be in anyway an issue, i am just VERY***** worried about corruption, lies and cheating, which has been my experience here 100% of the time so far. so the plan of attack s first get all the residency and marriage BS settled, and in the meantime i am hitting the books trying to learn chinese, then i try and find a lawyer who wont F meā¦which seems harder than learning Chineseā¦ but with this information i will hit the ground running and i can test the law help ahead of time before sinking in any real money, again.
Now one last question. the last farm we acquired i did go into the land office and got pointed to various other places and ultimately we were asking about ground water and river resources with the land. no one knew anything about it and the best answer we ever got was āask the people who dig the wellsā, so I am still slightly skeptical about the āwater sourceā thing.
this is the problem, people here are so damn good at deflecting questions and avoiding any possible sense of responsibility its infuriating to the point of insanity. no one wants to answer a question, never mind give an official document so they can deny everything in the future if there is a problem. I used to laugh and love this about Taiwan, but now after loosing lots of money to, and having many other problems with, this it has become substantially less funny and accountability is almost a prerequisite for me being willing to sink money into anything here ever again. I know thatās laughable to most 
Darn, I just wrote a long reply to this but wasnāt logged in and lost it. Iāll try to summarize it as Iām short on time at the moment:
The āwater sourceā thing mentioned in the Land Act as off-limits to foreigners refers to areas of land that are zoned as watershed areas, not to ordinary water sources for residential land or wells or other running water for farmland. I suppose that there might be an extremely slight risk of non-watershed land being rezoned as such, and that raises the interesting question of the legal position of a foreigner who owned such land before the rezoning. But the likelihood of typical residential land or farmland being rezoned as watershed land is very small, and such rezoning would apply to large areas, not individual properties. Even if land you owned were rezoned or expropriated, you would still have legal rights to some kind of compensation or remedy if you suffered loss as a result.
So I donāt think there is any significant concern for you in this regard. Just having or digging a well on your property will not make it legally become āwatershed landā. But there are no doubt other kinds of legal restrictions regarding digging wells and the like, so you would need to investigate that if you planned to dig a well or tap into some other water source rather than simply paying for ordinary running water from the water company.
Does anyone happen to know if hillside (mountain) land can be own by foreigners at all?
Maybe point me to an info on the government website?
Thank you
No link for you, but AFAIK foreigners canāt own mountain land, we were told as much by the Hualien Land Office.
Go and ask the Yilan Land Office - it should say the same.
Thank you
How do I provide proof of reciprocity to the authorities when buying property? Who even is the relevant authority? What kind of document should I provide?
You donāt. @QuaSaShao provided the list of recognised reciprocal countries. Theyāll know from your passport nationality.
Mine isnāt on the list. At the top of the document it says.
Nationals from the countries listed below desirous of acquiring land in Taiwan, ROC, may be exempted from providing reciprocal documents.
I know my country allows legal foreign residents to buy property but itās not on the list.
Hell, even N. Dakota is not on the list!
And British Guernsey Islands, Luxembourg? Got to be kidding me!