At some point a long stay makes renting look absurd. A used scooter costs less than two months of hire, and a car that would be worthless at home has a long, useful life on Thai roads. Buying is the obvious move — and then the paperwork starts.
This section is for people staying long enough to need it. Begin with whether buying is actually the right call, then the practical guides to buying a used motorbike or a used car, with the inspection checklists that stop you paying for someone else's crash repair.
The paperwork half matters more than the mechanical half. The registration book — green for a motorbike, blue for a car, whatever the expat forums call it — is the document that proves a vehicle is yours, and whether a foreigner can be the registered owner depends on documents you may not have yet. Get that order wrong and you end up with a vehicle in someone else's name, which is a common arrangement and a genuinely risky one.
After that it is upkeep: road tax, compulsory insurance, the annual inspection — and eventually selling it again when you leave.
