Buying in Bali?

Important things you need to know before you do!

Bali has and is still enjoying healthy steady property price rises and Returns on Investment (ROI) despite some minor hiccups to-date and is still considered a good lifestyle investment location within a few hours flight from most major hubs in Asia. Whatever problems it has had in the past, Bali just bounces back, bigger, better and more expensive than ever. As more people discover the charm and pleasure of Bali as a holiday destination the numbers interested in purchasing a piece of paradise have been steadily increasing year on year, fuelling the demand for more and more private villas and resorts.

Having lived and worked in Bali for the past 10 years as a property consultant and project manager, I have watched property prices sour as well as a growing number of frustrated buyers wanting to own property in Bali, with limited means of finding unbiased and useful information before they purchase.

There are plenty of villas to choose from in Bali but can you be assured which are safe and secure investments?

Put in any kind of search for Bali Property over the internet and the number of pages returned is staggering, everybody and anybody is selling and promising you your next dream villa, so how do you know what’s good advice? How can you trust advice you receive on the back of salespeople wanting to sell you their development or villa? What is your legal position if things go wrong? Unfortunately in Bali, you don’t have one, as foreigners cannot legally own freehold property, there are a number of ways to get around this but it needs to be water tight, using a reputable lawyer. In some cases ownership has been successfully contested as the paperwork was incomplete or misunderstood.

In my line of work I would talk to people actively looking for property in Bali on a daily basis and the constant complaint was the same, it was both difficult and time consuming to find the depth and selection of information they needed in one place. I thought about this for a while reviewing what was currently available about real estate in Bali from a buyer’s perspective and found they were right, nothing gave unbiased advice whilst showing a large enough selection of available properties.

The good news is that land and property prices have risen by almost 30% in some locations over the past 3-4 years, the bad news is that there are far more ‘developers’ coming out of the woodwork and jumping on the bandwagon in the hope of making a fast buck. Indonesian land owners, seeing the money to be made are also becoming savvy and demanding their piece of the pie, pushing land and property prices even higher, so where does that leave buyers?