Buying land in Bali: what a foreigner can hold and what to check on the plot

The short answer

A foreigner cannot hold Bali land as freehold, Hak Milik or SHM: the Agrarian Law reserves it for Indonesian citizens, and Article 26, paragraph 2, voids any deal built to move it into foreign hands regardless. What is actually open to a foreign buyer is one of three routes: a long notarized lease of the land itself, leasehold, the market default for a plot bought to build a home on; Hak Pakai in your own name if you live in Indonesia on residency documents and the property clears a minimum price test; or Hak Guna Bangunan, HGB, held by an Indonesian company, typically a foreign owned PT PMA. A "friend holds the certificate" arrangement is not a fourth route: it is void under the same law that closes freehold.

One nuance specific to bare land: the Hak Pakai regime that lets a resident foreigner hold a title personally is built around a residential dwelling, a house or an apartment, with a minimum price and a plot-size cap sized to that use (Government Regulation 18 of 2021, Articles 71 to 73). For a plot bought as land alone, with no structure on it, that is not automatically the same product, and it is the first thing to confirm with a notary before assuming Hak Pakai applies. A leasehold of the land, or HGB through a PT PMA, is the more common default for land bought to build on.

The title on the land you are shown

Every plot offered to you carries one of four labels.

• SHM (Sertifikat Hak Milik): full ownership, closed to a foreigner and to an ordinary company alike.
• HGB (Hak Guna Bangunan): the right to build and hold a building on someone else's land, open to an Indonesian company such as a PT PMA.
• Hak Pakai: the right to use land, the one land title a resident foreigner can hold personally, under the residential test above.
• Girik, pipil, kekitir, Letter C: pre 1961 village tax records, not a registered right. The land still has to go through first registration, boundaries measured and a public objection period run, before it becomes an SHM, HGB or Hak Pakai certificate.

A girik plot is common in Bali, and it is not automatically a bad plot, but it is a different transaction: you are either financing the registration or waiting through it, not just buying land. Our land titles article walks through each of the four in full, with the law behind each one.

Zoning and the status of farmland

A land right answers what can be owned. What can be built on it is a separate question, and for a plot it is often the harder one. KKPR, the document confirming a land use fits the spatial plan, sits before any building permit: a Konfirmasi KKPR where a detailed plan already covers the area, a Persetujuan KKPR where it does not (Government Regulation 21 of 2021, Article 1). The public spatial maps, GISTARU and RDTR Interaktif, show free of charge what a specific zone permits, and are worth checking before a deposit, not after.

Rice fields and other agricultural land carry an added restriction. Since 2 December 2025, Governor's Instruction 5 of 2025 has barred regents from approving the conversion of protected agricultural land, LP2B and LBS category paddy fields included, to non-agricultural use; Bali's regional regulation, Perda 4/2026, enacted in February 2026, wrote the same conversion control into a binding regulation and added a provincial ban on nominee land holding. Rice fields already shrank from 70,996 hectares in 2019 to 64,474 in 2024, per Ministry of ATR/BPN baseline data, so a plot sold on "rice field view forever, buildable later" is a harder promise to keep today than it was two years ago.

Sea view carries its own line. The coastal building setback runs at least 100 metres inland from the highest tide line under Presidential Regulation 51 of 2016, and the exact line for a specific stretch of coast is fixed by that regency's own spatial plan on top of the national floor.

What to check on the ground

Two checks come before price is even discussed. The government's own BHUMI parcel map shows, free of charge, whether a parcel is registered, its boundaries and its right type, though never the owner's name; the formal check against the land book runs through the land deed official, PPAT, before any deed is signed. Neither check substitutes for the other.

A landlocked plot is a real Bali problem, not a rare one. Book II of the Indonesian Civil Code (Articles 667 to 674 and following) gives a plot with no outlet to a public road the right to cross a neighbour's land against fair compensation, pengabdian pekarangan, but that is a right you assert, in writing or in court, not a guarantee that access already exists. Documented, written access to the plot, matched against what is actually walkable or driveable on site, is a check we run before the title check, not after it.

• Water: a working PDAM connection, or a private well and a recent water test, not a promise on the listing.
• Drainage and flood history for that specific plot after heavy rain, not the area's general reputation.
• Slope and, near a cliff or a riverbank, ground stability.
• Boundary markers on site matched against the BHUMI map and the surat ukur, not the fence a neighbour happens to have built.

Leasing the land itself

A land lease runs on the same legal basis as a leasehold villa: a notarial deed rooted in the Civil Code and the Agrarian Law's right of lease, Hak Sewa. The landowner keeps the title; you get a contractual right to hold and, if the deed says so, build on and use the land for the term. The market norm is 25 to 30 years, with extension options written into the deed, and nothing about the extension is automatic: it is worth exactly what the deed says, no more.

Land bought to build a house on needs one clause a finished-villa lease does not: an explicit right to put up a building, and separately, what happens to that building when the term ends. Indonesian land law treats land and buildings as separate things, and our leasehold expiry article covers the default when a deed stays silent on that point: the structures pass to the landowner with no compensation.

The transaction

1. 01

   Verify before you commit

   BHUMI parcel map, a PPAT certificate check, KKPR and the zoning maps, all matched against the actual plot on the ground.

2. 02

   The deed

   A notarized lease for leasehold, or a transfer deed made by the PPAT for an SHM-to-HGB or SHM-to-Hak-Pakai conveyance. Only that deed, not a preliminary agreement, carries legal weight.

3. 03

   Registration

   For a title deal the PPAT submits the deed to the land office within 7 working days. A lease is a contract and is never registered there.

4. 04

   Taxes

   A title purchase carries the buyer's 5 percent BPHTB acquisition tax; a lease carries none, because it is a contract, not a transfer. The seller owes a 2.5 percent final income tax on a title transfer, or 10 to 20 percent on lease income, and by law that tax is checked before the deed is signed, a built-in checkpoint rather than a formality.

None of this is a distant risk to worry about later. Money moves only after the certificate, the zoning and the access are confirmed, in that order, not before.

The traps specific to land

• "Freehold on a friend's name": void under Article 26, paragraph 2, of the Agrarian Law, and since Perda 4/2026 also a provincially prohibited scheme with sanctions reaching participants and facilitators.
• A plot with no documented road access, sold on the promise that "access will be arranged."
• A plot inside a green or protected zone, bought on a verbal assurance that a building permit will follow. On 21 July 2025, 48 unpermitted structures on regency land in a green zone at Bingin, Pecatu, were demolished (Bali Expat, 22 July 2025): a real case, not a hypothetical.
• A seller whose name does not match the certificate, or whose own head lease does not cover every year being sold to you.

We do not recommend land without a registered title and without confirmed zoning. That is the line, and we hold it on every plot we bring to a buyer.