Villa, apartment, residence or townhouse: what you are actually buying

Villa, apartment, residence, townhouse: one spectrum, not four categories

Indonesian law recognizes three built forms of house: a detached house, a house in a row of attached houses, and a rumah susun, a multi storey building made of separate units (Law 1/2011, Article 22(2)). By ownership structure there are two: a house on its own plot of land, and a unit inside a shared building. "Villa" in the catalogue is the first of those, a structure on its own piece of land, and "townhouse" is the law’s row house, the same ownership structure in a block of attached homes. "Apartment" and "residence" are the second: a unit inside a building the 2011 rumah susun law (UU 20/2011) defines, literally, as a "stacked house," a multi storey building built within one area, structured functionally both horizontally and vertically, made of units that can each be separately owned and used, intended primarily as dwellings, and equipped with shared parts, shared objects and shared land (Article 1(1)).

Residence does not open a third legal bucket. It is the same rumah susun structure as apartment, framed as a resort development rather than a hotel-adjacent block. The individual unit inside that structure has its own legal name too: satuan rumah susun, or sarusun, defined by the same law as the part of the building meant to be used separately, mainly as a dwelling, with access to a public road (Article 1(3)).

• Villa: 8 objects in the catalogue today; four of them state the size of their own plot on the card.
• Townhouse: 2 objects, in both cases a home in a row of attached houses.
• Apartment: 4 objects, each a unit inside a shared building.
• Residence: 1 object, SOL Nusa Dua, also a unit inside a shared building, whatever the different name suggests.

What Indonesian law actually separates inside a building

Once a unit sits inside a rumah susun building, the law fixes four pieces that do not move no matter how the building is branded.

• Sarusun, the unit itself: the part of the building meant for separate use, mainly as a dwelling, with access to a public road (Article 1(3)).
• Tanah bersama, shared land: the single undivided land parcel the whole building stands on, held under one right or lease and used jointly, its boundary fixed in the building permit (Article 1(4)). A unit buyer never gets a personal patch of ground: an Indonesian owner holds an undivided interest in the whole parcel, and where a foreigner owns the unit the share in the shared land is not counted at all (official elucidation to Article 67(1) of Regulation 18/2021).
• Bagian bersama, shared parts: the parts of the building held undivided for joint use (Article 1(5)); the elucidation to Article 25(1) lists them as the foundation, columns, beams, walls, floors, roof, gutters, stairs, lifts, galleries, ducts, pipes and the electricity, gas and telecommunication networks.
• Benda bersama, shared objects: things that are not part of the building itself but are held and used jointly and undivided (Article 1(6)); the elucidation to Article 25(1) names meeting halls, planting and garden structures, social facilities, places of worship, playgrounds and parking.

Each owner’s share of those three shared pieces is sized by one number, NPP (nilai perbandingan proporsional), the ratio between a unit’s value and the whole building’s value at the moment the developer first totals the construction cost in order to set the selling price (Article 1(13)). Our catalogue does not publish a per-unit NPP, so no specific figure is stated here; it is a number that lives in the paperwork of a specific deal.

What you own outright, and what you only ever share

Ownership of a sarusun unit is a personal, individually held right, legally separate from, but held alongside, an undivided joint right over the three shared pieces above, sized by that unit’s NPP (Article 46(1) to (2)).

Proof of ownership is a certificate, SHM Sarusun (Sertifikat Hak Milik Sarusun), issued by the regional land office, and it can be pledged as collateral for a loan (Article 47(1) to (5)). For contrast: our ownership-routes guide explains why a leasehold can never be mortgaged; an SHM Sarusun, where an owner genuinely holds one, does not carry that limit.

Can a foreigner actually hold that title?

Government Regulation 18 of 2021 opens direct ownership of a sarusun unit, Hak Milik atas Satuan Rumah Susun, not only to Indonesian citizens and Indonesian legal entities but to a foreign individual who holds a permit in accordance with applicable regulation, a foreign legal entity with a representative office in Indonesia, and foreign state or international organization representative offices (Article 67(1)).

The condition for entry is simple, but it is there: a dwelling can be held by a foreign individual who has immigration documentation as set by applicable regulation, which the official elucidation to Article 69 spells out as a visa, a passport or a stay permit; if that owner dies, the unit can pass to heirs, but a foreign heir must hold such documentation of their own (Article 69(1) to (3)).

This route sits in the same chapter of Regulation 18 of 2021 as the landed-house Hak Pakai route already covered in our ownership-routes guide. It carries four limits at once, not one: a minimum price, a land area, a number of parcels or units, and use as a dwelling (Article 72), with the actual figures set by a further Ministerial Regulation (Article 73). A separate condition applies to the building itself: the route only covers a rumah susun standing on hak pakai or hak guna bangunan land and built in a special economic zone, a free trade and free port zone, an industrial zone or another economic zone, which the elucidation reads as including urban and tourism areas (Article 71). We have not verified that ministerial figure this round, so no number is repeated here; a figure quoted elsewhere on this site for Hak Pakai may not apply to this specific title.

Now the part that actually plays out. Of the fifteen objects in the A&J catalogue today, fourteen carry a Leasehold badge, and only one, the villa Bingin Elements in Uluwatu, is freehold. That split runs across all four kinds at once: seven of the eight villas are leasehold, the eighth, Bingin Elements, is the catalogue’s only freehold title; the single residence and all four apartments are leasehold; both townhouses are leasehold too. None of the fifteen is currently marketed on the SHM Sarusun route above: apartment and residence describe the building here, not the title it is sold under.

Who runs the building day to day, and who decides on a repair

A leasehold villa has exactly one decision maker: whoever signed the lease. A unit inside a rumah susun building answers to a structure the law writes for it.

1. 01

   Before an owners’ association exists

   The developer must manage the building itself until the owners’ association forms; the law caps that transition period at one year from the first unit handover (Article 59(1) to (4)), and the law’s own elucidation to paragraph 1 separately describes it as running for as long as units remain unsold. Costs are shared between developer and owners by NPP.

2. 02

   Forming the owners’ association

   Sarusun owners are legally obliged to form a PPPSRS, an owners’ and occupants’ association; its members are owners or occupants holding a proxy from an owner, and it takes legal-entity status from the statute itself (Article 74(1) to (3)), while the association is set up by a deed of establishment with articles and by-laws and then recorded with the regency or city administration (Government Regulation 13/2021, Article 98). The law’s elucidation to paragraph 2 adds that a proxy from owner to occupant is limited to occupancy matters, such as the level of dues for security, cleaning or community activity.

3. 03

   Handover

   The developer must facilitate the PPPSRS forming before the transition period ends, then hand over management of the shared parts, shared objects and shared land to it (Article 75(1) to (3)).

4. 04

   Rebuilding the building

   Where the owners themselves initiate a rebuild, which the law calls a quality upgrade and carries out through demolition, rearrangement and new construction (Article 62), it needs the approval of at least 60 percent of PPPSRS members first (Article 65(1) to (2)). A single leasehold villa owner never faces that vote: fixing their own house is theirs to decide alone.

Day to day running sits with a management body rather than with the owners meeting directly: operation, routine maintenance (pemeliharaan) and repair (perawatan) of the shared parts, shared objects and shared land must run through a legally incorporated management body, registered and permitted to operate by the local regency or city, or by the Governor for Jakarta (Article 56(1) to (4)). The owners’ association can either form that body itself or appoint one from outside (Government Regulation 13/2021, Article 75(2)). The law’s own elucidation to paragraph 1 draws the line between those two words precisely: pemeliharaan means keeping the building and its facilities reliably fit for use; perawatan means repairing or replacing parts of the building, its components, materials or facilities so it stays fit for use.

Who pays for what is fixed too, not left to a building’s own rules. The management body can charge a fee, billed proportionally and sized to actual operating, maintenance and upkeep costs; the law names no rupiah figure (Article 57(1) to (4)). The law’s elucidation to paragraph 2 draws a precise line: everyday operating costs and pemeliharaan are billed to whoever actually occupies the unit, owner or tenant; perawatan, repairing or replacing an actual building component, is billed to the owner.

Voting inside the PPPSRS splits by subject. A decision about ownership and management of the building is weighted by each member’s NPP share; a decision about occupancy runs one member, one vote (Article 77(1) to (2)). The law’s elucidation to paragraph 2 adds that once a unit is occupied, an owner can delegate their vote to whoever lives there, though for a unit that is not yet occupied, each owner’s name still carries exactly one vote no matter how many units that name holds.

What changes in a hotel-managed building or a resort-style residence

Two of the catalogue’s four apartment-kind objects are explicitly styled as hotel buildings. Awwa Boutique Hotel, in Berawa, is a finished hotel-style apartment building with units from 33 m², serviced by concierge and housekeeping. X Hotel by Rentaved, near Tanah Lot, is an off plan managed hotel building with a shared pool and a rooftop bar, handover set for Q1 2027. The catalogue’s one residence, SOL Nusa Dua, is shown in a render of the resort courtyard, with a 3D tour available, and its own listing carries none of that concierge or housekeeping language.

What that styling changes, legally, is who runs the shared spaces day to day, a professional operator rather than a bare management body, and nothing in the law creates a separate legal category for a hotel-managed building: the management chapter, Articles 56 to 60 of UU 20/2011, is written for a building split into units held under SHM or SKBG Sarusun certificates, while for the catalogue objects sold on a leasehold the same ground is covered by the lease and the management contract instead, and those are the documents to read. What it does not change is the ownership question above: none of these three objects is marketed on the SHM Sarusun route, and the hotel styling does not change what a buyer legally holds.

One line we deliberately do not add to any of these three objects: no rental-pool split, no occupancy schedule, no income figure. This site does not carry that content for any object, hotel-styled or not.

The practical trade-off, in plain terms

None of the above answers "buy or not." It changes two questions worth asking about a specific object. First: what are you actually holding. Leasehold applies to fourteen of the fifteen objects here, freehold to the one; our ownership-routes guide covers that split. Second: if it is a unit inside a shared building, who runs it and on what budget, the law chapter above. The word on the card, villa, apartment, residence or townhouse, answers neither of these questions.

Browse by type in the catalogue, read the ownership routes in full, or bring a specific object to the form and we will walk the deed with a notary before any money moves.