Short answer: no foreigner can hold Hak Milik — freehold title — over land in Bali, and no structure changes that. What a foreigner can hold is a different right over the same plot: a use right, a building right, or a lease. Those are real, registrable and bankable. The trouble starts when someone sells you Hak Milik anyway and calls the workaround “as good as ownership”. This page sets out every structure that exists, what each one actually gives you, and where each one breaks.
The rule everything else follows from
Article 21 of the Basic Agrarian Law (UUPA 5/1960) reserves Hak Milik to Indonesian citizens. Article 26(2) goes further: a transfer of Hak Milik to a foreigner is null and void by operation of law, and the land falls to the state. Read that carefully — it is not “voidable if challenged”. There is no moment at which you held the right and then lost it. You never held it.
This matters because it sets the character of every dispute that follows. You are not a wronged owner seeking a remedy. You are a person who paid money for nothing, trying to recover the money from whoever took it.
The four structures that do work
| Structure | What you hold | Term | Registered at BPN |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hak Pakai (right of use) | Right to use land or a house in your own name | Granted, extendable, renewable under PP 18/2021 | Yes |
| HGB via PT PMA (building right) | Shares in a company that holds the building right | 30 years, plus 20 extension, plus 30 renewal over state land | Yes |
| Hak Sewa (lease) | Contractual right to use for a fixed term | Whatever the deed says — no statutory cap | No |
| Hak Milik in a spouse’s name | Nothing, unless a prenuptial agreement exists | — | Yes, in their name |
Hak Pakai — the one in your own name
Permen ATR/BPN 18/2021 art. 185 lets a foreigner hold a landed house on Hak Pakai over state land, over Hak Milik (by deed before a PPAT), or over Hak Pengelolaan. PP 18/2021 art. 69(1) requires valid immigration documents — this is a right for people who live here, not for a passport held abroad.
There is a price floor. Under Kepmen ATR/BPN 1241/2022, a foreigner buying a landed house in Bali must pay at least Rp 5 billion; for an apartment the floor is Rp 2 billion. Below those numbers the structure is simply not available to you. This is the single most misquoted figure in Bali property writing — the old Rp 3 billion number still circulates and has been superseded.
PT PMA holding HGB — the one for a business
A foreign-investment company is an Indonesian legal person, so it can hold Hak Guna Bangunan. If you intend to rent the villa out, you need a company anyway: the villa rental licence (KBLI 55193) requires one, and pondok wisata — the homestay licence — is open only to Indonesian citizens, capped at five bedrooms, with the owner living on site.
One detail almost nobody publishes. HGB over state land runs 30 years, extends by up to 20 and renews for up to 30. HGB granted over someone’s Hak Milik behaves differently: it cannot be extended at all. It can only be renewed by striking a fresh agreement with the Hak Milik holder — the same person whose leverage over you grows every year the land appreciates. If a seller offers you “HGB, 80 years”, ask which of the two it is. The answer changes the whole risk profile.
Terms also lapse. An extension must be applied for before the right expires; a renewal, within two years after. Miss both windows and you are negotiating from zero.
Hak Sewa — the one most Bali deals actually use
Leasehold rests on UUPA arts. 44–45. It is flexible, it has no statutory ceiling, and it is what most listings on this island mean by “leasehold”. It also has a structural weakness that buyers consistently underrate: Hak Sewa is not registered at the land office. Your protection is the notarial deed and nothing else. If the land is sold, mortgaged or inherited, your position depends on what that deed says and on how hard you are willing to litigate.
Three clauses decide whether a lease is worth signing. Whether extension is a guarantee (jaminan perpanjangan) or merely a “priority” — priority is not a right. Whether the extension price is fixed now or left at “market rate at the time”, which means the landowner names it. And who owns the building at the end of the term: by default it follows the land. We have written about how those clauses change the arithmetic in leasehold or freehold in Bali, and you can model the cash flows on our land lease calculator.
A worked example from our own catalogue: the 7-are leasehold plot in Kutuh is quoted at Rp 13 million per are per year — Rp 2.275 billion for the full 25-year term. Whether that is cheap depends entirely on the extension clause, not on the headline.
The structure that does not work: the nominee
The nominee arrangement — Hak Milik registered to an Indonesian, with a stack of side agreements giving a foreigner control — is not a grey area. It is art. 26(2) applied directly: the transfer is void, and the side agreements exist to disguise that. Indonesian courts have treated the package as an attempt to evade the law rather than as a contract to enforce.
What changed in 2026 is the forum. Perda Bali 4/2026, in force since February, moves the nominee question out of private dispute and into public law, with administrative sanctions set out on the provincial portal. We deliberately do not repeat the criminal penalties that agency blogs attach to this regulation — the province lists administrative sanctions only, and the five-year / one-billion figures circulating online come from a different statute.
That different statute is worth knowing about on its own. At a police press conference on 24 January 2025, a German national was named over 34 certificates on land zoned LP2B — protected farmland — under art. 72 of UU 41/2009. Enforcement here is not hypothetical, and it does not always wait for a court: the Bingin demolition of 21 July 2025 removed 48 structures from state land under UU 27/2007 art. 35 and Pergub 24/2020, with no court order at all.
Choosing between them
| If you want to… | Use | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Live here, one house, your own name | Hak Pakai | Rp 5 bn floor, immigration documents, term windows |
| Rent the villa out commercially | PT PMA holding HGB | Tourism zoning, HGB over Hak Milik cannot be extended |
| Lower entry cost, defined horizon | Hak Sewa | Not registered; extension guarantee; building ownership |
| “Own it like at home” | Nothing does this | Anyone who says otherwise is selling you art. 26(2) |
There is also a practical constraint that is practice rather than law: a governor’s letter of 28 January 2026 (No. B.27.000/642/PM/DPMPTSP) has led to some PT PMA property applications being rejected in the OSS system. It is not a published norm and we do not present it as one — but if a company route is your plan, confirm its current status before you commit money.
What to do with this before you pay anyone
- Decide the structure first, then look at plots. The structure determines which plots are even eligible.
- Read the certificate yourself. Title type, holder, area, encumbrances. Then run the rest of the due diligence checklist for 2026 — heirs, spousal consent, overlapping certificates, access rights.
- Check the zoning before you fall in love with the view. A plot that cannot host a rental licence is a different asset than the one you think you are buying.
- Price the whole thing, not the headline. Transfer duty, notary, tax and conversion costs are set out in what a Bali plot really costs per are.
Every plot in our catalogue states its title type in the listing itself, so you can filter by structure rather than by hope: freehold (Hak Milik) plots for buyers going the Hak Pakai or PT PMA route, leasehold plots for a defined-term deal. Certificates, zoning and access are checked before anything appears on Bali Land Sales.
This is general information about Indonesian land law, not legal advice. Structures and thresholds change, and the right answer depends on your residency status and what you intend to do with the land. Use it to ask a notary better questions.
Join The Discussion