The legal process

Your notary is not their notary

In Indonesia the notary – specifically the PPAT, the land deed official – does the work a solicitor does elsewhere: verifies title, drafts the deed, registers it. They are meant to be neutral. The one introduced by the developer has an ongoing commercial relationship with the developer, and you do not.

Appoint your own. It costs about the same and it is the cheapest protection on this list.

What diligence actually checks

Two to four weeks, and it is checking four separate things that people collapse into one.

• The certificate. Who holds the land, what right they hold, whether it is encumbered, and whether the boundaries on the certificate match the plot you were shown. Bali has a long history of overlapping claims and family land that was never formally divided.
• The zoning. The zoning letter for the specific plot, not for the area. Only tourism zoning permits commercial short-stay accommodation, and this is the most-ignored risk in the market.
• The permit. PBG, Persetujuan Bangunan Gedung, which replaced IMB in 2021. It approves a specific design on a specific plot. Any document citing IMB for a post-2021 approval needs a second look, and sighted, applied for and not started are three very different answers.
• The seller's capacity. That the entity signing has authority to sign, and that everyone who controls the land agrees. Where land is family-owned, that can mean several signatures.

The sequence, and where you can still walk away

A reservation, usually with a modest fee, takes the unit off the market for two to four weeks while diligence runs. That fee is normally refundable if diligence fails – get it in writing before you pay it, because normally is doing a great deal of work in that sentence.

The deposit that follows, typically ten per cent, usually is not refundable. That is the point at which leaving costs money, and it should never fall before diligence is finished. If you are being pressed for a deposit before the zoning letter has been produced, you are being pressed for a reason.

Then the contract – on off-plan, a conditional sale and purchase agreement – followed by staged payments through construction and the deed at handover.

The clauses that matter

Read for what happens when things go wrong, not for what happens when they go right.

• Late delivery: is there a defined date, a grace period, and a penalty that means anything?
• Specification: can they substitute materials, and do you get to object?
• Snagging: how long do you have, who arbitrates, and what is retained until it is closed?
• Default: what happens to your money if they fail, and to the unit if you do?
• Disputes: which forum, in which language, under which law?

Have it translated properly. The Indonesian text is the one that governs, whatever the English version says.