Waiting for it to be built

Eighteen to thirty months of nothing you can see

This is the stage nobody plans for. The contract is signed, the payments are scheduled, and there is a very long gap in which your only evidence is whatever the developer chooses to send. Most disputes in off-plan Bali are not about fraud. They are about a slip disclosed in month twenty-two that was visible in month nine.

Photograph it monthly, or make somebody else do it

The same three angles, the same day of the month, date-stamped. If you are not on the island, appoint somebody who will actually go – a local surveyor, a property manager, a friend with a diary reminder. It costs very little and it does two things: it gives you a real progress record rather than a curated one, and it tells the developer somebody is watching.

Written monthly updates should be a contractual obligation, not a courtesy. Ask that each one states the current milestone, the current forecast handover date and any change to either. A developer who resents that request is telling you how the next two years will go.

Slip is normal. Late disclosure is not

Every scheme here slips: rain, permits, materials, labour. Three months on a twenty-four month programme is unremarkable. What matters is when you were told.

The pattern to watch for is a forecast handover date that does not move for eighteen months and then moves by nine. It moved gradually. Nobody said so. A forecast that shifts a little each quarter is a healthy sign; a frozen one is a warning.

What slip actually costs

• Rental income you had modelled and will not receive, in a season you cannot get back.
• Another year of holding costs on a property earning nothing.
• Currency exposure held open longer than you planned.
• Somewhere else to live, if you were buying to live in it.

Put a number on it before you sign, and use that number to argue for a delivery penalty with teeth.

Snagging rights belong in the contract

Not in an email at handover. Before you sign, establish how long you have to inspect, whether you may bring your own surveyor, what happens to the retention, and what the remedy is when a defect is structural rather than cosmetic.

Tropical construction has a particular list: damp ingress, pool plant, drainage falls, aluminium corrosion near the sea, and joinery that has moved. Have it inspected by somebody who knows that list.

Keep your own file

Every payment receipt, every milestone certificate, every photograph, every written update. You will need it twice – if there is a dispute, and when you sell. A buyer four years from now asking what really happened during construction is a buyer you can answer, and that answer is worth money.