For two years the argument about Bali property has lived online, in WhatsApp groups and forum threads where confident answers cost nothing and nobody is accountable for them. On 19 August it moved into a room. Around 40 investors, villa owners, developers and operators gathered in Canggu for a panel hosted by Aspire Consulting Services, built around the question most of them had been asking privately for months: is a Bali villa still a viable investment?
I joined the panel as an invited guest speaker representing Fullers Properties, there to share the buyer’s perspective alongside three people who have built, operated and advised on a meaningful share of the island’s villa economy. Adhiguna, Founder and CEO of ArkaCara, brings two decades in Bali luxury hospitality, more than 80 properties under management, and leadership roles across the island’s villa and hospitality associations. Roy Gill has spent 15 years delivering hospitality, villa and mixed use projects. Vasily Pronin, Founder and Managing Partner of Seacrest Consulting and Seacrest Real Estate, has worked this market since 2008. Christian Reinaldo of NF Group Indonesia moderated.
The questions from the floor told me more than the panel did. Away from the group chats, people are genuinely confused. Can a foreigner still invest at all? Is a management company worth the fee? Why did the construction quote jump? The confusion is real and it deserves straight answers. What the room heard converged on a single idea from four different directions: structure decides outcomes now.
The Rules Did Not Change. The Enforcement Did.
Vasily Pronin gave the evening its clearest frame. “The rules did not change that much,” he said. “The regulation was always there, but implementation was not. There were no real checks, so people did whatever they wanted. Now the implementation is coming.”
That reading matches the record. The licence classifications covering villa management and real estate activity closed to new foreign owned companies earlier this year, a change already live in the government’s online licensing system. Companies that held those classifications before the reset keep them. New entrants have one route, and it runs through a domestically owned PT PMDN company. This is why the loudest online theories about a ban on foreign investment miss the point. The framework did not slam a door; it formalised a partnership. Foreign capital and Indonesian operations are now structurally tied together, and any owner setting up an operation today builds around a local partner by design, not by preference.
Pronin was equally direct about how the market arrived here. The post pandemic years brought what he called a gold rush. “People were not selling properties. They were selling renders and promises, with no real plan and no bill of quantities attached,” he said. He does not expect every buyer who paid a deposit into one of those projects to see the money again, and he does not pretend the correction is finished. His view of what follows is more constructive: fewer but stronger developers, a properly regulated market, and demand that never went anywhere.
The Operator’s Chair: Management Is No Longer Optional
Adhiguna made the argument that landed hardest with the owners in the room. “A few years ago, a management company was nice to have. It has become a must have, and not because I am pushing the business,” he said. “A management company is a second layer between you and the authorities.” Regulation in Indonesia moves quickly and often arrives with little public notice. Professional operators hear it first. “When it was being drafted, I was in the same room,” he noted of one recent change.
He is just as involved in what comes next. Adhiguna described ongoing discussions with the Ministry of Tourism on a framework that would finally define villa rentals as their own category rather than an extension of hotel licensing, alongside proposals that could require registration at the individual villa level. None of this is confirmed policy, and he was careful to say the system is still being designed. The message for owners was simpler: the people who will know first are inside the industry, not reading about it afterwards.
His advice on choosing an operator deserves to be framed on every owner’s wall. Vet the person, not the brand. “A good management company sometimes has only a handful of properties, but with deep competency. That is much better than a flashy portfolio with hundreds of doors and lots of branches,” he said. Followers can be bought and brands can be manufactured. What cannot be faked is the operating record of the individual actually running your property, and whether the entity named on your contract is the entity doing the work.
The Builder’s Numbers
Roy Gill brought the cost reality. The rupiah has fallen roughly 10% against the US dollar over the past year, touching a record low above 18,200 in June before stabilising. Imported materials and premium finishes are priced in dollars, and construction costs have followed. Gill said his most recently signed project has absorbed a rise of around 10% since November. “For the contracts we already signed, we keep going. You have to be responsible for your contract,” he said. New contracts are being repriced to match reality.
His practical answer is sourcing. Indonesian materials, from Bali, Java and further afield, now close much of the quality gap with imports at a fraction of the currency exposure. His sequencing advice was blunter still: secure the building permit before ground is broken. Retrofitting paperwork at 70% completion is where the unpredictable costs live, and in an enforcement era, the inspectors do arrive.
The Buyer’s Side of the Table
My contribution came from the buyer’s chair, because at Fullers we answer these questions every day. The first thing I told the room is that none of this should be read as decline. What Indonesia is doing now is what the United States and Australia went through decades ago as their property markets matured. Rules tighten, informality gets squeezed out, and the market that emerges is more predictable, not less.
The second thing was an order of operations. You fall in love with a place after you understand the structure, not the other way around. We regularly meet buyers who have already committed emotionally, then pay for due diligence at roughly 1% of the property price, and two and a half weeks later we have to advise them to walk away, because no workable structure ever existed underneath the dream. That money buys a painful lesson that a structure first conversation would have made unnecessary.
The third was a question almost nobody asks. Are you a licensed broker, and can you show me the licence that lets me hold you accountable if you sell me something wrong? Buyers who source properties through social media groups routinely receive ten suggestions within the hour and never ask that question once.
And on returns, the numbers need honesty. The highest verified net figure we have seen in this market is 16.8%, drawn from a full year of audited performance. When a seller promises 25%, ask where the number comes from and whether it is gross or net. Tax alone makes the answer structure dependent: two buyers of the same villa can hold identical keys and take home different returns, depending on residency, treaty relief and how the ownership is set up.
A Market That Rewards Preparation
Forty people gave up an evening to ask whether Bali still works. The answer from every chair on that stage was yes, for the prepared. Pronin put the mindset shift best: property is not a time deposit. It is a risk investment in a developing market, and it rewards the buyers who treat it that way.
This is the entire logic of our CLEAR Buyer Method at Fullers Properties. Calibrate the brief before viewing anything. Locate against that brief, not against what is loudest online. Examine title, permits and zoning before commitment. Acquire on verified terms. Root the investment with the right operating and tax structure after the keys. The buyers making money in Bali in 2026 have not found a secret. They have simply done things in the right order.
