If you take one thing from any of this, take the order. The cheap check is the one people skip.
Most of what goes wrong in a Bali purchase was discoverable before the deposit. Not through expensive investigation, but by asking for eight documents in a particular order and reading them.
Send the question. It goes to a person, not a form, and the answer comes back with the document it sits on.
No email required. No mailing list.
The order matters because each one is capable of ending the conversation before you spend money on the next. Asking for everything at once means paying for checks on a property that the first document would have disqualified.
The land certificate. The original, not a photograph of one, in the name of the person selling or leasing to you.
It tells you the class of right, who holds it, the area, and, for HGB or Hak Pakai, when it expires. If the name on it is not the name of the person you are dealing with, stop and find out why before anything else happens.
Certificate verification at the land office, carried out by your notary, never the seller's.
This confirms the paper you were handed matches the land office's own book, and it reveals blocks, seizures, disputes, and any mortgage registered over the land. It is cheap, it is fast, and it is the step people skip because the certificate in front of them looks convincing.
A registered mortgage matters enormously if you are taking a lease, because a lease is contractual rather than registered. What happens to your position if the bank forecloses is a question worth answering before you are the one asking it. That is covered in leasehold land in Bali, properly explained.
The measurement letter, carrying the boundaries and coordinates. Reconcile it against a physical survey of the actual plot.
Discrepancies between the certificate area and the land as it exists are common enough that any land size in marketing material should be treated as unverified until this document has been seen. A marketing pack reviewed by this agency overstated a site by close to a quarter.
The annual tax assessment. It tells you the official valuation, which drives your acquisition duty, and whether the name on the tax record matches the name on the certificate.
Unpaid arrears attach to the property, not to the person who ran them up.
Spatial use conformity, which replaced the old ITR. This is where zoning bites: green zone, protected rice land, coastal and cliff setbacks.
A beautiful plot in the wrong zone is a garden. It is also the document that determines whether the income case anyone has described to you is lawful in the first place, because land not zoned for tourism accommodation cannot host it regardless of what the building looks like.
Building approval, which replaced IMB. Obtained before construction, on submitted plans. Check that the plans it approves are the building that exists.
The certificate of worthiness, issued after completion, confirming the building may lawfully be used for its stated function.
Absence of PBG and SLF can mean usage prohibition, fines, difficulty insuring or financing, and in serious cases demolition. On an off plan purchase neither exists yet, which makes the contractual obligation to obtain them, and the consequence if they are not obtained, a clause worth reading closely.
Required to let the property out at all. If your plan involves letting, this is not administrative tidying, it is the difference between an asset and an expensive holiday house.
These are standard practice but were absent from every published checklist reviewed, so confirm them with your notary rather than treating this page as final.
Spousal consent. Consent of all heirs where the seller inherited the property. Banjar and adat clearance, meaning the customary village has no objection. And legally established road access, which is not the same as a road currently being used.
That last one catches people. A track that everyone has driven down for fifteen years is not the same as a right of way that survives the neighbour selling.
A common exchange: "Is it licensed?" "Yes, all permits are in place."
Permits are specific. A registration number is not a licence. A business registration permitting the holding and leasing of property does not permit running accommodation. A restaurant licence licenses a restaurant. An application in progress is an application, not a certificate.
This agency has read a due diligence pack in which the seller stated in writing that all permits and licences were in place. Their own documents showed the only issued licence covered a different activity altogether, and the certificate everyone had assumed was granted was an application still in progress.
The seller was not necessarily lying. They had been told it was fine and had never read their own file. That is the more common failure by a wide margin.
The lesson is not that Bali is lawless. It is that "all permits are in place" is a sentence, and a sentence is not a document.
Ask your notary, in writing: which permit, issued by whom, on what date, under which code, and may I see it?
A seller who produces these without friction is telling you something useful before you have read a word of them. A seller who produces some, delays on others, and offers reassurance in place of paper is also telling you something.
Neither is proof. Both are signal, and the signal arrives early enough to act on.
This page describes publicly available law and administrative practice and is not legal advice. Bali Property Sourcing is a real estate agency and buyer's agent, not a law firm. Instruct your own notary, and read the documents yourself, before committing money.
Every property listed here has been vetted before it went up. Ask what those documents actually say before a deposit changes hands, not after.