There is no building to inspect, so the contract is the building. Here is what to read in it, in the order that matters.
Most new villas in Bali are sold before they exist. That is not a warning, it is how the market works, and a good off plan purchase can be a better outcome than a resale at the same price.
Send the question. It goes to a person, not a form, and the answer comes back with the document it sits on.
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What makes it different from buying a finished house is that there is nothing to inspect. The render is marketing material and not a term of anything. The contract is the only version of the property that legally exists at the point you pay, so the contract is what gets read.
This page is the order to read it in.
Before anything about the building, establish what is already in place over the land and what is only promised.
Three arrangements get described the same way in a brochure and are not the same thing at all.
The right already exists in your name on signing. A lease deed over your specific plot, executed at the notary, with a term and an expiry date on it. Best position.
The right exists, held by the developer, and transfers to you later. Workable, and the question becomes what happens in the gap. If the developer's own right is a lease, yours cannot outlast it, and a promise to give you thirty years from handover is not something they can necessarily deliver.
The right does not exist yet and is to be granted on completion. Common, and the weakest of the three. You are buying a contractual promise that a land arrangement will be created in future by someone who does not yet have to create it.
Ask which of those three this is and get the answer in writing. It is the single most useful question on this page, and almost nobody asks it, because the brochure has already said "leasehold 30 years" and everyone moved on.
Ask your notary: what right over this specific plot exists today, in whose name, and what has to happen for it to end up in mine?
One point in your favour here. Under Article 1576 of the Indonesian Civil Code, a sale does not break a lease. If a lease is properly in place and the land underneath it is sold, the lease survives the sale. That protection only helps if the lease actually exists, which is the whole reason the question above comes first.
Developments regularly sell units on plots that vary in size, shape, aspect and what ends up built next to them.
If the material quotes a land size as a range, or the site plan has unit numbers but no dimensions, you need the specific plot identified before you sign, not allocated afterwards. A twenty per cent difference in land area between two units in the same development is normal, and so is a difference in what you look at from the terrace.
Get the plot number, the dimensions, and the site plan into the contract as an annexure.
This is where off plan risk actually lives.
Payments in Bali are usually made directly to the developer. There is no widespread escrow practice and no statutory deposit protection scheme of the kind buyers from other markets assume exists. The money goes into the build, and while the build is incomplete, what you hold is a contractual claim against a company rather than a right over a building.
Two things make that better.
Tranches tied to verified progress, not to dates. "Thirty per cent on completion of the structural frame, certified by an independent party" is a term. "Thirty per cent in March" is a calendar entry that pays out whether or not anything got built.
A retention held back until after handover. A final tranche released some weeks or months after you take possession, so there is a reason for the defects to get fixed.
Ask what the payments are secured against while the building does not exist. If the honest answer is nothing, that is still useful to know, and it should be reflected in the price rather than discovered afterwards.
Read the specification schedule, and then read what the contract says about the developer's right to substitute.
"Or equivalent", "or similar", and "subject to availability" are doing an enormous amount of work in most off plan contracts in this market. They are not unreasonable clauses on their own, because supply genuinely moves, but an unlimited right to substitute means the specification is an aspiration.
What makes it a term is a constraint on the substitution: equivalent or better, of the same or higher value, with your written approval above a threshold. Any of those is worth more than the glossy schedule it qualifies.
Find the clause that says what happens if the date slips. If there is no consequence for late delivery, there is no deadline, only an expectation.
A real late delivery clause has a mechanism: liquidated damages per week or month, a right to withhold a tranche, and at some outer limit a right to terminate and recover. The outer limit matters more than the weekly rate, because the weekly rate compensates for an inconvenience and the outer limit is what covers the scenario where it is not getting built at all.
Delays here are normal. Wet season, permits, materials, a subcontractor walking off. A developer who has written a fair mechanism into the contract is telling you they have delivered before.
Building approvals in Indonesia are typically not complete until a build is well advanced, so a developer who cannot produce a finished permit set at the point of sale is not necessarily hiding anything.
What matters is the obligation and the consequence.
PBG, the building approval that replaced IMB, is obtained before construction on submitted plans. SLF, the certificate of worthiness, is issued after completion and confirms the building may lawfully be used for its stated function. If letting is part of your plan, NIB and the accompanying certification are what make that lawful, and they are not administrative tidying.
So: who is obliged to obtain each of those, by when, and what is your remedy if they are not obtained? Absence of PBG and SLF can mean usage prohibition, difficulty insuring or financing, and in serious cases demolition. That risk should sit with the party who controls whether the permits happen, which is the developer, and the contract is where that gets allocated.
Check separately that KKPR, spatial use conformity, permits accommodation on the parcel at all. A development can be well run and well financed on land that does not allow the use being sold.
Ask what handover actually consists of. A walk through with a snagging list, a period to report defects, and a defects liability period during which the developer fixes structural and workmanship problems at their cost.
Twelve months is a common defects period. What is in it and what is excluded matters more than the length.
Ask also who manages the development afterwards, what the service charge covers, how it is set, and who decides when it changes. On a multi villa development that number recurs forever and is frequently not mentioned until after handover.
The plot, identified.
The land right, described as it exists today rather than as it is intended to exist.
The payment schedule, tied to progress, with a retention.
The substitution clause, constrained.
The late delivery mechanism, with an outer limit.
The permit obligations, allocated, with a remedy.
Your own notary, instructed by you, reading all of it before money moves.
None of that makes off plan safe, because nothing does. It moves the questions to the point where you can still walk away, which is the only real protection available on a building that does not exist yet.
This page describes publicly available law and ordinary contracting practice and is not legal advice. Bali Property Sourcing is a real estate agency and buyer's agent, not a law firm. Contract terms, permit requirements and their enforcement vary and change. Instruct your own notary and read the contract 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.