Buying Bali Property Through a PT PMA

A PT PMA is a foreign-investment company, and holding Bali property through one used to be the standard advice for anyone buying more than a single villa. In 2026 that advice needs a footnote the size of a page, because Bali began closing the door on exactly the kind of small PT PMA that property buyers were setting up. This guide covers what the structure gives you, what it costs, and what has changed.

What the structure is

A PT PMA — Perseroan Terbatas Penanaman Modal Asing — is an Indonesian limited company with foreign shareholding. Even 1% foreign ownership makes a company a PMA. The company can hold HGB, Hak Guna Bangunan, the right to build: 30 years, extendable by 20, renewable for 30, under PP 18/2021 article 37.

What that buys you, compared with the alternatives:

• No personal visa requirement. The company holds the title. Hak Pakai, by contrast, needs you to hold a KITAS or KITAP and to keep holding it at renewal time.
• A vehicle that can own several properties and can legally operate a business — accommodation, management, development.
• Transferability by share sale. You can sell the company rather than the property, which in some deals is cleaner.

What it costs to stand up

The capital drop in October 2025 was large — a 75% reduction — and it is the reason PT PMA suddenly looked accessible to individual buyers. Note the two numbers are different requirements, not one: the 2.5 billion is capital you put in, the 10 billion is an investment plan per business code. They get conflated constantly, including by people selling the service. For property sectors, land and building value counts toward the 10 billion plan.

A third number gets folded in by mistake: the Investor KITAS threshold is a personal shareholding requirement set by immigration, historically IDR 10 billion, and entirely separate from the company’s capital. If the plan is “set up a small PT PMA to get a residence permit”, check the current immigration threshold first — that arithmetic usually does not work.

What changed in Bali in 2026

This is the part that matters more than any of the above.

On 28 January 2026 Governor Koster wrote to the Ministry of Investment asking to close a set of low-risk and medium-low-risk business codes to foreign-invested companies in Bali. Bali’s investment office formally submitted the request on 9 February 2026.

KBLI 70209 — management consulting, the code most commonly used for a light-touch PT PMA — was closed in late February 2026. Six further codes went under review:

From March 2026 the OSS licensing system began rejecting new registrations with a Bali address across this list — including codes still formally “under review” — operating on the Governor’s letter ahead of the ministerial decrees. Separately, virtual office addresses are no longer accepted as a legal address for PT PMA in the affected codes.

Two consequences for a property buyer:

• Do not assume the structure is available. Verify the status of your intended KBLI code, with a Bali address, in the week you plan to file. This is a moving target and any guide — including this one — can be out of date.
• An existing PT PMA is now an asset. Buying a company that already holds the right code and a clean compliance record is a live alternative to incorporating, and a market for that has appeared.

The ongoing obligations nobody mentions at the sales stage

A PT PMA is a company, and companies have upkeep: quarterly LKPM investment reports, annual tax filings, BPJS registration for staff, corporate income tax at 22%, and an accountant. Budget a few thousand dollars a year and real attention. A dormant PT PMA that misses its LKPM filings is a problem that surfaces years later, usually at the moment you try to sell.

When it is the right answer, and when it is not

We are a property agency, not a corporate services firm and not your lawyer. Company structure and its current availability in Bali are confirmed by a konsultan hukum or a notary, and the regulatory picture here changed three times in twelve months. What we can do is tell you which of our listings work under which structure, and flag the ones where the tenure makes the choice for you.