The great thing about land is they aren’t making any more it. When people decide a small island is the place to be, land prices soar and right now Bali is that place. Walking around Jl. Oberoi recently I saw how fast offices and villas have replaced chunks of sawah (ricefields) that were there back in 2003. The value of land varies in Bali, with the beach front area on the south of the island fetching the highest prices. On the coast at Blue Ocean Beach at the end of Jl. Double Six and at the end of Jl. Dhyana Pura, 2 huge construction projects are underway. A tremendous amount of money is being spent on acquiring land and putting up these high end places.
A friend of mine who has been doing a small scale construction of his own for the last 2 years told me what a drain on resources the whole thing is. He is spending 15m rp every month just for wages. “There’s no getting around it,” he said, “They’re just slow and they take it easy.” When it rains the workers in Bali want to stop working, which can double the time-line in the wet season. Another expat told me construction workers in Ubud now want 100,000rp per day and aren’t that good. Still there are some choice spots in Bali still to be sold. Simply taking a motorbike ride around and exploring the small villages and land that lies between them is evidence of that. Bali’s unique culture and developed expat scene make it an attractive place to live and to own a second home.
An article in property-report.com talks about the factors leading to the boom in Bali’s real estate sector and how it might continue.
