Can I sell my Bali lease early? UUPA 5/1960 and PP 18/2021 disagree

A seller three years into a Bali lease asks a narrower question than the buyer asked. Can the rest of this be handed on, and does anyone have to say yes? The market answers in a table. Bali Property Rules, a guide site for foreign buyers, compares Bali land rights in a table whose row for hak sewa reads: Transferable? Yes (per contract terms).^{Source: 8}Bali Property Rules, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified That page is a market source, not an authority; its wording is all we cite it for.

Four papers decide what sits inside those brackets, in the order below, because the first decides which of the others reach you. This reads instruments; it does not advise on your deal.

Which right does the certificate name?

Begin with whether a certificate exists at all: the answer branches there and never rejoins. Government Regulation 18 of 2021 splits hak pakai into two species, one granted for a term and one for as long as the land is used, and the time-limited species may be granted to a foreigner.^{Source: 2}JDIH Kementerian Perumahan dan Kawasan Permukiman, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified Under the same regulation a hak pakai over privately owned land arises through the owner’s grant in a land-deed official’s deed, and exists only once the land office registers it and issues a certificate.^{Source: 2}JDIH Kementerian Perumahan dan Kawasan Permukiman, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified

A certificate naming a time-limited hak pakai tells a seller which paragraph governs the sale. Article 60(2) of PP 18/2021 reads with no condition attached: a time-limited hak pakai may pass, be transferred, be released to another party, or have its right converted.^{Source: 2}JDIH Kementerian Perumahan dan Kawasan Permukiman, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified Read alone, that settles the question in the seller’s favour. It is not alone.

Does the deed let you hand the right on?

Article 43(2) of the 1960 land law provides that a hak pakai over land held in ownership may be transferred only if the agreement concerned makes that possible, and Article 43(1) that a hak pakai on land held directly by the state needs the authorised official’s permission.^{Source: 1}JDIH Kementerian Perumahan dan Kawasan Permukiman, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified So the deed signed with a Balinese family is not merely where the right came from: it decides whether the right can be sold, and a deed silent on transfer gives the seller nothing to point at.

Two texts on one transaction, and they disagree. The comfortable way out is that a statute outranks a regulation. Government Regulation 18 of 2021 states in its preamble that it implements Article 142 and Article 185(b) of the Job Creation Law of 2020, and cites as authorities Article 5(2) of the 1945 Constitution and that same law; the 1960 land law appears nowhere.^{Source: 2}JDIH Kementerian Perumahan dan Kawasan Permukiman, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified On the face of that list the regulation is not the child of the statute it contradicts — our reading of a citation list, which is evidence about drafting authority, not a holding on hierarchy.

One step further along that chain, the authority is gone. The finance ministry’s record for the Job Creation Law of 2020 gives its status as Dicabut, revoked, in force from 2 November 2020 to 30 December 2022, naming two instruments as revoking it; the Article 142 the regulation cites left further provisions on hak pengelolaan to a Government Regulation.^{Source: 6}JDIH Kementerian Keuangan, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified Its replacement, a regulation in lieu of statute of 30 December 2022 that Law 6 of 2023 enacts and annexes in full, revokes that law in Article 185, keeps regulations made under it in force in Article 184(b) so far as not contrary, and repeats the same delegation word for word in its own Article 142. The 1960 land law is not mentioned there either.^{Source: 7}JDIH Kementerian Keuangan, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified

So the regulation did not fall with its parent; a saving clause holds it up, measured against the instrument containing it and not against another statute. On that clause alone we leave the conflict open; we read instruments and searched no decisions. The 1960 law’s memorandum is no help: against the transfer article it prints Tidak memerlukan penjelasan, no explanation needed, and against the rental-right articles says that hak sewa is a hak pakai with special characteristics, named separately for that reason.^{Source: 1}JDIH Kementerian Perumahan dan Kawasan Permukiman, Last reviewed 29/09/2026Confidence: Verified

Is a permit recorded on your certificate?

The third paper is the grant decision and the land book entry carrying its terms, answering what a seller actually asks: must an office sign anything? Article 173(1) of Permen ATR/BPN 18/2021 lists four rights whose transfer needs a transfer permit: Hak Milik held by designated legal entities; Hak Guna Usaha held by a legal entity; hak pakai over agricultural land on state land; and any other land right that by its nature requires one and is recorded on the certificate and in the land book.^{Source: 3}JDIH Kementerian Agraria dan Tata Ruang/Badan Pertanahan Nasional, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified

A residential hak pakai over a family’s land is none of the first three, so the fourth limb is the one to check. Article 173(3) requires that provision to be stated in the decision granting the right and recorded in the land book, the certificate and other public registers.^{Source: 3}JDIH Kementerian Agraria dan Tata Ruang/Badan Pertanahan Nasional, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified Either the annotation is there or it is not: a reading task, not interpretation.

One land type changes the answer on its own. Article 49(1) of Permen ATR/BPN 18/2021 requires the Hak Pengelolaan holder’s recommendation or approval for every legal act intended to transfer a right over that land, except by auction, and Article 49(4) requires none on inheritance.^{Source: 3}JDIH Kementerian Agraria dan Tata Ruang/Badan Pertanahan Nasional, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified That is a named party with a veto, the clearest consent requirement these documents contain.

The land ministry’s register still records Permen ATR/BPN 18/2021 as in force, promulgated 29 April 2021, partly revoked by a 2025 ministerial regulation as to converting Hak Milik into a building right or a hak pakai, except at auction.^{Source: 3}JDIH Kementerian Agraria dan Tata Ruang/Badan Pertanahan Nasional, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified That 2025 regulation was itself revoked by Permen ATR/BPN 5/2025 of 28 April 2025, whose Article 23 says nothing about Permen 18/2021.^{Source: 4}JDIH Kementerian Agraria dan Tata Ruang/Badan Pertanahan Nasional, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified What survives of the partial revocation we cannot say; it does not touch Articles 49 and 173.

What if there is no certificate, only a contract?

Then the fourth paper is the contract, and the land law says almost nothing about it. Whether this is the branch most Bali sellers are on, we decline to assert. Our own earlier page, “Do you pay acquisition tax when you buy someone else’s Bali lease”, says in print that most leasehold deals sold to foreigners are hak sewa; that sentence carries no source there, so we do not rely on it. We order these branches by what a certificate says, because which is typical our documents cannot answer.

That is the whole of the section, not of the statute. Article 16(1)(e) lists hak sewa among the rights over land, and Article 50(2) provides that further provisions on hak guna-usaha, hak guna-bangunan, hak pakai and hak sewa untuk bangunan are to be regulated by legislation.^{Source: 1}JDIH Kementerian Perumahan dan Kawasan Permukiman, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified So the land law states no transfer rule for a rental right and delegates the further rules. Silence is neither permission nor prohibition, and a delegation is not an answer; we read neither as one.

The market’s answer comes from the Civil Code. Article 1559 has two limbs. A tenant without permission may neither misuse the thing rented nor hand the lease to another person, on pain of cancellation and compensation for costs, damages and interest. But where the thing rented is a house the tenant occupies himself, he may on his own responsibility sublet part of it unless the agreement forbids that.^{Source: 5}Kejaksaan Negeri Sukoharjo, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified The market’s bracket therefore covers two rules, not one: handing the lease on needs permission, letting part of a house you live in does not.

One caveat is ours. We looked for an officially promulgated Indonesian text of the Civil Code and found none: the authentic instrument is a Dutch colonial code we did not read, and the versions in circulation are translations. The copy we cite, on a prosecutor’s file server, reads menyalahgunakan, to misuse, where the widely quoted translation reads mengulangsewakan, to sublet; the words this piece leans on, melepaskan sewanya kepada orang lain, are identical in both. What is verified is a translation’s wording, there being no authentic text to check it against. And whether that rule on rented things reaches a hak sewa untuk bangunan created by the land law, neither instrument says.

The case against this reading

The strongest objection is that we have made a conflict where practice sees none. A registered time-limited hak pakai is transferable in the paragraph that names transfer, and a reader may fairly say PP 18/2021 is now the law of that right, the 1960 condition spent. We cannot refute that from documents.

The second objection is about what a certificate proves. Permen ATR/BPN 18/2021 contemplates a foreigner with immigration documents holding a landed house on a hak pakai over Hak Milik land, under an agreement granting that right by deed of a land-deed official.^{Source: 3}JDIH Kementerian Agraria dan Tata Ruang/Badan Pertanahan Nasional, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified So an arrangement marketed as leasehold may be that registered right, or a contract that never reached the land office — a fact about your file we have not seen.

The third matters most, because this piece’s opening invites the wrong inference: being unable to assign is not being unable to exit. Article 55(3) of PP 18/2021 allows a hak pakai over privately owned land to be renewed, by agreement between holder and owner, through a fresh deed of grant registered at the land office.^{Source: 2}JDIH Kementerian Perumahan dan Kawasan Permukiman, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified Read with the release limb of the transfer paragraph, and the rule that the right is created by the owner’s deed, a way out appears that assigns nothing: release it, and have the owner grant a fresh right to the buyer.

The regulation describes that mechanism, for a different right. The memorandum to PP 18/2021 Article 49(1)(b) says that a hak pakai granted for an indefinite term while the land is used for a particular purpose cannot be transferred to another party, but may be released by its holder so that the land becomes state land and is then applied for with a new right by that other party.^{Source: 2}JDIH Kementerian Perumahan dan Kawasan Permukiman, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified That governs the species held over state land, so it is analogy and not authority: under Article 57(f) of PP 18/2021, land released from a hak pakai over Hak Milik returns to the owner, not the state^{Source: 2}JDIH Kementerian Perumahan dan Kawasan Permukiman, Last reviewed 29/09/2026Confidence: Verified, and nothing we read applies it there. The reading is ours; it needs the owner, and yields a new term, not the remainder of yours.

Article 50 of PP 18/2021 obliges a hak pakai holder who ceases to qualify to release or transfer the right within a year, failing which it lapses by operation of law.^{Source: 2}JDIH Kementerian Perumahan dan Kawasan Permukiman, Last reviewed 27/09/2026Confidence: Verified A seller who has lost eligibility is on a clock that is not negotiable.

None of this tells you what your certificate says, or how a Bali land office applies these paragraphs: we read instruments, not decisions or refusals. Four documents we could not obtain would move the answer more than anything above: the land offices’ procedure for annotating the fourth limb of Article 173(1), a PPAT model deed of grant, any refusal or approval on these facts, and the Dutch Civil Code text.

We read the 1960 law and the 2021 regulation at the housing ministry’s legal-documentation office, the ministerial regulations and register entries at the land ministry’s portal, the 2020 law and its replacement at the finance ministry’s, and the Civil Code on a prosecutor’s file server, as those files stood on 27 September 2026.