Bali Expat Forum - Bali Travel Forum

I am looking for builders to tender for the construction of 4 villas in Brawa? Is there a builders registration board?

Wlecome to the forum Shayb.

Maybe you will need to seek out comparable villas recently built and check who built them and how happy the owners are.

Just what Canggu needs...more villas!

ouch Roy...

No there is not a builder's Registrar or Assoc. or is a license required. One thing Bali has in spades is talented craftspeople and builders, however, they're are more hands out than dollars to put in'em so buyer beware!!!! Use someone who has proved their capability and integrity and don't budge on that.

And yes there are too many villas down, well, everywhere on Bali. If what you're building won't be used as a home but rather for other's holiday good-time, shouldn't you ask yourself...is that what this place really needs? Is this progress?

Thanks for for the responses. I am trying to contact as many new villa owners as possible to source a competent Building Company.
In effect, the land-space occupied by villas on the coastal stretch of Bali is a small percentage of the overall land area.I guess one should also look at the Balinese long-term income from villas and houses owned partly by foreigners. One hopes that this might in some way offset the inconvenience and influences of us 'foreigners'.

I don't think you need to be apologetic about building villas. This forum has many people who already have come from elsewhere and found their own small bit of Bali, and more people who are thinking of doing it. So it would be a bit hypocritical to start waving "No more villas" placards.

Yes and no ronb. It really depends where the building is going on. IMHO, too much development is when you can no longer recognize the place...like with Seminyak for example. There are no more sawahs in Seminyak. However, on my last trip to Lovina, which was about 6 months ago, it didn’t look over developed at all...yet.

Moving elsewhere, if Tabanan were to turn into a Yak in future years, that would be an unforgivable crime. Well, it can’t anyway, since several large tracts of land with sawahs will soon be added to the UNESCO list of protected properties. The same cry, “kriminal” could easily be said for a number of other areas of Bali...like Batur or Amlapura, just to mention two places, that if transformed into a Yak, would be horrible.

Ubud and its environs seem to be holding its own fairly well. Most changes in the past years have been for the good...vastly improved roads, sidewalks, stone walling of sharp hills along roads to prevent mud slides, street lighting, garbage collection and re-cycling are just some of the improvements made during the years since I moved here. Although four circle K convenient stores have worked their way into Ubud, there are still no fast food chain restaurants, and it looks promising that there may never be any.

The challenge in the future, as I see it, is to find a balance between responsible development and the rights of Balinese to do with their land what they want...assuming compliance to local banjar, regency and provincial laws. Anywhere in the world, it’s a tough nut to crack to inform owners what they can and cannot do with their land, or the structures on that land. I learned that in the late 80’s while working on the Historical District Commission in Connecticut. Telling a home owner that they can’t aluminum side their clapboard 18th century house didn’t go over well, unless the owner already appreciated the historical and architectural significance of their home.

Who can’t understand or appreciate the inherent unfairness of telling one Balinese, “sorry, you can’t sell that land as anything else but farm land” while another is told, “ok, no problem, go ahead and sell it to that developer?” The price per are differential is staggering.

I don’t know the “fair” solution to that problem. But, I do feel strongly that both “out of Bali” purchasers, as well as “in Bali” developers share an equal responsibility to exercise some amount of common sense and appreciation for the long term ramifications of their desires.

It’s not about being hypocritical ronb, rather it is all about being responsible.

Just about Lovina - I find it becoming far too developed. The main strip down by the dolphin on the beach is shockingly ugly, and I noticed land that was once sawah now littered with villas. There's a question of what is reasonably sustainable and what is purely ego gratification in terms of building. There's certainly a lot of empty buildings that can be torn down and rebuilt as a number of my friends have done, rather than continuing to use up sawah and putting additional pressure on resources that will be stretched to limit in just a few years.